Principal Platform Specialist

Job Category: Sales
Location: Atlanta, GA, US
Job ID: 833496-108786
Division: Sales

The Greater South East District is looking for a motivated and self-driven sales professional, focused on selling application platform solutions to large customers. The Principal Platform Specialist (PPS) will utilize deep account knowledge and a long term vision to drive large or complex Tier 1 application opportunities (in many cases mission critical) in a given set of targeted customers. This will be done by focusing on the CIO, Business Decision Maker (BDM) and Business Unit IT communities within the targeted account(s). The PPS approach will be consultative in nature, but also provide an in-depth solutions architecture capability that will be based on specific customers' business needs.

While balancing the customer's needs within the Microsoft portfolio of products and the Microsoft ecosystem (ISV/SI solutions), the PPS will drive a long term strategy within the account to ultimately drive a deeper Microsoft platform footprint. This strategy will manifest itself in a large product and solutions pipeline and large Tier 1 solution wins. The successful candidate will play a key role in the virtual sales team (Account Manager, Technical Specialist, Services Executive, and Partner Team) so will require excellent collaboration skills.

Solution Selling experience with Portal, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), and/or Business Intelligence solutions is also a plus - are they a plus to what? Or in addition to what. The successful candidate should have demonstrated the ability to develop and maintain CxO-level and Senior Line of Business Executive relationships with Enterprise customers, mapping IT and development solutions to business initiatives. Successful candidates must understand how to manage complex sales cycles and will be expected to work with the virtual sales team and Global Solution Integrators (GSIs) and Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to identify customer problems, opportunities and requirements and to prospect, qualify and drive closing solution opportunities based on Microsoft's Platform server products (SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Windows Server, SharePoint Server, Microsoft Dynamics) and tools (Visual Studio, MSDN).

Qualifications:
Extensive experience (15+ years) in selling software solutions to large enterprises
8+ years selling Application Platform solutions
Demonstrated track level of success in selling complex solutions to large companies
Solid understanding of Microsoft server products or complementing solutions. The position requires the ability to articulate and present the business value of Microsoft's solutions and have a firm understanding of Microsoft's strategies and products relative to major Microsoft competitors.
Skills required include: Excellent executive communication skills, strong writing and presentation skills, a comprehensive knowledge of key partners and applications, and the ability to direct efforts of cross-functional teams.
Experience in Sales and partner management, complex sales training (eg, Miller Hyman, Spin, Michael Bosworth, Holden, etc.), sales methodologies (equivalent to MSSP), Six Sigma, ITIL, CMC etc. certification a plus, or equivalent experience, presentation skills, effective marketing tactics, negotiation skills, financial analysis, Line of Business applications, business process consulting or automation, CRM (Siebel or other), MCSE
Strong, proven track record of consistently holding or exceeding quota using a consultative/solution selling approach, focused on solving Enterprise customer problems with Line of Business solutions, within customers and markets that require a break the mould approach (eg, size of transactions, complexity of sales, shifts in perception, etc.).
Proven record of effective account management, including Account Planning, Opportunity Generation and Management, Communication Plans, and Business Management Excellence.
Proven experience in the following key areas:
o System and application design
o Solutions Architecture
o Needs Analysis and Envisioning
o In-depth knowledge of competitors
o Demonstrated project management skills
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 solutions to continuously find ways to solve customer needs.
In-depth knowledge of targeted customers' Line of Business decision-makers (VPs of Sales, Operations, HR, Marketing, etc.), the business applications they use and/or develop and the challenges they face with these applications.
Works with the customer to architect solutions
Jointly creates the evaluation plan with the customer and orchestrates the virtual team
Facilitates the Envisioning and Architecture Design sessions
Creating the deliverables (final presentation, solution specification and value proposition)
Presenting the final deliverables to the customer
Excellent verbal and written communication skills:
o The ability to persuade others through presentations, demonstrations, and written communication are required.
Strong facilitation skills
Communicates effectively:
o Constructs and communicates compelling arguments that convince others to take a desired action
o Demonstrates the ability to present ideas, goals, problems, outcomes, and processes in a fashion that is understood by a diverse audience.
o Provides examples of and demonstrates communication capabilities with presentations, articles, whitepapers, etc.
Understands the customer's business:
o Actively researches customer to determine business issues
o Asks High yield questions to draw out customers issues
o Differentiates symptoms from root cause problems
o Helps customer prioritize issues to derive high value initiatives
o Understands, describes, and executes a business process:
o Describes the function of a business process and logically and coherently walks you through the process end to end

Builds and leads teams through influence:
o Demonstrates from experience, the ability to recruit and convince others to participate in achieving group goals.
o Keeps the group working toward a common shared outcome or goal
o Effectively utilizes and leverages virtual team resources
Problem solver:
o Demonstrates the ability to apply people, process, and technology to solving complex business problems.
o Effectively describes how to apply which type(s) of technology to solve or mitigate specific business problems
o Is familiar with and can describe to varied audiences in their business terms Microsoft's solutions
Focused:
o Keeps the desired and agreed to outcome in mind while striving to complete the job and achieve the desired outcome
Organized and analytical:
o Works well in an unstructured environment and creates a common thread through seemingly dissimilar facts and/or events
o Organizes disparate facts and events, discovers causes and effects, and explains them to others
Trusted Advisor:
o Works effectively with all levels in the customer organization helping them understand and solve their business problems
o Becomes the go to person the customer seeks out when new business problems must be solved
o Is welcomed by top customer management to discuss new ideas and approaches
Creative:
o Identifies opportunities to solve problems in a new and different way
o Independently and unprompted creates solutions and shares those solutions with customers and peers
o This position involves significant executive level interaction and involvement including presentations, etc.

Acts as a mentor for less experienced Principal Platform Specialists and Platform Specialists
A BA/BS and MS degree in Business or related discipline is required.

Relocation is not available.

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