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Services Solution Sales Professional

Job Category: Sales
Location: United Kingdom, Reading
Job ID: 781264
Division: Sales
Travel Required: 75%
Role Purpose
The Services Solution Sales Professional (SSSP) role is primarily responsible for positioning, crafting and selling specific Microsoft Services solutions or offerings into Microsoft customers. Solution Sales Professionals help further the Microsoft customer relationship from a capability development perspective by targeting sales in specific workload-related solution areas, and plays and important role in competitive and strategic growth areas.

As such, this job is specific to the Tier 1 application platform and development environment, and the Tier 1 SSSP will work closely with account teams assigned to targeted accounts that have been identified as presenting Tier 1 opportunities from a product, services and compete perspective. By nature, this role will drive large or complex Tier 1 application deployment opportunities (in many cases mission critical). This will be done by focusing on Business Unit (BU) and Service Unit (SU) decision makers and related customer communities within the targeted account(s).

Team/Department Mission
The Microsoft Services mission is to accelerate adoption and increase productive use of our technologies by our customers.

Key Accountabilities
The Tier 1 SSSP is responsible for positioning, crafting and selling specific Services solutions or offerings in the Tier 1 application platform and development environment into targeted Microsoft customer accounts. The Tier 1 SSSP adds value to Microsoft by concentrating on large or complex Tier 1 application opportunities. With the emphasis on increasing Microsoft’s importance within these accounts, the Tier 1 SSSP will focus on solutions in the client’s largest and most important applications thereby increasing our share of the customer’s wallet and the penetration of our application platform products and services.

The Tier 1 SSSP:
• Works with the existing sales account team as an overlay sales role
• Advises customer decision makers how to best realize the value of the Microsoft application platform investment through innovation, implementation and productive use
• Is responsible for positioning, crafting and selling application platform-specific consulting services across targeted accounts in a given sales location
• May oversee the delivery of services to ensure high overall customer satisfaction

The Tier 1 SSSP must exhibit acceptable proficiencies in the following competency areas

Building Customer/Partner Relationships
Identifies and takes advantage of his or her key customer/partner/client contacts and relationships with either direct or indirect communication to address immediate issues while establishing a foundation for a long-term relationship
Prepares executive summaries of business reviews that track results, returns on investment, and emerging opportunities while engaging Microsoft executives with customers/partners/clients, as appropriate
Addresses the most sensitive or complex business or technical problems while honoring the customer/partner/client's perspective and marketplace challenges throughout the process
Analyzes customer/partner's business environment and political environment, where appropriate, to proactively identify and manage customer/partner/client issues and opportunities

Strategic Sales Planning
Institutes defined checkpoints in a plan to ensure efficient and reliable execution of work by internal and external team
Maintains a long-term perspective when creating approaches to systematically fill opportunity gaps in a customer/partner's technology portfolio and service needs
Proactively matches solution scenarios with the proper business group within a customer/partner's organization to facilitate future adoption of Microsoft products

Drive for Results
Uses his/her network to identify alternative solutions to customer/partner problems, while continually exceeding expectations to bring issues to resolution
Engages other teams involved in the sales process to significantly improve how Microsoft does business, while ensuring accountability for improved performance on future projects

Team Leadership
Creates a sense of teamwork and gains the support of key members of the team, especially in stressful or challenging situations
Establishes standards and best practices for team to share information among its members and to publicly celebrate the successes achieved by the team
Creates approaches and strategies that directly address and/or overcome priority challenges

Product and Technology Expertise
Incorporates detailed assessments of competitor strengths and limitations into fact-based discussions to strengthen Microsoft's position
Applies his or her deep technical knowledge in both structured and unstructured customer/ partner interactions when appropriate to expose potential challenges and resolve issues
Demonstrates his or her understanding of a broad array of internal and external developments to immediately establish credibility with a highly technical audience

Value Selling
Drives conversations with customers/ partners that present the strategic relationship between Microsoft technologies/ services and the customer/partner's overall business goals and objectives
Clearly establishes the business value that Microsoft technology and services add to the customer/partner's broader business objectives while reinforcing the relevance of Microsoft expertise to its business
Identifies product solutions or services that help customers/ partners meet their core business objectives and that also provide a competitive advantage

Cross-Boundary Collaboration
Initiates collaboration with others; invites others to meetings and presentations to share information
Asks for critique and insights from others about new ideas, product or process innovations, and so on
Seeks support for collaborative activities from peers and senior leaders

Confidence
Acts confidently in uncertain circumstances; works effectively in ambiguous situations
Makes decisions without having to ask others for advice or permission
Stands behind his or her decisions

Impact and Influence
Consciously develops influence strategies
Anticipates the reactions of others
Adapts a presentation or discussion to appeal to the interest of others
Takes well thought-out action to achieve a specific impact

Interpersonal Awareness
Integrates his or her understanding of others' emotions as well as the content of what they're saying into his or her interpretation of situations
Understands less-obvious reasons for others' concerns, behavior, and perspectives
Understands others' attitudes and behavior

Knowledge, Skills and Experience

1) Essential Experience
Proven experience in sales or professional services
Solution sales experience in the Tier 1 application, application platform, solution architecture or related areas.
Extensive experience in working within teams is required.
Proven experience in the following key areas will be beneficial:
System and application design
Solutions Architecture
IT Architecture and Consultation
IT Solution Development
IT Solution Delivery

2) Technical/Functional Skills
Strong, proven track record of consistently meeting or exceeding sales targets by using a consultative/solution selling approach, focused on solving Enterprise customer problems with Line of Business solutions, within customers and markets that require an innovative approach (e.g., size of transactions, complexity of sales, shifts in perception, etc.)
Demonstrated expertise selling technology solutions to senior business and IT decision makers by reinforcing the technology value to the customer’s overall business pain and/or strategic opportunities.
Demonstrated strategic time management and multitasking skills.
Proven record of effective account management, including Account Planning, Opportunity Generation and Management, Communication Plans, and Business Management Excellence.
Working effectively within a virtual team, taking strategic direction from opportunity owners and considering inputs from team members.
Listening to customers (as opposed to telling/selling), probing for business process pains and opportunities, in an effort to meet or exceed their expectations.
Leveraging partner-facing readiness activities to continuously find ways to scale capacity.
Proven experience in Tier 1/complex solution sales and deployment, needs analysis and envisioning, in-depth knowledge of competitors, complex deal negotiation and contracting, demonstrated project management skills

Technology skills/experience:
Subject Matter Expertise:
Knowledge of customers’ application platform and datacenter strategies, government and industry regulations and requirements (e.g., data privacy issues), business opportunities and risks (e.g., integrating partners, vendors and customers into internal customer applications), and the impact on a customer’s Security architecture
Knowledge of the tools and resources used by customers and their Lines of Business (e.g., financial metrics and statements, industry and analyst reports, executive dashboards, etc.)
Knowledge of management networking solutions and/or storage management solutions supporting LOB Applications

Microsoft Products:
Microsoft Server Platform Technologies, Active Directory Group Policy, as well as customer operational issues.
Knowledge in significant Enterprise Management products and initiatives: Operations Manager, Configuration Manager, Virtual Machine Manager, Run book automation, Service Manager
Knowledge of Windows Server 2008, Active Directory, System Center Reporting Manager and System Center Capacity Manager
Knowledge in significant Enterprise Security products and solutions e.g. RMS CAL, Bitlocker NAP, Server and Domain Isolation, Terminal Services
Knowledge of basic Microsoft platform technologies

Competitor/Partner Products:
Knowledge of:
Competing server security products: Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro
3rd party integration with the Windows platform.
Global SI Management Solutions partners, for example: Atos Origin, Capgemini, Dell, Getronics, Infosys, Tata, Unisys and Local/Regional Management partners
Global ISV Management Solutions partners, for example: 1E, PS’Soft, JalaSoft, eXc Software and Local/Regional Management Solutions partners
Competing products: IBM Tivoli, HP OpenView, Altiris, VMWare
Security partner solutions and deployment/ consulting expertise, for example: Atos Origin, Avanade, Capgemini, Citrix, Computacenter, Getronics, Infosys, Tata, Unisys and Local/Regional Security partners
Novell, Altiris, Symantec, Linux, and other Unix technologies


3) Qualifications
Sales and partner management, complex sales training (e.g., Miller Hyman, Spin, Michael Bosworth, Holden, etc.), sales methodologies, presentation skills, effective marketing tactics, negotiation skills, financial analysis, CRM (Siebel or other)
ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library = IT Lifecycle), Six Sigma, CMC etc. certification a plus, or equivalent experience. Line of Business applications, business process consulting or automation. Infrastructure products and solutions, including storage and networking, MCSE

Salary package: £70,000 to 90,000 plus bonus and excellent salary package
Closing date: 23rd January

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer and supports workforce diversity

Microsoft’s privacy statement can be viewed on the following web page: http://privacy.microsoft.com/en-gb/default.mspx

EUR:MSGB:SALES:EN

Services Solution Sales Professional