Overview
Why Microsoft
The team at Microsoft Asia sees start-ups and cloud-born organisations as critical to our mission. These companies will help accelerate the priorities of our nations and change our world for the better as they aim to transform business process, finance, climate action, and more changing the way we live and work. Microsoft aspires to empower every cloud-born innovator to scale and grow with Microsoft technology and via Microsoft’s unique channel and customer ecosystem.
The Digital Natives Asia – Growth Markets team at Microsoft is at the leading edge of our business and one of the fastest growing and most exciting groups in the Company. We operate like a “start-up” within Microsoft and the team driving this initiative is incredibly entrepreneurial and high-performance. Microsoft is making an incredible commitment to Digital Natives and this business unit is rapidly scaling this business unit.
The purpose of the role
Are you a passionate Commercial Executive who wants to help Startups and Digital Natives grow their businesses and drive commercial outcomes with our customer base?
Microsoft is at the forefront of AI innovation; come and help organizations rethink aspects of their business in a way that sets them and their people up for success. As a Digital Native Asia Growth Markets team, we enable customer success by deeply understanding their business, embedding sales & technical people alongside our customers to help them build solutions leveraging the Azure, Data & AI Microsoft Clouds.
The main goal of the Commercial Executive is a trusted advisor who leads the design and execution of the customer’s commercial strategy and negotiation, selling the right commercial solution at the right time and ensuring every deal is compliant and profitable for Microsoft.
Responsibilities
The Digital Native business operates like a startup within an enterprise. The ideal candidate will thrive in an ambiguous environment, network to leverage the team around them and bring a get it done attitude for our customers.
The Commercial Executive will be responsible for the following:
Deal Making
- Leverage advanced knowledge of customer business needs and desired outcomes to achieve revenue goals using ethical selling methods.
- Develop and present pricing scenarios and proposals. Build upon industry knowledge and independently conducts competitive analysis to craft commercial solutions.
- Lead internal and external sales and management teams through commercial construct optimising for the right level of investment and customisation.
- Optimise deal customisation leveraging price and non-price concessions.
- Crafts and executes close plan strategies. Aligns language of renewal or negotiation to customer's understanding.
Negotiation
- Define, negotiate complex commercial terms and lead the strategy for the negotiation approach by engaging with stakeholders. Ensures appropriate monetization of commercial solutions.
Collaboration
- Develop trusted relationships with key customer stakeholders, partners, Account Team in order to help our customers deliver their business goals and achieve Microsoft revenue targets.
- Initiates and develops challenger relationships with customers to understand their priorities and strategies, and structures deals that drive value and contribute to Microsoft growth through attainment of revenue-based, share-based, and/or consumption-based quota with minimal guidance.
- Grows share and adoption while simultaneously driving business value for customers. Proactively identifies and balances customer and Microsoft needs when crafting value-based solutions.
- Represents customer and partner requirements in proposals.
- Identifies issues and potential recommendations for internal stakeholders to help solve customer issues.
- Simplifies commercial strategies for customers and partners with minimal guidance.
Qualifications
Key Experiences:
- Seasoned sales and negotiation professional, unafraid of conflict.
- Positive attitude and a passion for working with customers and partners.
- Comfortable speaking at all organizational levels, from the CxO to the procurement / commercial teams.
- Able to make the best choices for the customer based on their commercial strategic needs.
- Strategic, long-term thinker able to analyse data to identify trends, risks and opportunities.
- Team player and collaborative
- In-depth and strategic understanding of Microsoft licensing programs and contracting will be essential but not required at hiring.
Deep Proactive Engagement
- Orchestrates high levels of strategic conversations internally and with our customers.
- Proactively engages with others to align commercial strategy to customer needs.
- Serves as trusted business partner and advisor to customers to ensure that solutions are aligned to customer commercial strategic needs.
- Acts as a trusted advisor to determine how commercial licensing and contracting should be changed to best meet customer needs.
- Engages in feedback loop to corporate to improve/simplify contractual commercial to meet business needs or market opportunities.
- Contribute to overall success by driving strong team collaboration, cross segment and cross group collaboration.
- Contributes to teams by sharing knowledge, supporting the onboarding of others in the same role and proactively seeking help.
What skills do you need to have?
There will be many opportunities for you to learn and grow into this role and Microsoft.
However, to be able to best deliver on the purpose of this role, these are the core skills and experiences you should have on day one:
- Master's degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing (or equivalent) AND 4+ years of sales and negotiation experience or related work OR
- Bachelor's degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing (or equivalent) or related field AND 5+ years of sales and negotiation experience or related work or internship experience OR
- 7+ years of sales and negotiation experience OR equivalent experience.
- Acts as a trusted advisor to determine how commercial licensing and contracting should be changed to best meet customer needs.
Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.
Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.
