OverviewDo you care deeply about working with governments to help constituents and advance the digital transformation of countries across the world? This is one of Microsoft's most critical and strategic areas of focus, and we are looking for a leader to lead our engagement with the Defense and Intelligence Industry in the Americas. In this position, you will be working with senior-level officials in government and industry on transformative projects driven by Microsoft technology.
Using extensive industry and sales knowledge, the Industry Advisor, Americas (Defense & Intelligence) will help our sales teams and partners to provide relevant, high-quality solutions and services that enable our government customers to drive digital transformation in the Americas. The Industry Advisor will collaborate closely with corporate teams, as well as sales teams in the Americas, to build trusted relationships with our most important accounts and deliver thought leadership in the Defense sector to include the Defense Industrial Base.
We are looking for someone who has a relentless passion for industry, along with a significant sales leadership background and understanding of the segments within the Defense Industry.
Regionally based in the US, you will be working as an integral member of the Microsoft Frontier Company team and will collaborate and partner with colleagues in other geographies. It will involve up to 50% travel, with some global travel required occasionally. Successful candidates will work closely cross-functionally with our customer account teams, the service delivery teams, public sector and industry teams to deliver key business priorities, goals, and objectives.
ResponsibilitiesServes as a thought leader on industry-focused sales within Microsoft and as the Industry subject matter expert in digital transformation account planning for Defense, Intelligence and the Defense Industrial Base. Acts as an industry advisor to executive-level business decision makers. Identifies business needs and customer readiness to land value propositions at the center of Microsoft's Frontier Co. ambition, helping our most strategic customers turn industry disruption into measurable transformation through AI, data, security and Forward Deployed Engineering (FDE). You will coach and develop industry experts who engage senior business and technology leaders, shape board-level transformation conversations, and identify customer scenarios where FDE can unlock faster time to value and differentiated business outcomes. Working across account teams, specialists, FDE teams, partners and executive stakeholders, you will help connect customer ambition to Microsoft's most strategic growth motions. You will be responsible for building a high-performing team culture, driving strategic customer impact, and creating repeatable industry-led growth opportunities across a portfolio of strategic accounts. Provides guidance from an industry perspective during early stages of opportunity engagements. Engages with senior decision makers to nurture new business opportunities. Initiates conversations with strategic customers to bring innovative ideas that showcase the need for strategic change. Determines root cause of customer problems, removes blockers, and establishes recovery action plan. Generates demand through industry presentations and events. Proactively seeks additional training, including information that adds to the understanding of customers' businesses, and shares it with team members. Serves as industry communicator to translate industry knowledge for the account management team. Collaborates with partners to identify future requirements and connect the partner ecosystems in efforts to scale business results. Extends relationships with peers and senior team members across solution areas. Proactively builds knowledge of Microsoft and industry solutions and capabilities.
Collaboration and Partner Management- Leverages their understanding of and relationships with Business Strategy Leads (BSLs), Business Development Managers (BDMs) and Partner Development Managers (PDMs) to plan, orchestrate and execute customer opportunities, and inform house of industry. Drives engagements with Industry Solutions Delivery (ISD), partners (e.g., solution architect, solutions-sales professionals, cloud-solution architects) and external stakeholders to design and illustrate envisioned solutions (e.g., pilots, proof of concept, rapid prototyping, minimum viable product). Collaborates with the account team unit (ATU) and partners to drive GTM strategy, ensuring security is a core component, and drive together customer opportunities. Collaborates with commercial and legal teams to establish formal partnership. Collaborates with partner teams (e.g., Global Partner Solutions [GPS]) to carry out competitive recruiting of new partners and helps current partners to understand the industry and develop/deliver truth for the solutions within that industry. Drives team efforts to identify and engage partners for targeted solutions and articulates the case for developing solutions on top of the Microsoft cloud.
Industry Expertise- Completes the required training and seeks additional learning opportunities to obtain relevant industry expertise and certifications pertinent to the role and the industry itself. Proactively builds and maintains knowledge of Microsoft's and other industry-relevant solutions and other capabilities. Leverages advanced knowledge of industry-specific security best practices and future trends to assess and interpret security needs to proactively apply to customer's transformation roadmap and address complex customer questions around security. Proactively builds strong knowledge of the industry, including trends, policy implications (e.g., privacy), and competitors to act as a subject matter expert and inform decisions on pursuit or withdrawal. Leads communication to provide feedback across the ecosystem (e.g., cross-pollinating information across teams/industries) to other teams (e.g., sales, marketing, engineering) on future product trends or sales blockers and to guide industry solutions team members in a wide variety of specialties, leveraging deep industry knowledge to articulate nuances and anticipate gaps. Advises and presents at industry communities. Provides recommendations on accounts and establishes a learning baseline for less experienced colleagues. Proactively seeks out additional training to build on career competencies, including information that adds to the understanding of customers' businesses, and shares it with team members.
Planning and Engagement- Leads multi-horizon planning to outline an approach for industry-oriented solution selling with the customer. Creates segment-focused three-horizon roadmaps for impactful accounts based on business and technology priorities, as well as deep understanding of their industry. Proactively develops strategies that ensure roadmaps integrate security-related considerations (e.g., cybersecurity and data sovereignty) as core components of digital transformation, enhancing and driving continuous improvement in customer security posture. Identifies appropriate resources to execute on digital transformation plan to support mid- to long-term customer plans. Drives internal and customer envisioning and articulates business and program changes in the roadmaps around new and groundbreaking capabilities.
- Proactively continues to build and maintain mutually influential relationships with external senior- and executive-level decision makers and partners, leveraging targeted stakeholders at assigned customer. Builds an understanding of who the most influential decision makers are in potential and existing customer accounts to engage with them and develop a relationship, understand their motivations, and open up new opportunities. Defines an engagement strategy for identifying customer stakeholders (e.g., executives) with the most influence. Ensures effective procurement relationship with stakeholders to understand buying habits of customer. Supports broad and specialist teams in determining who to contact and connect with (e.g., detailing that a logistics challenge in the retail space starts with merchandising). Supports definition of holistic strategy for account and individual stakeholder. Engages in regular and continuous communication to act as an industry advisor to the executive-level business decision makers at the customer's business by applying deep understanding of their business strategy, market dynamics, relevant technology trends and Microsoft's Industry point of view (POV). Orchestrates V-team in executing plays that support relationship building. Navigates complex corporate and/or political environments specific to the customer's industry to drive business value-case creation.
- Serves as the industry subject matter expert in digital transformation account planning. Engages with internal and external stakeholders on account planning and partner business planning (e.g., Key Business Leaders [KBLs], Global Systems Integrator [GSI], Independent Software Vendors [ISV]) and reviews industry plans, lending credibility from an industry perspective. Brings a multi-year strategic perspective to digital transformation account planning by identifying where the industry is, where the account is, and what Microsoft has to offer that is new. Provides thought leadership via focus on broad global industry trends (e.g., emerging customer needs and competition) to activate and evangelize worldwide industry strategies and/or large ecosystem plays into local market and/or must-win accounts. Drives stakeholder mapping to identify the most influential stakeholders and decision makers in the customer business. Ensures that security-related considerations (e.g., cybersecurity, sovereignty, regulatory requirements) are key factors during account planning by identifying security gaps in customer's AI transformation plan. Partners locally with ISVs to inform industry knowledge. Participates in small-scale iterative planning rhythms with core account team and other team members to discuss operational elements (e.g., tactics, execution, roles, and orchestration) needed to deliver on the account plan. Ensures alignment with account roadmaps by determining how to drive growth/reduce cost and help direct the account team to what business decision makers (BDMs) pair. Increases the speed of adoption of Microsoft technologies by plotting the strategic, long-term vision of the customer's/partner's business strategy and driving appropriate actions to bring it to fruition.
Sales Execution- Recognized as a trusted advisor by the customer to shape, lead, and challenge strategic decision makers to take action and implement the proposed solutions using a compelling storyline and a strong financial business case (e.g., return on investment [ROI], other applicable metrics) rooted in the customer's industry. Understands customer and industry challenges, helps define the problem statement, and envisions the digital transformation journey (e.g., through user research, storyboards, roadmaps) to drive change for large, complex, and/or strategic customers. Incubates and develops early stage pipeline for large scale digital transformation opportunities based on market research and customer-specific needs to drive strategic partnerships. Initiates conversations and networks with customer and internal teams (e.g., industry team, digital technology specialists, sales teams) to determine the right stakeholder mix for transforming the customer's business. Drives the acceleration of new, multi-horizon customer transformational business models incorporating security-first approaches that reshape the customer business and advance their cloud maturity. Leads complex transformational opportunities to turn them into commercial agreements that deliver on customer objectives. Ensures a strong connection into delivery and success, post-sales, to help customers realize desired business value. Organizes collaboration with the account team unit (ATU) to identify opportunities to drive growth with new and existing accounts. Identifies high-impact customer requirements for internal ideation with team. Drives the team to accelerate new customer transformational business models that reshape the customer business and advance their cloud maturity. Gathers competitive insight and proactively shares insight and impacts.
- Creates and maintains an industry-focused vision with business and technology solution scenarios and services that helps large-scale, high-stakes customers achieve industry-relevant business outcomes, achieve their long-term corporate vision, and maximize commercial success. From an industry perspective, leads and facilitates strategic discussions with board-level/senior executive stakeholders (e.g., CxO, senior Business Development Managers [BDMs]) both with the customer and internally to design the end state and show how it achieves and aligns to the goals of the customer's business, as well as how it compares with competitors' solutions. Identifies and connects with customer executives who own the area being influenced (e.g., business process) to align with the customer's business strategies and goals, and to design and model how the business will execute strategy with the integration of Microsoft technology.
- Identifies needs and industry readiness of customers and influences stakeholders. Leverages internal resources (e.g., account team unit [ATU], partners) to land value propositions for solutions with customers and solution plays in a repeatable manner. Leads work to open customer opportunities based on industry objectives, best practices, and new stakeholder relationships. Identifies and advances high-impact, high potential repeatable use cases and scenarios for reuse across customers. Envisions product scenarios that do not currently exist to identify and open white spaces. Leverages industry expertise to help craft and modify prioritized services and solutions that align with customers' needs and innovation-centered initiatives with an industry narrative. Makes and proposes solutions to customers and competitors in the i
