Microsoft's mission is grounded in both the world in which we live and the future we strive to create. Today, we live in a mobile-first, cloud-first world, and the transformation we are driving across our businesses is designed to enable Microsoft and our customers to thrive in this world.
Microsoft is seeking a Manager, Digital Natives, Late Stage Startups and Unicorns to lead a team of Business Development Managers / Strategic Negotiators who are orchestrating One Microsoft team efforts to drive ambitious growth and wins, with late-stage start-ups and unicorns, on the Microsoft cloud platform. This senior leadership role will partner closely with resources in the Business Development Organization, WCB, Engineering, Marketing, Finance and Legal, Deal Desk, and other groups across Microsoft. The High-Tech Pursuit Manager is a senior leader within our enterprise sales organization that will model, coach, and care the team aligned to sales goals.
This is a unique opportunity for a bold, customer oriented, strategic thinker to empower a team of strategic sellers execute Microsoft cloud deals that drive significant publicity, competitive share, and revenue for the Microsoft Azure platform. The primary focus will be on late-stage start-ups and ISV’s that are transforming key verticals across the United States.
Microsoft's Global Sales & Marketing has created a Digital Transformation Partnership organization to embark on an effort to identify and engage with late-stage start-ups and unicorns to secure long lasting partnerships with such organizations and get them to utilize the benefits of Microsoft cloud platforms and leverage the advantages of Microsoft’s business model. This effort will involve close alignment with Corporate Business Development, Global Partner Solutions, Microsoft’s Startup organization, Private Equity Account management teams, Venture Capital partner management teams, and most importantly deep collaboration with the local area teams.
In this context, we are building out a team across the US that will partner with broader teams including a technical team, formed primarily of Cloud Solution Architects within our Customer Success Unit.
The collective responsibility of the late-stage startups and unicorns team is:
- Leading and shaping the future of high potential late-stage start-ups and unicorns based on locally set selection criteria
- Assessing external data identifying those unicorns and late stage, qualifying them based on current status, scores, cost of complexity and acquisition as well as internal Microsoft relationship and relevance (any upcoming ISV that can scale and go big)
- Engaging with this segment to prioritize the right motion for a potential unicorn WIN (either through projects on Azure at the start, strategic partnership with commitment, or exclusivity on a specific workload)
- Building strategic partnerships at the right time, with those unicorns to accelerate their growth and build new solutions
- Onboarding the selected ones onto the Azure platform, designing and helping to migrate and increase consumption while striking the right goals for unicorns
- Envisioning new industry scenarios and business models with the unicorns
- Driving technical alignment with the v-technical team across organizational segments (Customer Success, Global Black Belts, Engineering, Channel Sales, etc.)
Responsibilities
- Leadership: The High-Tech Pursuit Manager leads, develops and manages a team of high performing BDM’s to drive solution opportunity revenue and market share by executing to bring late-stage start-ups, unicorns and digital natives to build solutions using Microsoft Azure, and related technologies.
- Strategic thinker and market expert: Accountable for identifying growth opportunities, defining strategies, prioritizing sales plays and developing go-to-market execution plans, to ensure Microsoft realizes its full growth potential within the late-stage startups and unicorns space. This process will integrate and rely on thorough analysis of external and internal data for building a solid portfolio of prospects
- Growth & Transformation business leader and Customer Advocate: Engage with the late-stage start-ups and unicorn customers to accelerate revenue growth, drive business outcomes, while helping customers to digitally transform in their industry. Responsible for supplementing global data with local insights to optimize for customer lifetime value through acquisition, retention and growth strategies
- Sales Leader: Ensure each customer has the most valuable relationship with Microsoft and execute MS vision of empowering enterprise customers, driving business growth and transformation through strategic thinking, sales execution and influence
- Deal Maker: Develop and progress the deal shaping and commercial deal construct that is optimal for both the customer and Microsoft
Core competencies in the role include: sales and pipeline management, people leadership, customer obsession, creative deal making, resilience, goal orientation, embracing internal and external leadership opportunities, strong business networking ability, public speaking, CxO level presentation and partnering skills, structured thinking, and deep project management.Other aspects of the role include:
- Lead BDM’s to drive the High-Tech Pursuit Business to overachieve revenue, consumption, and scorecard targets
- Develops their seller’s Solution Sales and technical skills to sell the business outcomes of the broader Azure platform
- Drives strong partnership with sales team and other teams engaging in the customer (e.g. partners, services, Customer Success, engineering support, etc.)
- Maintains the pipeline and the forecast to required operational standards
- Drives new business opportunities to achieve targets contributing positively to relevant subsidiary scorecard metrics
- Drives higher levels of operational excellence. Ensures appropriate 4 quarter qualified pipeline in place by workload/solution.
People Management:
- Develops a high-performing team by hiring diverse talent, prioritizing development, leading by example and by preparing people for more senior positions in other parts of the organization.
- Coaches Seller’s with a “challenger mentality” by prompting Seller’s to engage early and lead with new insights on how to grow the customers’ business.
- Successful teams and team members are recognized and rewarded, both within the sales organization and at Corporate levels.
- Drives cross-team collaboration with Channel Sales Teams, Account Teams, and Specialist Teams
Customer centricity:
- Lead from the front, personally engaging at CxO level to support and coach teams on opportunity discovery and acceleration
- Lead sellers to drive end-to-end business solutions, increasing customer and partner satisfaction and average deal sizes YoY.
- Lead cross-team to ensure customer commitment to consume to migrate and expand cloud services.
Partner Engagement:
- Bring together Microsoft solutions with Partner solutions, fully leverage the synergy effect with our partners, and co-sell with them to make deals bigger and faster.
Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications
- 7+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience
- OR Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration, or related field AND 6+ years of technology-related sales or account management experience.
- 5+ years of demonstrated experience in leading teams, programs or projects to drive impact and influence sales.
- 5+ years' experience in any of the following: complex solution selling, consulting services sales, sales management, corporate strategy, or enterprise technology related sales.
Additional Preferred Qualifications:
- Deep understanding of cloud computing, application hosting, social media and software development (level 200+) preferred.
- Experience in building long-term commercial agreements that deal with ambiguities and dynamic business changes while minimizing risk.
- Ability to analyze and model financial data.
- Ability to creatively move difficult deals forward by restructuring the deal and/or finding ‘win-win’ scenarios and ensuring competitive advantage.
- Ability to coordinate with external partners and internal teams, both on the business and technical sides to deliver on strategy.
- Accuracy in providing senior executives with required information, which ensure project visibility and risk mitigation.
- People leadership and passion for building a strong culture.
- Business Development and Sales Leadership.
- Deep understanding on how to create a new business offering from scratch via different forms of partnerships, and strategic investments while keeping a laser focus on revenue, profitability, and market share growth.
- Translating strategy into action and a clear passion for closing deals.
- Ability to ramp up quickly and understand thoroughly the economics, dynamics and intricacy of the cloud business, knowing what levers to pull and when to pull them to influence change, and continually monitoring ongoing trends to anticipate change and proactively lead a timely response.
- Assessing markets and trends to determine opportunities for Microsoft that provide opportunities for customers/partners to leverage the Microsoft Azure platform.
- Applying innovative thinking to develop or refine product or services approaches, business models, or marketing strategies to proactively and strategically respond to opportunities.
- Seeing the big picture, develop models, learn from experience, and
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. We also consider qualified applicants regardless of criminal histories, consistent with legal requirements. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.
Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.
