Overview

Acts as a trusted advisor to determine how commercial licensing and contracting should be changed to best meet customer needs. Leverages understanding of sales science (e.g., pipeline metrics, closed rates, competitive selling) to establish a strategic sales execution cadence. Develops customer-centric offers by engaging with and aligning account teams around the deal(s) that they are casting. Ensures that Win/Win compliant deal making occurs while creating commercial solutions. Establishes the strategy for the negotiation approach by engaging with senior stakeholders internally and externally. Drives accountability and the negotiation outcome.

The Senior Commercial Executive engages with and provides tactical direction to sellers and business stakeholders in order to achieve revenue targets. Leverages expertise in customer business needs and desired outcomes and identifies and applies new tools and processes to achieve revenue goals using ethical selling methods. Leads internal sales and management teams through sales process optimizing for the right level of investment and customization. Proactively identifies, prioritizes, and evaluates business opportunities which vary based on deal lifecycle and AI-enabled customer solutions. Partners with customer, partner, support, and account teams to ensure value is delivered during lifecycle management planning and ensure that all teams are aligned on customer/partner priorities, strategies, and budget to better structure deals that drive annuity and cloud growth. Owns and leads the design of commercial deal construct that enable the company to scale and grow the business. Drives adherence to commercial solutions policy for commercial deal execution, inclusive of regulatory laws and principles in local markets, company policies, and guidance for consistent deal making. Utilizes deep expertise in liability to evaluate and recommend risk tolerance strategies.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

Responsibilities

Deep Proactive Engagement

Leverages knowledge of best practices and strategies to accomplish goals. Understands nuances of product strategy per solution area. Leads analysis competitive positioning and use cases. Possesses and utilizes knowledge of industry, competition, and Microsoft offering to accomplish goals. Mentors peers and provides recommendations to align pricing and offers commercial strategies to meet customer needs. Provides strategic guidance and tactical plans internally and externally. Demonstrates agility in aligning business strategies within region. Actively pursues learning opportunities and reinforces understanding of local subsidiary strategy. Fosters alignment across teams, especially with regard to aligning Microsoft portfolio and customer business outcomes. Fosters sharing of best practices and strategies across internal teams (e.g., product groups, field sales force, leadership). Leads initiatives to create clarity in work. Inspires teams to follow through on plans. Buys engagement from multiple stakeholders to ensure that all Microsoft solution capabilities are represented.

Leads internal sales and management teams through sales process optimizing for the right level of investment and customization. Ensures tasks are accomplished across stakeholders with appropriate breadth and depth. Crafts and presents deals that will process, including any standard or custom amendments and documentation. Secures and leverages internal resources to assist with customer queries regarding contract terms. Leads negotiations of contractual amendments within empowerment. Develops deal strategies to present offers to clients. Demonstrates strong leadership and engagement with all stakeholders to ensure that their teams are executing effectively while reaching milestones and that all internal stakeholders are aligned on closing to avoid deal delay. Ensures that the appropriate value has been sold and the deployment plan has been considered. Leverages comprehensive knowledge of sales science and operational acumen (e.g., pipeline metrics, close rates, competitive selling) to lay out a strategic sales execution cadence. Leverages AI tools to analyze and synthesize multiple data inputs quickly and drives strategic decision making to ensure the best sales and revenue production and velocity through management team.

Partners with customer, partner, support, and account teams to ensure value is delivered during lifecycle management planning and ensure that all teams are aligned on customer/partner priorities, strategies, and budget to better structure deals that drive annuity and cloud growth. Initiates and develops challenger relationships with customers/partner to understand their priorities and strategies, and structures deals that drive value and contribute to Microsoft growth through attainment of revenue-based, share-based, and/or consumption-based quota independently. Demonstrates empathy with high-level customers and partners. Grows share and adoption while simultaneously driving business value for customers. Works collaboratively within the customer/partner ecosystem to balance customer/partner and Microsoft needs when crafting value-based solutions. Represents customer and partner requirements in proposals. Translates requirements into proposals. Provides direction and recommendations to internal stakeholders to help solve customer/partner issues. Leverages knowledge about customer/partner priorities and industry challenges to solve problems. Validates and translates commercial strategies for customers and partners. Identifies and recommends the right resources to solve partner issues in deals. Fosters and grows senior leader trusted relationships with customers and partners. Strategically engages with partners (e.g., scale partner, cloud solution provider [CSP]) on effective ways to establish customer solutions for the benefit of all parties.

Leverages expertise in customer business needs and desired outcomes and identifies and applies new tools and processes to achieve revenue goals using ethical selling methods. Mentors others on developing pricing scenarios and proposals. Leverages industry knowledge expertise and leads competitive analyses that substantially contribute to and shape commercial solutions. Acts as a trusted advisor both internally and with customers in the sales process. Ensures appropriate monetization of commercial solutions. Provides direction and guidance during early engagement, planning and ideation process. Serves as an expert and advises on account territory planning. Crafts and communicates novel and innovative close plan strategies. Aligns language of renewal or negotiation to customer's understanding. Demonstrates customer understanding. Works within portfolio to gain strategic position. Drives the creation of best practices for deal making. Builds consistency across deals. Examines deals from different angles (e.g., year over year), models different variables to make the most effective deal. Presents and speaks at a C-level audience to understand business solutions outside of technology solutions and understands the terminology of working at this level.

Engages with and provides tactical direction to sellers and business stakeholders in order to achieve revenue targets. Secures and deploys critical resources (e.g., deal desk, sales support, partners, finance) to drive business outcomes. Orchestrates high levels of strategic conversations internally or externally. Serves as an expert and resource for others and provides guidance to align commercial strategy to customer needs. Drives the planning and execution of strategies with partners to ensure that solutions are aligned to customer commercial strategic needs. Acts as a trusted technical advisor of commercial solutions and expected outcomes within local or regional segment/organization to determine how commercial licensing and contracting should be changed to best meet customer needs. Drives accountability in resolving cross-functional issues to successful conclusion. Promotes and provides unique solutions, approaches, or techniques in feedback loop to improve/simplify deal construct to meet business needs or market opportunities. Drives and ensures overall success by reinforcing cross segment and cross group collaboration with prioritization to ensure proper balance of demands. Actively shares knowledge across segments/organizations and creates a common or shared vision across a highly matrixed organization (across other Microsoft functional areas).

Proactively identifies, prioritizes, and evaluates business opportunities which vary based on deal lifecycle and AI-enabled customer solutions (e.g., upsell/cross-sell, expanding footprint, transformational). Uses knowledge of both customer and Microsoft commercial strategies to seize new opportunities that grow the Microsoft footprint. Leads consultations with internal partners to maximize pipeline conversion. Prioritizes execution appropriately. Secures upsells that aligns to proven value. Works with account teams to identify growth opportunities and solutions. Mentors others on creating and utilizing multiple equivalent offers (MEOs) that advances internal alignment and maximize business outcomes. Oversees offers. Demonstrates deep subject matter expertise in how our solutions work and applies that knowledge to help teams understand how to monetize products and solutions. Understands and communicates limitations on deal making with peers (e.g., understands when it is appropriate and not appropriate to follow through with a deal). Demonstrates advanced knowledge of industry and industry trends. Drives strategic insights into deal making by leveraging audience understanding and knowledge of decision-maker buying criteria. Influences teams. Recognizes and acts on trends across deals to guide teams toward new best practices. Builds customer-centric offers. Drives collaboration with account team to determine how they can best monetize opportunities that are included in the account plan.

Mastering Key Skills

Utilizes deep expertise in liability to evaluate and recommend risk tolerance strategies. Articulates when and why risk is worth it (or not). Focuses on sustainable business. Independently evaluates risk and liability as part of deal consideration and escalates when appropriate. Shares best practices and experiences to create efficiencies for teams. Assesses when engagement and executive engagement is necessary due to deal size, complexity, or strategic importance.

Leads complex, high-value deal negotiations. Coaches others in the application of proven sales and commercial methodologies (e.g., Value Selling, Think, Strategic Negotiations). Maintains and leverages a thorough understanding of internal and external stakeholders. Leverages negotiation strategies and assigns roles and responsibilities while considering customer needs. Clarifies strategy and serves as escalation point as needed. Briefs leadership team on negotiation strategy. Solicits and receives sign off from leadership teams on largest deals. Articulates and maintains the strategy for the negotiation approach by formulating plans with all required stakeholders to ensure that the entire sales team up to top management are aligned. Shares accountability for negotiation outcome(s).

Drives adherence to commercial solutions policy for commercial deal execution, inclusive of regulatory laws and principles in local markets, company policies, and guidance for consistent deal making. Coaches others to ensure compliance is embedded in the deal making process. Advises on others' sales and negotiation strategies to ensure they adhere to established guidelines, policies, and legal standards. Partners with Deal Execution Compliance (DEC) where applicable and audit teams. Leverages relevant tools including business conduct and integrity, appropriately and confidentially. Actively and promptly raises compliance issues through available channels. Mentors less experienced team members in addressing compliance investigations. Provides recommendations to address potential non-compliance issues and redirect appropriately. Serves as a trusted advisor on compliance (e.g., General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR]). Exemplifies and drives a culture of compliance through the sales deal execution related parts of Microsoft policy (e.g., anti-corruption policy). Drives adherence to security policies and standards, ensuring proper security classification on internal and customer-facing documentation. Oversees win/win-compliant deal making processes to ensure that they occur while commercial solutions are created.

Owns and leads the design of commercial deal construct that enable the company to scale and grow the business. Provides guidance to peers around account planning and AI-usage to maximize revenue. Uses AI tools to synthesize data on customer commercial opportunity history, inclusive of discounts, concessions, and consumptions for territory. Handles deal escalation strategies and tactics as necessary.

Embody our culture and values

Qualifications

Required/minimum qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing, Finance, Communication, Education (or equivalent) or related field AND 8+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work or internship experience OR 12+ years sales and negotiation experience OR equivalent experience.

Additional or preferred qualifications

Master's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing (or equivalent) AND 10+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work OR Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing, Finance, Communication, Education (or equivalent) or related field AND 12+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work or internship experience OR 15+ years sales and negotiation experience OR equivalent experience.

Commercial Sales IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $133,000 - $222,700 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $170,300 - $239,800 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here:
https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay

This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. 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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.

Commercial Executive

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