Address Microsoft is empowering every person and every organization on the planet to do more and achieve more. As a company, Microsoft is looking to foster innovation that generates new ecosystems of inventors, partners, developers, creators, changemakers, public servants, frontline workers, and knowledge workers who, together, drive the engines of growth and opportunity in ways that benefit everyone.
As an Industry Advisor, you will have the opportunity to drive industry-focused sales for Microsoft and serves as a thought leader on industry-focused sales within Microsoft and as the Industry subject matter expert in digital transformation account planning. This role is responsible for originating sales and driving industry-led conversations with customers. Accountabilities include developing and winning market-making opportunities that deliver customer value and enabling transformational customer outcomes. As an Industry Advisor you will be the Industry subject matter expert in digital business transformation and engage with senior decision makers to nurture new business opportunities. Initiates conversations with strategic customers to bring innovative ideas that showcase the need for strategic change. As an Industry Advisor, you will have the opportunity to drive industry-focused sales for Microsoft. This role is responsible for originating sales and driving industry-led conversations with customers.
Responsibilities
Planning and Engagement
- Serves as the industry subject matter expert in digital transformation account planning. Engages with internal and external stakeholders on account planning and partner business planning (e.g., Key Business Leaders (KBLs), Global Systems Integrator [GSI], Independent Software Vendors [ISV]) and reviews industry plans, lending credibility from an industry perspective. Brings a multi-year strategic perspective to digital transformation account planning by identifying where the industry is, where the account is, and what Microsoft has to offer that is new. Provides thought leadership via focus on broad global industry trends (e.g., emerging customer needs and competition) to activate and evangelize worldwide industry strategies and/or large ecosystem plays into local market and/or must-win accounts. Drives stakeholder mapping to identify the most influential stakeholders and decision makers in the customer business. Partners locally with ISVs to inform industry knowledge. Participates in small-scale iterative planning rhythms with core account team and other team members to discuss operational elements (e.g., tactics, execution, roles, and orchestration) needed to deliver on the account plan. Ensures alignment with account roadmaps by determining how to drive growth/reduce cost and help direct the account team to what business decision makers (BDMs) pair. Increases the speed of adoption of Microsoft technologies by plotting the strategic, long-term vision of the customer's/partner's business strategy and driving appropriate actions to bring it to fruition.
- Leads multi-horizon planning to outline an approach for industry-oriented solution selling with the customer. Creates segment-focused three-horizon roadmaps for impactful accounts based on business and technology priorities, as well as deep understanding of their industry. Identifies appropriate resources to execute on digital transformation plan to support mid- to long-term customer plans. Drives internal and customer envisioning and articulates business and program changes in the roadmaps around new and groundbreaking capabilities.
- Proactively continues to build and maintain mutually influential relationships with external senior- and executive-level decision makers and partners, leveraging targeted stakeholders at assigned customer. Builds an understanding of who the most influential decision makers are in potential and existing customer accounts to engage with them and develop a relationship, understand their motivations, and open up new opportunities. Defines an engagement strategy for identifying customer stakeholders (e.g., executives) with the most influence. Ensures effective procurement relationship with stakeholders to understand buying habits of customer. Supports broad and specialist teams in determining who to contact and connect with (e.g., detailing that a logistics challenge in the retail space starts with merchandising). Supports definition of holistic strategy for account and individual stakeholder. Engages in regular and continuous communication to act as an Industry Advisor to the executive-level business decision makers at the customer's business by applying deep understanding of their business strategy, market dynamics, relevant technology trends and Microsoft's Industry point of view (POV). Orchestrates V-team in executing plays that support relationship building. Navigates complex corporate and/or political environments specific to the customer's industry to drive business value-case creation.
Sales Execution
- Identifies needs and industry readiness of customers and influences stakeholders. Leverages internal resources (e.g., account team unit [ATU], partners) to land value propositions for solutions with customers and solution plays in a repeatable manner. Leads work to open customer opportunities based on industry objectives, best practices, and new stakeholder relationships. Identifies and advances high-impact, high potential repeatable use cases and scenarios for reuse across customers. Envisions product scenarios that do not currently exist to identify and open white spaces. Leverages industry expertise to help craft and modify prioritized services and solutions that align with customers' needs and innovation-centered initiatives with an industry narrative. Makes and proposes solutions to customers and competitors in the industry. Identifies corporate priorities and map (in a chain) of enabling capabilities from KPIs to the lowest level.
- Collaborates with the account team units (ATUs) and internal and external stakeholders/partners to build a pipeline within the industry and territory. Supports the orchestration of appropriate resources to converge, support, and convert industry-specific opportunities into deals. Conducts research with customer on their markets and opportunities for implementation of digital technologies. Represents industry perspective in and drives conversations and ideation with customers to create a shared vision and future direction for the integration of Microsoft technology in their business. Originates, develops, and drives opportunities based on industry best practices and own expertise, presents transformative opportunities to customer, and creates demand in highly strategic, complex business and IT scenarios. Influences execution of the worldwide play into the field to drive for scale and leverage customer pain points and industry depth to identify and open new business opportunities that meet customer business objectives and drive growth across customer's business. Contributes to market making business partnerships in their industry of expertise with multi-year potential, in collaboration with ATUs. Provides guidance to account teams to help ensure representation of industry to internal senior leadership. Advises account executives and technical leaders of accounts on how to best align sales opportunities to customer business objectives to help customers achieve business results.
- Creates and maintains an industry-focused vision with business and technology solution scenarios and services that helps large-scale, high-stakes customers achieve industry-relevant business outcomes, achieve their long-term corporate vision, and maximize commercial success. From an industry perspective, leads and facilitates strategic discussions with board-level/senior executive stakeholders (e.g., CxO, senior Business Development Managers [BDMs]) both with the customer and internally to design the end state and show how it achieves and aligns to the goals of the customer's business, as well as how it compares with competitors' solutions. Identifies and connects with customer executives who own the area being influenced (e.g., business process) to align with the customer's business strategies and goals, and to design and model how the business will execute strategy with the integration of Microsoft technology.
- Collaborates internally to articulate strategic business value from an industry perspective and long-term implications of using Microsoft's products, services, solutions, and existing features of customer's digital portfolio to create mutually beneficial business value propositions as they digitally transform their business (e.g., program or solution development). Engages senior decision makers within customers to identify, generate, and nurture new business opportunities through qualitative industry solutions. Provides the industry point of view to support the group assessing account maturation using innovative and creative insight. Executes on the proposal or development of solutions that align with customer and Microsoft industry-focused priorities and showcase clear benefits of choosing Microsoft over competitors. Creates value opportunities and value case by identifying value drivers, representing the industry cloud vision, top line revenue opportunities, and cost drivers. Leverages customer successes to demonstrate value and expand solutions throughout other areas of the customer's business. Applies knowledge of the current state, projected future state, and improved capabilities of the customer via Microsoft solutions to create a compelling business-value case with consideration of customer and business scenarios. Provides customer references as industry exemplars in specific, novel customer scenarios. Leads work to build proposals/develop potential industry-specific solutions that align with the customer's priorities.
- Recognized as a trusted advisor by the customer to shape, lead, and challenge strategic decision makers to take action and implement the proposed solutions using a compelling storyline and a strong financial business case (e.g., return on investment [ROI], other applicable metrics) rooted in the customer's industry. Understands customer and industry challenges, helps define the problem statement, and envisions the digital transformation journey (e.g., through user research, storyboards, roadmaps) to drive change for large, complex, and/or strategic customers. Incubates and develops early stage pipeline for large scale digital transformation opportunities based on market research and customer-specific needs to drive strategic partnerships. Initiates conversations and networks with customer and internal teams (e.g., industry team, digital technology specialists, sales teams) to determine the right stakeholder mix for transforming the customer's business. Drives the acceleration of new, multi-horizon customer transformational business models that reshape the customer business and advance their cloud maturity. Leads complex transformational opportunities to turn them into commercial agreements that deliver on customer objectives. Ensures a strong connection into delivery and success, post-sales, to help customers realize desired business value. Organizes collaboration with the account team unit (ATU) to identify opportunities to drive growth with new and existing accounts. Identifies high-impact customer requirements for internal ideation with team. Drives the team to accelerate new customer transformational business models that reshape the customer business and advance their cloud maturity. Gathers competitive insight and proactively shares insight and impacts.
Collaboration and Partner Management
- Leverages their understanding of and relationships with Business Strategy Leads (BSLs), Business Development Managers (BDMs) and Partner Development Managers (PDMs) to plan, orchestrate and execute customer opportunities, and inform house of industry. Drives engagements with Industry Solutions Delivery (ISD), partners (e.g., solution architect, solutions-sales professionals, cloud-solution architects) and external stakeholders to design and illustrate envisioned solutions (e.g., pilots, proof of concept, rapid prototyping, minimum viable product). Collaborates with the account team unit (ATU) and partners to drive GTM strategy and drive together customer opportunities. Collaborates with commercial and legal teams to establish formal partnership. Collaborates with partner teams (e.g., Global Partner Solutions [GPS]) to carry out competitive recruiting of new partners and helps current partners to understand the industry and develop/deliver truth for the solutions within that industry. Drives team efforts to identify and engage partners for targeted solutions and articulates the case for developing solutions on top of the Microsoft cloud.
Industry Expertise
- Completes the required training and seeks additional learning opportunities to obtain relevant industry expertise and certifications pertinent to the role and the industry itself. Proactively builds and maintains knowledge of Microsoft's and other industry-relevant solutions and other capabilities. Proactively builds strong knowledge of the industry, including trends, policy implications (e.g., privacy), and competitors to act as a subject matter expert and inform decisions on pursuit or withdrawal. Leads communication to provide feedback across the ecosystem (i.e., cross-pollinating information across teams/industries) to other teams (e.g., sales, marketing, engineering) on future product trends or sales blockers and to guide industry solutions team members in a wide variety of specialties, leveraging deep industry knowledge to articulate nuances and anticipate gaps. Advises and presents at industry communities. Provides recommendations on accounts and establishes a learning baseline for less experienced colleagues. Proactively seeks out additional training to build on career competencies, including information that adds to the understanding of customers' businesses, and shares it with team members.
Qualifications
Required/Minimum Qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Health Sciences, Supply Chain, Education, Business or related field AND 7+ years customer-facing experience in operations, enterprise-level improvement program management, product management, transportation, hospitality, automotive, consumer goods, financial services, retail, management consulting, consultative selling, public sector, technology or industry-relevant equivalent management or technical work experience
- OR Master's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Engineering, Health Sciences, Supply Chain, Education, Business or related field AND 5+ years customer-facing experience in operations, enterprise-level improvement program management, product management, transportation, hospitality, automotive, consumer goods, financial services, retail, management consulting, consultative selling, public sector, technology or industry-relevant equivalent management or technical work experience
- OR equivalent experience.
- 5+ years proven people management and/or leadership 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) .
