Address 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.
The purpose of this role:
An Azure Channel Manager:
- Drives digital transformation for organizations by ensuring an active and engaged channel ecosystem aligned to customer needs.
- Manages partner capacity and capability to optimize partner impact on new customer acquisition, renewals, and consumption.
- Creates a local partner ecosystem by driving channel activation.
- Drives connections between Microsoft sellers and partners to deliver solutions to end customers.
Responsibilities
Co-Sell Partnerships
· Creates and nurtures a partner ecosystem with assistance from manager and others, to drive larger impact for the customer. Facilitates match-making to drive opportunities (e.g., cloud and solutions), connecting partners to sellers and identifying how specific business needs can be met via Microsoft solutions. Delivers and integrates partner expertise and solutions into sales cycles that grow consumption of Microsoft products.
· Collaborates with internal stakeholders (e.g., account team unit, solution team unit, business groups, customer program management, worldwide inside sales, cloud specialist) to establish quality partner connections and orchestrate processes to set expectations and generate trust. Refers to solution/practice maps or marketing campaigns to support partner strategy. Drives leads and opportunities for co-sell-ready partners with internal teams (e.g., Partner Marketing Advisor [PMA] team) and provides feedback on Solution/Practice map coverage or marketing campaigns. Engages in partner-to-partner collaborations to provide solutions to customers and to scale offerings.
· Manages partner co-selling for Microsoft's most strategic solution partners to drive joint pipeline and partner consumption of Microsoft products. Connects with Microsoft's sales and partner communities to bridge and support partner-to-partner engagements as needed, aiming to scale the offering also through co-sell-ready partners. Identifies and lands sales offers, incentives, and surface customer wins for partner sell-with evidence. Supports account teams while navigating within the partner's solutions and expertise. Carries a target on intellectual property (IP) or service co-sell metrics and connects partners with sales teams to move sales forward.
· Develops pipelines with co-sellers; engages partners and co-sellers proactively to ensure right co-sell prioritization and pipeline coverage to support targets. Participates in intellectual property (IP) and service sales forecasting, as well as account/territory planning to identify and address gaps. Drives pipeline reviews with top co-sell partners and Microsoft sellers to evaluate pipeline effectiveness.
Partner Impact
· Leverages the voice of partners and customers through direct engagements, field surveys, partner events and surveys, listening systems, and social mechanisms, to identify and alleviate key customer and partner success blockers. Drives attendance to partner events and responses to surveys. Connects resources and programs to support partner co-sell pipeline velocity and alleviate friction points. Shares feedback among build-with teams and executes on corrections of errors in response to feedback.
· Maintains and stays up to date on Microsoft's sales compliance processes. Drives sales with partners in accordance with Microsoft's compliance policies.
Qualifications
What skills do you need to have?
There will be many opportunities for you to learn and grow into this role and Microsoft. However, to be able to best deliver on the purpose of this role, these are the core skills and experiences you should have on day one:
Required/Minimum Qualifications
· Strong experience in core sales, channel sales, industry or solution selling, or business development experience
o OR Bachelor's Degree in Sales, Marketing, Business Operations, Business Administration or related field AND 2+ years core sales, channel sales, industry or solution selling, or business development experience
o OR Master's Degree in Sales, Marketing, Business Operations, Business Administration or related field AND 1+ year(s) core sales, channel sales, industry or solution selling, or business development experience.
Team Culture and Support
Microsoft believes that by investing in our people and creating an inclusive environment, our team will do their best work. See our complete list of benefits and why we are recognised as an Endorsed Employer for Women by WORK180. Microsoft Benefits | WORK180 Endorsed Employer (https://work180.com/en-au/for-women/employer/microsoft/benefits)
Our mission is deeply inclusive. See Inside Microsoft | Global Diversity and Inclusion at Microsoft (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/diversity/inside-microsoft/default.aspx)
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) .
