Sales Account Executive (Education) at Microsoft

Overview

Microsoft CEMA Africa is seeking an innovative Sales Leader in Education to lead and orchestrate team to work across all Education accounts to enable a customer-centric approach, that drives simplicity, tech intensity and delivers against educational priority focus areas:

• Teaching & Learning - deliver tech- enabled learning with hybrid and blended teaching and learning and personalized student experiences
• Cloud Transformation  - drive digital transformation in campus, schools and research institutions
• Skills and Employability  - Prepare students to be workplace ready

Achieved through:

• Orchestrating a diverse education v-team of high impact relationship, technical and industry sellers to expand strategic education customer relationships to drive larger impact and targeted business growth and drive the jointly agreed customer multi-year Digital Transformation business strategy, delivering agreed outcomes
• Mobilizing, orchestrating, mentoring and leading the Microsoft Education v-team, partners and customer in order to help solidify the path to the complex yet exciting journey that is Digital Transformation
• Identifying business needs and industry readiness of customers. Collaborates with the account management team and internal partners to land value propositions for solutions with customers. Helps craft prioritized services and solutions that align with customers' needs.
• Disrupting the mindset of customers and sales teams by bringing innovative ideas that showcase case for change and Microsoft's unique value proposition for education
• Articulating the Education Transformation Framework strategic vision, followed by the customer maturity framework/path for customers to take to enable their digital transformation based on their stage and objectives/capabilities they want to achieve.
• Presenting and demonstrating key end-user solutions/capabilities and technical architectures aligned to a customer maturity framework and looking holistically end to end to the resources ready for deployment & adoption (usage) assistance for smooth customer experience.

Qualifications

• 5+ years experience working in an industry (e.g., Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Energy, Government, Education) and/or driving digital transformation 
• OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Technology, or related field AND 3+ years experience working in a relevant industry (e.g., Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Energy, Government, Education) and/or driving digital transformation
• OR Master's Degree in Business Administration AND 2+ years experience working in an industry (e.g., Financial Services, Retail, Manufacturing, Healthcare, Energy, Government, Education) and/or driving digital transformation.
• Solution Sales experience 

Responsibilities

Industry specific 

• Serve as a thought leader on education industry-focused sales as the Industry subject matter expert in digital transformation account planning.
• Proactively build the external stakeholder network and leverage internal stakeholders to engage them.
• Acts as an industry advisor to the executive-level business decision makers at the customer's business. Shares best practices in stakeholder management across industries.
• Generate demand through industry events and other activities/presentations/customer events (e.g., large scale, high profile). Leverages such engagements to craft tailored industry solution opportunities, working and selling closely with Microsoft’s partners.

Customer Engagement

• Builds and maintains relationships with executives and business and technical decision makers at high levels of the customer's organization through consultative engagement to establish Rhythm of Business (RoB) with customer sponsors to highlight the value of the Microsoft solutions and subsequent Return on Investment (ROI). Seeks to deepen relationship with customers during interactions by being customer-focused and consistently honoring commitments and connecting the customer to Microsoft executives, and partners with them to foster trust and brand growth and loyalty through multiple levels (e.g., managers, executives) of the customer's organization in the assigned accounts. Assists partners in joint-selling by establishing joint desire to create new go-to markets by starting to build relationships in new markets (e.g., Vice President). Leverages digital selling methods (e.g., digital) to grow your network and create a pipeline, consume account-based marketing outputs, and reflect in the engagement strategy in our customer plan.
• Proactively develops a comprehensive understanding of the customer's business and technology needs and priorities for each assigned account. Identifies opportunities to drive optimizations and new business and technology solutions based on customer's strategies. Presents solutions and ideas based on customer insights. Advocates on behalf of the customer internally, ensuring requests and needs of assigned accounts are being addressed. If industry aligned, also develops a comprehensive understanding of the customer's industry.
• Understands customer drivers of business transformation and leads new opportunities and orchestrates internal teams to accelerate the customer's digital transformation. Engages with customers to lead strategic technology direction/transformation within assigned accounts customer. Proactively mitigate competitive risk. Mitigate competitive risk. Ensures line-of-business wins are captured (e.g., testimonials) for referencing through insightful listening.

Account Management

• Develops and oversees the execution of account plans utilizing common sales and delivery methodology for the Microsoft sales organization for multiple accounts to ensure Microsoft revenue targets and customer business needs are met. Drives accountability to deliver on account plans among the extended virtual teams and internal industry experts. Leads extended team and embraces partners to scale business by understanding partner goals and creating an interest in mutual business growth. Ensures achievement of revenue and consumption targets and drives integrated joint account governance through customer plan on regular frequency. Identifies initial stakeholders, customer needs, and customer priorities. Proposes initial Solutions/Sales Plays.
• Thinks strategically about customer planning for assigned accounts, setting standards and priorities, outlining where to and how to invest resources of the account management team and other stakeholders, engaging internal and external decision makers on long-term business planning, and anticipating needs of assigned accounts to turn enterprise accounts into strategic accounts. Influences to scale strategic plans (inclusive of partners) and involves senior leadership team. Ensures teams are documenting in the Account Plan.
• Anticipates moves within assigned accounts, as well as potential problems and ways to mitigate risks. Determines prioritization of action for multiple assigned accounts based on customer needs, sales-generating importance, growth opportunities, and account risks, all while maintaining a high level of commitment and accountability for assigned accounts. Consults and coordinates with the account management team to make necessary adjustments, determine what actions to tackle first, and re-adjust priorities to respond to pressing and changing demands.
• Expands network of key internal (e.g., Industry Solutions [IS]) and external partners for accounts to ensure execution of core tasks and account transactions. Grows sales and partner impact and engages mainstream partners to develop and promote mutually-beneficial customer business and technology transformation strategies. Where applicable, shares opportunities outbound with partners, and reviews/accepts opportunities shared inbound. Proactively engages and works with partners’ sellers directly to drive non-qualified opportunity momentum and deal closure inclusive of partners. 

Sales Excellence

• Seeks customer feedback (both formal and informal) of assigned accounts to identify and understand the drivers of satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction. Leverages internal resources to support customer needs. Orchestrates others (e.g., Customer Success Account Management [CSAM]) to anticipate issues/risks on customer satisfaction, determine the root cause of problems, remove blockers, and establish recovery action plans as need to improve customers' overall experience. Proactively establishes agreement on success measures and manages execution on success measures to prevent need for recovery plans.
• Leads and orchestrates extended virtual teams and key stakeholders with deep industry expertise (e.g., customers' sponsors) to expand relationship with decision makers and stakeholders of assigned accounts by leveraging best-in-class sales and communication techniques and tools to meet customer needs and accelerate sales. Document and creates stakeholder map in the account plan of the key decision makers, influencers, sentiment, etc.
• Educates decision makers of assigned accounts on Microsoft's value proposition aligned to customer's business objectives. Establishes the competitive advantage. Develops plans to offer solutions that satisfy customers' key performance indicators (KPIs) and align the right partner solution for customer industry needs.
• Develops value-proposition presentations (e.g., with the use of business cases) and specialized business plans for customers that drive business outcomes to generate business and upsells. Presents business plans to customers to generate new non-qualified opportunities.
• Implements strategies to engage relevant stakeholders of assigned accounts and create and/or identify upselling/cross-selling non-qualified opportunities and drive consumption of Microsoft solutions while utilizing common sales and delivery methodology for the Microsoft sales organization.

Industry Knowledge

• Proactively builds and maintains a strong knowledge of Microsoft's product landscape, solutions, and strategy in the industry of assigned accounts, as well as of the business priorities and potential threats the customers face. Coordinates with internal industry experts (e.g., industry teams, industry specific partners) to gather industry data of assigned accounts and improve planning. Demonstrates a strong understanding of the customers' business strategy and the direction of the industry.