Strategic Initiatives Development Manager

Overview

Microsoft is on a mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Our culture is centered on embracing a growth mindset, a theme of inspiring excellence, and encouraging teams and leaders to bring their best each day. In doing so, we create life-changing innovations that impact billions of lives around the world. You can help us to achieve our mission.

Strategic Initiatives Development Manager is responsible for being the Area-based leader for the identification and orchestration of large, complex strategic partnerships with the largest and most strategic customers in the Area. Key responsibilities are as follows:

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration, Marketing, Finance, Engineering, or related field AND 5+ years experience in business consulting, sales, sales operations, information technology (IT), account management, business development, marketing, IT field sales, or a related field

o OR equivalent experience.

6+ years experience in in Near Term Strategy (2 years out), Management Consulting, Sales, or Finance.

Additional or Preferred Qualifications

Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Computer Science, or related field AND 7+ years marketing, strategy, sales, sales leadership, program management, project management, business planning, consulting, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience

o OR Master's Degree in Business Administration or related field AND 5+ years marketing, strategy, sales, sales leadership, program management, project management, business planning, consulting, banking, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience

o OR equivalent experience.

Responsibilities

Opportunity identification and formulation

Proactively identifies and determines high-impact parties to partner with/sell to through orchestrating a customer assessment of their current needs and defining a value proposition to meet those needs. Prioritizes and pursues large and transformative market opportunities and trends for Microsoft that provide opportunities for customers to leverage Microsoft platforms/products by identifying, quantifying, and qualifying opportunities. Evaluates opportunities and leads overall planning in cooperation with various internal functions in region and HQ (e.g., field sales, industry and solution specialists, partner development org) to identify and prioritize goals and objectives for an achievable target. Orchestrates end-to-end functional thinking and discussions to design and drive customer strategic deals for a commercial strategic framework that are aligned with strategic business objectives and customer current state and needs at an appropriate motion and cadence in cooperation with customers. Oversees that strategic deals incorporate relevant market factors (e.g., competitive, economic, industry specific) to drive optimal results and return on investment. Ensures prospective pipelines and opportunities are built into deals across customers. Empowers a strong customer presence through a deep customer focus and strategic development, attracting and committing customers to the journey through the integration of customer feedback. Ensures information from prior engagements and learnings are integrated to build an improved strategy. Drives understanding of customer needs, gains internal customer alignment, and mobilizes partners to achieve the strategy. Facilitates the incorporation and feedback of other internal teams (e.g., product, engineering, finance, legal, sales, marketing) and executive-level leaders to help inform the strategy.

Stakeholder Managment

Drives identification of the appropriate executive-level stakeholder within customers to connect and work with in pursuit of new business generation. Leads the orchestration of large-scale sales or partnership pursuits with customers. Acts as the voice and a trusted advisor for customers/partners across the organization to design and oversee plans/programs. Connects customers with key senior level influencers/players, as well as Microsoft's value proposition, in order to drive effective customer models and strategies. Leads creation and management of connections between necessary stakeholders within Microsoft and customers. Builds and leads strategic connections with customers and partners across multiple engagements with Microsoft. Builds trusted advisor partnerships with executive-level leaders and managers, representing the organization to area/regional leadership. Influences across the company to accomplish initiatives and achieve business goals, owning the relationships with cross-functional (e.g., finance, engineering, legal, commercial, product, sales segments) and multi-country team members. Drives design of internal orchestrations, influences assurances, and creates to internal feedback loops with stakeholders to align resources, plan up, and support strategic growth. Drives the building of internal strategy for orchestrating development of sales opportunities and across the organization, especially in solution sales management (e.g., cloud, data) to drive effective capabilities.

Partnership agreement negotiation

Leads discussions with customers to align and determine customer and Microsoft needs and desired outcomes across regions or territories. Drives negotiations with and influences existing and new customers/partners in long-term planning to form a strategically driven deal. Identifies, engages with, acquires support from, and negotiates internally with key senior stakeholders (e.g., product, engineering, finance, legal, sales, marketing) to move forward with negotiations. Takes the lead on closing effective, mutually beneficial deals with customers, in participation with internal partners (e.g., Sales Management Team). Orchestrates the creation of an action plan that spans across the end-to-end strategic landscape to ensure the deal is properly closed through the integration of reports, risk analyses, driving agreements, and assessing value in strategic deals. Leads conversations and coordinates with Microsoft's legal team to ensure that contracts are signed, that the deal is effectively closed, and that there is compliance between teams.

Strategic partnerships execution and on-going process improvement

Drives feedback consolidation and provision from/to team members and partners/customers regarding experiences and potential improvements to strategic plans with a broad impact. Provides strategic insight into strategic plan attainment to drive continuous process improvements and sales leadership decisions. Takes steps to continuously learn and develop self, and mentor less experienced team members, by bringing losses to the forefront and growing from prior engagements. Drives continuously on customer centricity, technological intensity, and process simplicity. Leads the management of projects in alignment with strategic goals. Leads coordination of projects programmatically across the different areas of engagement with stakeholders and contributors to assure appropriate resources are available and that the project is executed in a timely manner. Creates objectives to assure that outcomes are achieved in accordance with goals. Aligns the vision, outcomes, and indicators of performance against strategic goals, and assures movement forward movement toward the goal by all contributing stakeholders and constituents across Microsoft to meet outcomes and objectives. Leverages domain expertise in partnership with other subject matter experts to lead efforts to drive creative and innovative solutions and processes for diverse partners and customers to drive substantial business impact, and improve optimizations of workflow broadly. Drives and scales successes, thought leadership, opportunities for improvement, best practices, and learnings internally and externally to help drive digital transformation deals. Brainstorms new initiatives and product/projects for partners in unexplored areas partners/customers in unexplored areas (beyond current offerings).

Other

Embody our and Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.Industry leading healthcareEducational resourcesDiscounts on products and servicesSavings and investmentsMaternity and paternity leaveGenerous time awayGiving programsOpportunities to network and connect

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