Our love for innovation, technology and doing meaningful work, is at the heart of everything we do at Microsoft ANZ. It is a shared passion that inspires our team and customers to think bigger.

The Global Partner Solutions (GPS) team mission is to build and sell intelligent cloud and intelligent edge solutions with partners, empowering people and organizations to achieve more. GPS is a sales organisation accountable for the commercial partner business at Microsoft. Building on the GPS mission, the Go-To-Market team mission is to develop the strategy and marketing approach for how we build, nurture, and engage the partner ecosystem to drive tech acceleration and customer outcomes.

This Partner Solution Sales Specialist for Independent Software Vendors (ISV) role is perfect for someone who thrives on orchestrating and guides our partner engagement is to define and realise mutual success in the Partner’s and Microsoft’s business aspirations. As a Microsoftie , your daily actions will contribute to our inclusive culture.

The purpose of this role

You will be joining a high performing team that works together to support our partners help their customers reach their digital transformation goals. We want to hear from you if: 

• you are reading this knowing you're a strong seller and bring high energy and passion for our partners every day 

• you have a growth mindset, passion for partners and are a team player 

• you have a professional approach to engage at all levels within an organisation 

• you are thinking that you don't have the laundry list of skills yet but do have the mindset and energy called out above

Responsibilities

Partner Management

• Uses Challenger mindset to build, maintain, and own a trusted-advisor relationship with C-suite leaders of complex partners based in ANZ to achieve strategic alignment and drive growth. Understands and aligns partners’ priorities, strategies, and goals with Microsoft’s to build mutually beneficial account plans. Executes and drives action through regular partner reviews and quarterly business reviews (e.g., MBRs, QBRs) to track plan execution, identify gaps and agree on any correction of errors. Builds, maintains, and owns trusted advisor relationships with partner through an advanced understanding of their local strategy and business imperatives. Identifies and clearly articulates current and future business opportunities and ways to pursue them.​ Influences and plays an active role across a complex stakeholder map.

• Coaches and challenges partners to transform their plans and strategies around consumption and key targets. Leads reviews of Partner’s pipeline, top deals, and consumption targets. Shapes the thinking of partners on top deals and ensure close alignment between the partners sales team, channel managers, and other relevant teams. Works with partners sales leaders on how to overcome obstacles, compete, create deal proposals, etc.

• Owns the relationship to gain support for strategic transformational initiatives to drive incremental cloud growth. Leads efforts to collaborate across the Microsoft and partner sales teams to manage pipeline and drive large opportunities/deals. Leads the guiding of partners through Digital transformation by building Digital capabilities with a Challenger mindset: sharing ideas, perspectives, and building a trusted advisory relationship. Leads effort to drive partner integration of the common sales and delivery methodology for Microsoft for customer opportunities, accelerate pipeline by removing blockers, and drive key sales motions, programs, and incentives with their partner.

• Leads efforts to identify new opportunities with partner, document in MSX, connect Microsoft and partner sellers, and help move through sales stages. Demonstrates precise pipeline ownership, translating into advanced deal control and forecasting.

• Reviews pipeline performance against expectations. Identifies gaps in capacity for partner delivery. Forecasts preview of pipeline and develops trajectories for partners. Verifies and qualifies leads provided by partners, aligns specific sales teams within Microsoft on the opportunity, and defines next steps of how to move the opportunity down the sales pipeline. Manages complex industry opportunities and assess whether opportunities exist. Aligns partner offerings with customer potential/need and drive it further through partners.

• Provides guidance on the right partner offering and capability understanding based on opportunities across the segment. Helps partner sellers determine prioritization of specific solution areas (e.g., Azure, ModernWork, Business Application) based on customer needs/opportunities. Ensures that partners have access to resources; follows partner sales readiness of access to resources. 

Driving and Facilitating Sales/Business Growth

• Facilitates the sales cycle by managing partner and stakeholder collaboration. Develops and helps partner(s) develop relationships with internal stakeholders who facilitate external stakeholder connection. Leverages input from stakeholders as part of the account team to determine which opportunities should be pursued. Utilizes different stakeholders and partners based on their subject matter expert (SME) perspective on the need for specific projects. Navigates resource allocation between account managers and specialist sales on behalf of the partner. Understands the key performance indicators (KPIs) of internal stakeholders and leverages them. Negotiates with internal sales manager leadership team to pitch opportunities for top partners. Strategically increases utilization of these partners over distributing opportunities to various partners.

• Accompanies partners and primes them on how to most effectively pitch products to customers. Helps partners capitalize on and understand customer needs by educating them on customer needs based on customer insights to improve pitch strategy. Encourages and supports partners in offering solution pitches that satisfy customer's Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and identify the partner solution that aligns on customer and industry needs. Aligns internal account strategy with account planning team to ensure initiative execution. Supports partner in development of plan to deliver proof of concept (POC). Evaluates and communicates to partner when it is appropriate/ most strategic to do a POC or when to avoid it.

• Facilitates connection with industry subject matter expert (SME) and partner. Determines how increased industry knowledge will benefit the partner's engagements. Ensures that competitive analysis is done and that partner understands the competitive differentiators across partner offerings. Communicates diffentiators among stakeholders. Detects differences among Microsoft and external offerings, articulates why Microsoft solution is better based on business perspective. Proactively reaches out to partners to articulate/showcase use cases for a particular industry (e.g., how modern work solutions are used in the public sector) based on local/regional needs.  

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Marketing, Business Operations, Computer Science or a related field AND 8+ years experience in partner management, sales, business development, or partner channel development in the technology industry or related experience

o OR equivalent experience.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Master's Degree in Business Administration, Business Science, or an advanced degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) or a related field AND 8+ years experience in partner management, sales, business development, or partner channel development in the technology industry or related experience

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .