Consulting Account Executive

Overview

As a Consulting Account Executive, you will lead the contributions of the Account Team and the Consulting account team, as well as the Industry Solutions account planning with the wider Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions account team. You will own and maintain agreements with the core account team, leveraging insights from the consulting account-delivery team to monitor project status. Your role involves driving and leveraging agreements with the core account team and proactively building up-to-date knowledge of customers. You will utilize Microsoft Consulting go-to-market scenarios to foster intentional customer conversations about Microsoft Cloud adoption, identifying, qualifying, leading, managing, and closing strategic industry cloud opportunities on prioritized accounts. This role requires orchestrating the consulting-sales relationship with the core account team, collaborating closely with Enterprise colleagues, and leveraging customer connections, the account team, customer success team, service team, and the Consulting account team's insights. You will actively contribute to building close plans for qualified opportunities, ensuring leads are linked to customer priorities in the account plan. The position also entails driving discussions of terms and conditions and maintaining customer relationships to secure formal contract signings.

Communicating with Impact

This role requires effectively articulating solutions' value to internal and external business stakeholders, ensuring mutual objectives and priorities are understood for successful sales engagements.

Responsibilities

Required Upon Hire and Critical/Important

• Conflict Resolution: The ability to manage conflict, disharmony, and strife among people and situations, while recognizing and addressing sensitivities.
• English Language Proficiency: The ability to speak and understand English when giving instructions and directions, and when talking with colleagues, managers, and others for work matters.
• Oral Communication: The ability to make a verbal message understood and to receive/understand messages during in-person or remote (e.g., telephone) interactions.
• Presentations: The ability to create and deliver formal presentations to others. This includes sharing information on a range of topics in a clear, concise, engaging and convincing manner; commanding the audience’s attention; developing effective presentation materials (e.g., handouts, visual aids); and handling questions or argumentative positions from the audience.
• Written Communication: The ability to prepare clear, accurate, and understandable written text, and follow the basic rules of spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This may include memos, emails, proposals, reports, and professional or general correspondence.

Cultivating Strategic Partnerships

You will build and maintain strong business relationships and partnerships, nurturing executive relationships, and establishing credibility as a trusted advisor. This involves effective relationship management, stakeholder engagement, and projecting executive presence, cultivating collaborative partnerships to drive business growth, and establishing yourself as a valued advisor.

Maximizing Business Opportunities

This includes applying business acumen and understanding business needs and opportunities across market, industry, and competition to effectively manage and prioritize business development opportunities. You will analyze market dynamics, recognize customer needs, qualify opportunities, and identify how Microsoft solutions enable business capabilities that drive growth and innovation, while staying abreast of emerging trends and digital solutions.

Optimizing Account Operations

You will effectively manage accounts through critical thinking, strategic decision-making, and a vision focused on clear short- and long-term goals. This involves aligning plans with sales strategies that drive successful business outcomes and maximize customer value realization.

Selling Solutions

The ability to effectively sell Microsoft solutions by demonstrating value, influencing others, persuasively negotiating mutually beneficial agreements, disrupting conventional thinking, and consulting with stakeholders. This includes effectively managing sales processes and effectively articulating how solutions will drive business impact and value.

Strategically Managing Sales Pipelines

This role requires analyzing business needs and market dynamics, gathering and analyzing data, developing strategic plans, managing change, forecasting trends, ensuring quality, and making informed decisions. It also involves effective deal close planning with a focus on industry strategies and Partner ecosystems to drive revenue and growth.

Accelerate Cloud Growth

You will identify, qualify, lead, manage, and close strategic industry cloud opportunities on prioritized accounts, aligning with documented customer business value and outcomes. Possessing in-depth knowledge of advanced cloud solutions and cross-checking against key competitors, you will drive advanced workloads and usage, accelerating Microsoft Cloud differentiation (e.g., security, AI) to win market share. You will increase customer business value with advanced technology (e.g., AI) and drive consumption.

You will leverage Microsoft Consulting go-to-market scenarios to drive intentional customer conversations about Microsoft Cloud adoption and provide feedback on required go-to-market scenarios based on local market requirements. You will educate senior decision makers of assigned accounts (e.g., director-level) on Microsoft's value proposition, aligning to customer priorities and differentiating competitor solutions. Proactive identification and engagement of key influencers are crucial.

Proactively build and maintain up-to-date knowledge of customer's business priorities, risks, challenges, internal landscape (e.g., organization structure, stakeholders, business performance), industry/sector challenges, regulations, trends, and futures (e.g., impact of artificial intelligence [AI], sustainability) to meet customer needs and drive satisfaction. Connect with internal and external industry experts to build knowledge and connections, sharing insights with the virtual team.

Account Team Orchestration

You will orchestrate the consulting-sales relationship with the core account team, working closely with Enterprise colleagues to ensure successful creation, maintenance, and execution of Industry Solutions account plan components, fostering a positive One Microsoft customer experience. This involves coordinating across the account team, customer success team, service team, and the Consulting account team, influencing and collaborating with account-aligned and solutions-aligned colleagues and Partners to bring the best resources for customer success, successfully closing deals. You will champion the One Microsoft methodology.

Deal Excellence

Leverage customer connections and account team insight to confirm Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline (BANT) information to determine opportunity progression. Expand customer thinking through trusted stakeholder relationships, probing and challenging customer appropriately on BANT quality. Secure pre-sales investment to shape and scope opportunities into compelling propositions, focusing on organizational strategy alignment and highest impact/consumption potential.

You will drive discussions of terms and conditions (e.g., scope, milestones, price) with executive-level customer stakeholders (e.g., CFO, CEO) in collaboration with the entire account team, navigating multiple iterations to ensure agreement. Maintain productive working relationships during negotiations, persuading others, and fostering a positive atmosphere during difficult discussions. You will successfully leverage techniques for handling difficult questions, overcoming objections, and respectfully challenging, building negotiation activities into the close plan based on team guidance.

Ensure all applicable leads and qualified opportunities are linked to customer priorities in the account plan. Maintain accurate Sales Stage, Forecast Recommendation (e.g., committed, committed at risk), and Due Dates in required systems (e.g., Microsoft Sales Experience [MSX]), aligning with the close plan. Consistently deliver on committed forecast recommendations and coach peers on best practices for forecasting accuracy, using required tooling to report business state.

Maintain customer relationships to secure formal contract signing and oversee processing, including financial purchase orders. Drive smooth transition from sales-led to delivery-led accountabilities, supporting delivery aspects with customers and teams, and driving future opportunities. Once contracts are signed and engagements are in delivery, support tracking Industry Solution Delivery (ISD) direct Azure impact (aligned with consumption plan). Meet or exceed personal Revenue-based Incentive (RBI) targets and contribute valuable impact within and beyond the team. Participate in win/loss reviews, championing lessons learned to improve efficiency for customers and peers, and identify repeatable intellectual property for scaling solutions and growing market share.

Gain active contribution from others in building close plans for all qualified opportunities, initially comprising BANT information and commercial strategy, progressing to include detailed customer procurement processes, risks, and issues. Update the close plan as the deal progresses through each sales stage, obtaining consensus and participation from the entire account team. Execute, update, and close customer-centric actions for alignment between Microsoft and customers, building and sharing plans with the customer. Secure Microsoft virtual Consulting account team and customer stakeholder buy-in to activity schedules for successful deal closure. Anticipate potential risks and blockers, taking proactive action to mitigate and maintain deal velocity. Work with internal key stakeholders and approvers to ensure margin targets, consumption plans, and other key metrics are considered/met.

Relationship Management

You will leverage insights from the consulting account-delivery team to monitor project delivery status. Plan regular consulting connections with customers to seek feedback and maintain proactive dialogue on overall consulting value, as well as relationship risks and issues. Anticipate issues/risks on customer satisfaction, determine root causes, remove blockers, and establish recovery action plans. Facilitate CXO connections between customers and Consulting to enable direct feedback to Microsoft executives and to develop executive relationships.

Own and maintain customer and partner relationships in agreement with the core account team, influencing key decision makers and leading effective rhythms of connection with stakeholders. Build and maintain relationships with appropriate networks of Microsoft decision makers and leaders, leveraging them for customer and partner success.

Drive and leverage agreements with the core account team, building and strengthening relationships with Microsoft partner teams (e.g., ATU and CSAM), as well as pursuit and delivery teams, through regular connections. Bring expertise, insights, and perspectives from customer engagement to Microsoft business to drive deeper engagement. Contribute to and lead overall Microsoft account teams, solution teams, and other partner groups.

Strategy and Planning

You will lead the contributions of the Account Team and the Consulting account team to the account vision and strategic approach. Provide insights, ideas, and recommendations to address immediate and longer-term customer priorities and Microsoft objectives. Contribute to the overall One Microsoft strategy, driving for agreement with the account team on Consulting and Partner strategy. Leverage appropriate tools, frameworks, and methodologies to develop a deliberate approach to position potential modernization and digital transformation outcomes specific to their industries across 3 horizons, aligned with customer priorities. Understand competitor solution weaknesses and strengths, leveraging this knowledge in strategy and planning.

Lead the Industry Solutions account planning contribution with the wider Microsoft Customer and Partner Solutions (MCAPS) account team, defining Industry Solutions sales priorities to leverage insight and provide input to the overall account plan. Proactively identify actions to develop Consulting opportunities aligned with account strategy, Microsoft's strategy, and Consulting catalog go-to-market solution plays. Leverage business outcomes across 3 horizons as a point of view/roadmap for digital transformation. Lead Consulting input to account-team planning sessions, follow the common sales and delivery methodology, and provide updates per required account-team governance. Understand revenue drivers for other Microsoft business segments (e.g., Microsoft Azure Commit to Consume (MACC)) and align plans appropriately (e.g., cloud-success metrics, revenue-recognition timelines). Think strategically about account planning for assigned accounts, setting standards, outlining resource investment, engaging decision makers on long-term planning, and anticipating needs to turn enterprise accounts into strategic ones.

Qualifications

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree AND 6+ years industry sales experience in the commercial or public sector (e.g. Finance, Local Government) or related work OR 8+ years industry sales experience in the commercial or public sector (e.g. Finance, Local Government) OR equivalent experience.
• 3+ years consulting solution sales experience.

Preferred Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Information Technology (IT), or related field AND 8+ years industry solution or consulting sales experience in the commercial or public sector (e.g. Financial Services, Local Government) or related work OR Master's Degree in Business, Information Technology (IT), or related field AND 6+ years experience in technology sales experience in the commercial or public sector (e.g. Finance, Local Government) or related work OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years consulting solution sales experience.

Key skills/competency

• Account Management
• Consulting Sales
• Cloud Adoption
• Strategic Partnerships
• Sales Pipeline Management
• Deal Negotiation
• Relationship Building
• Microsoft Solutions
• Business Acumen
• Digital Transformation