Director Sales Excellence - App Innovation

Microsoft is uniquely positioned to win “App Innovation” workloads to help with customer’s Digital Transformation journey. Microsoft apps portfolio spans Azure App Platform, PowerApps, GitHub/DevOps and Visual Studio. Azure App Platform is one of the fastest growing businesses inside the Azure platform and has tighter integrations with developer tools.   
  
This role is part of the Digital and Application Innovation Solution Area that helps businesses achieve their digital transformation and business goals with Microsoft solutions and partners. The Director of Sales Excellence - App Innovation is focused on Application Innovation and has the ability to drive actionable outcomes, guide and optimize the sales process with our sales leaders. We are looking for an outcome-driven Sales Excellence (SE) person to support App Innovation’s current and forward-looking business goals. You will drive a predictable Rhythm of Business (ROB) with cross-functional teams to ensure quality rolling business outcomes.  
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. 

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• 8+ years’ experience with active participation in sales, sales operations/management, account management, program management, business development, marketing, consulting, or a related field
  • OR equivalent experience
• 5+ years of experience using data to drive business outcomes or inform business decisions
• 5+ years of experience managing relationships with stakeholders, clients, and/or customers

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

• Understanding of how to run a consumption business. 
• Experience in developer services or building applications.

Sales Strategy Enablement IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $124,800 - $242,600 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 $159,000 - $264,000 per year.
Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. 
Microsoft will accept applications for the role until May 4, 2024.

Responsibilities

Business Partnership and Support 

• Drives sales growth through mid-to-the-long-term account or business planning. Analyzes the outlook and generates business insights to benchmark performance and/or define sales/ organizational/partner strategies. Contributes to integrating strategy components (e.g., programs, blueprints), cascading, aligning, and executing the defined strategy across region(s).
• Guides segment leads or partners or collaborates with peers to develop segment strategy for segmentation, territory planning, and quota setting. Shares feedback on proposed segmentation changes based on local business knowledge. Aligns with Business and Sales Operations (BSO) on quota distribution strategy and timeline for the Area. Leverages segment expertise to review judgment/adjustments prior to quota decisions. Participates in sales leader and manager briefings to share quotas and rationale where needed.
• As primary orchestrator of the Account/Portfolio Partner Business Plan activates sponsorship within segment leaders. Coaches managers and sellers on account/portfolio/partner business planning fundamentals, habits, and plan quality. Drives reinforcement and review of quality plans across region(s).
• Defines and drives a predictable rhythm of the connection (RoC) in collaboration with peers and/or leadership. Leads end-to-end RoC activities to enforce great discipline and ensure quality outcome delivery. Provides in-depth business insights and recommendations to effect positive changes. Leads efforts and coaches less experienced team members to streamline and improve the RoC cadence across region(s).
• Guides sales teams/leadership on sales motions/strategies for opportunity management (e.g., up-sell, cross-sell, renewal, recapture) as a subject matter expert. Clarifies accountabilities and operationalizes the prioritized sales plays and industry solutions. Guides sales teams/leadership to generate new business and accelerates the closing of existing opportunities.

Sales Coaching for Growth and Transformation

• Coaches and builds relationships with sales managers on executing key priorities. Identifies where coaching may be needed based on data-driven insights. Influences sales managers to become more effective coaches to their teams. Guides sales managers to achieve increased individual and team capability, employee satisfaction, and collaborative selling efforts. May coach and guide large deal pursuit.
• Drives awareness and clarity of Corporate or Time Zone programs. Intakes and drives the adoption of plans to create new habits among sales teams or partners.
• Drives optimization and improvement in sales team processes and capabilities across the region(s). Assesses and anticipates customer/partner needs and applies or develops methodologies and resources to transform seller capabilities, sales processes, and/or partner engagement processes. Models transformation to a coaching culture.
• Partners with Area Transformation Leads, Area Capability Leads, and Business and Sales Operations (BSO) to remove sales roadblocks, drive utilizations of investment, increase customer/partner-facing time, and enhance seller/partner capability and effectiveness. Shares insights and influences sales managers' strategies to anticipate and mitigate risks. Integrates feedback on sales challenges or blockers. Guides relevant teams to develop actions based on the feedback.

Driving Sales Process Discipline

•  Leads analytics on key revenue drivers (e.g. by channel, by product, by geo) and generates data-based insights. Leverages and develops reporting and analytical capabilities to generate data-based insights and enable visibility into revenue and forecast for sellers, sales managers and leaders, or partners.
• Drives sales process discipline, adherence to standards and excellence in execution, or pipeline health in collaboration with sales managers. Holds sales managers accountable for account plan quality and completeness. Helps ensure consistency and excellence in the sales process across the segment(s)/region(s). Shares best practices and provides thought leadership across teams.
• Acts as a subject matter expert to convey the value of tools and drive the effective and rigorous usage of common and/or new processes and tools developed for the wider business to improve internal and external communications and engagements. Owns consolidated input from the supported area into the feedback loop. Leverages the feedback to influence engineer/partner teams on improving tools.

Supporting Executive Capacity

• Supports segment leader capacity as a leader. Advises on and contributes to various aspects of business management (e.g., employee engagement, resource allocation, change management, building high-performing teams) in collaboration with leadership and cross-functional teams. Represents the segment as an internal advocate and an extension of the segment leadership.