Vendor Digital Sales: Sales Strategy Lead

Overview In the SME&C Global SMB Team, the Vendor Digital Sales team is at the leading edge of our digital transformation and leads a vendor sales organization focused on growing, migrating and acquiring new SMB customers. The Vendor Digital Sales engine is a tremendous growth engine for the company, driven by net new revenue growth in cloud.

Vendor Digital Sales’ impressive return on cost of sales makes it a preferred investible engine for the company. The Vendor Digital Sales: Sales Strategy Lead is a global role that will support the efforts of the Vendor Digital Sales team in the sales enablement of vendors and field sales leaders, driving Outbound and Inbound Sales campaign structure, accelerating growth through data driven insights for global sales motions and leading the change management efforts of versatile Sales motions and campaigns.

The overall priorities of this position will be to collaborate with Program Managers, Solution Area and Sales Leaders to successfully empower the vendor and field sellers to execute quality customer and partner engagements through tech intensity and consultative selling to deliver growth and consumption targets.

Microsoft’s mission is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. As employees we come together with a growth mindset, innovate to empower others, and collaborate to realize our shared goals. Each day we build on our values of respect, integrity, and accountability to create a culture of inclusion where everyone can thrive at work and beyond.

The Sales Strategy Lead role is responsible for driving the structure and execution of sales strategies that empower the sales organization to achieve revenue goals. This individual contributor position collaborates closely with cross-functional teams, including Sales, Marketing, Operations, and Product Management, to identify growth opportunities and implement effective enablement initiatives.

Key responsibilities include analyzing market trends and sales performance data, designing impactful sales processes, and delivering best-in-class structure to connect digital customer outreach, inbound signals and data insights to sales teams.

The role acts as a strategic advisor, leveraging insights to inform leadership decisions and ensure alignment between sales objectives and broader business goals. Candidates should possess strong analytical skills, excellent communication abilities, and a proven track record in sales strategy or enablement.

Lead the design and campaign orchestration across Top Growth Accounts and Scale motions in collaboration with Program Managers. Analyze sales metrics and market data to identify areas for process optimization. Collaborate with leadership and stakeholders to align sales strategies with company objectives.

Align with digital customer outreach, sales enablement and AI transformation initiatives. Monitor and report on the impact of enablement levers and programs to drive continuous improvement of sales campaigns. Lead and orchestrate with leaders in change management processes.

Responsibilities Cross Functional Joint Planning Establishes and maintains key points of contact with internal teams (e.g., Finance, Marketing, Engineering, Field Sales). Manages and cultivates relationships with leaders of internal teams. Builds relationships with senior leadership executives (e.g., Directors, General Manager [GM] level, CVP).

Acts as an advisor to senior leadership on a particular area of expertise and market awareness to inform strategic sales planning decisions. Demonstrates influences through partners across multiple divisions. Influences for impact by motivating others to buy into vision and execution.

Drives alignment and influence towards common goal, Maintains awareness about business transformation and growth across Horizon 2 and Horizon 3 initiatives. Challenges status quo to drive business transformation. Problem Solving and Insights Synthesizes findings into insights across sales projects, including implications that inform sales go-to-market objectives, leveraging executive presence to influence decisions and proactively identifying expansive ideas for field and partner sales strategy.

Leverages insights to develop recommendations and seeks to provide thought leadership (e.g., sales trend identification, implications of competitor moves, solution area gaps) around potential future growth opportunities and strategic issues for Microsoft sales processes.

Creates frameworks and methodologies to drive problem solving and insights. Sales Insights, Readiness, and Activation Collaborates with business, platform, and tools experts to provide updates and report key metrics needed to assist sales and partner teams to drive the sales business forward.

Addresses any tools, platform, or business escalations when needed. Oversees the tools catalogue and the Microsoft Data Dictionary. Collaborates with key stakeholders across Microsoft (e.g., Marketing & Operations [M&O], Go to Market [GTM], Worldwide Commercial Business [WCB]) to update the platforms and tools.

Provides insights into the Sales market, acts as a business conduit to broader internal and external stakeholders and adjusts plans when required to exceed business outcomes. Provides support success measurements based on data from tools and platforms.

Communicates with field sales on business updates and plans within multiple regions. Shares best practices with peers. Communicating with Impact Effectively articulating with internal and external business stakeholders in a clear and concise manner, proactively ensuring mutual objectives and priorities are presented and understood to drive successful outcomes in sales engagements.

Business Value Communication The ability to convey the business need and value of proposed solutions, plans, and risks to stakeholders and decision makers. This includes the ability to persuade and inform based on facts and alignment with goals and strategy.

Developing Meaningful Relationships Cultivating and nurturing strong connections with internal stakeholders, customers, and partners. Actively engaging with stakeholders, understanding their needs, and aligning diverse, cross-functional teams to pursue the company's goals.

Business Relationship Management The ability to develop and maintain positive working relationships with supervisors, staff, managers, customers, and vendors. This includes expressing empathy and compassion when dealing with the needs and problems of others, being approachable, taking time to address the concerns of coworkers, and treating others with respect and dignity.

Conflict Resolution The ability to manage conflict, disharmony, and strife among people and situations, while recognizing and addressing sensitivities. Influence Others he ability to garner support for initiatives by gaining the respect of others and inspiring trust and confidence.

Guiding Teams to Deliver Successful Outcomes Managing projects and ensuring high-quality deliverables through strategic planning, execution, resource alignment, and quality control practices. Change Management The ability to define and implement procedures and/or technologies to deal with changes in the environment.

This may include adapting to change, controlling change, and/or affecting change. Project Management Knowledge of and the ability to carry out the process of planning, organizing, and managing tasks and resources to accomplish a well-defined objective.

This includes the ability to manage and provide project deliverables, optimize the contribution of the people involved, and assess the impact of project decisions on quality, productivity, schedules, cost, performance, etc. Team Facilitation The ability to lead and orchestrate cross-functional teams to complete objectives.

This includes the skills of communicating and collaborating with others, leveraging resources and tools, and coordinating processes. Synthesizing Complexity to Drive Action Synthesizing complex data into actionable insights, identifying patterns and themes, and fostering problem-solving that align with strategic business objectives.

Analytical Thinking The ability to collect information and identify fundamental patterns/trends in complex data. This includes the ability to gather, integrate, and interpret information from several sources; use information to generate insights; and make decisions.

Business Analysis The ability to identify business needs and determine solutions to business problems; solutions may include a software-systems development component, process improvement, organizational change or strategic planning and policy development.

Data Analysis The ability to systematically gather information from a variety of sources, analyze information, identify implications of data, draw conclusions, generate alternatives and solutions, and evaluate the consequences of choosing each alternative using quality metrics and data.

This includes the ability to convert general data and findings into applied, specific information and suggestions that add value to business planning and strategies. Financial Analysis Knowledge of and the ability to use basic financial analysis (e.g., return on investment, value chain analysis) related to marketing effectiveness, resource allocations, and new business opportunities.

Problem Solving The ability to identify problems and review related information to develop and evaluate options and implement solutions 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 OR equivalent experience. 6+ years experience in in Near Term Strategy (2 years out), Management Consulting, Sales, or Finance.

Additional or preferred qualifications Master's Degree in Business Administration or related field AND 5+ years of marketing, strategy, sales, sales leadership, program management, project management, business planning, consulting, banking, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience OR Bachelor's Degree in Business, Finance, Economics, Computer Science, or related field AND 7+ years of marketing, strategy, sales, sales leadership, program management, project management, business planning, consulting, finance, economics, and/or partner organization experience OR equivalent experience.

Sales Strategy Enablement IC5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $130,900 - $251,900 per year. There is a different range applicable to specific work locations, within the San Francisco Bay area and New York City metropolitan area, and the base pay range for this role in those locations is USD $165,600 - $272,300 per year.

Certain roles may be eligible for benefits and other compensation. Find additional benefits and pay information here: https://careers.microsoft.com/us/en/us-corporate-pay This position will be open for a minimum of 5 days, with applications accepted on an ongoing basis until the position is filled.

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 with religious accommodations and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations.