EMEA Global Partner Solutions (GPS) ISV Leader

Overview
Our mission at Microsoft is to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more. Global Partner Solutions (GPS) is the organization that enables this mission by developing strategies for creating and maturing long-term trusted-advisor relationship with major global partners, to ensure strategic alignment and drive growth across different key channels, including the GPS Independent Software Vendor (ISV) organization. The EMEA GPS ISV organization ensures Microsoft becomes the AI & Cloud Partner of choice for software development companies to build innovative solutions and accelerate their business growth.

The EMEA GPS LT has an unique opportunity for a top-notch Partner Sales enablement leadership role which will drive the GPS ISV mission across the Region, accelerating Copilot empowerment and delivering AI design wins through integrated partner solutions, winning share of ISVs Cloud spend and solution portfolio focusing on migration, modernization and transformation of ISV partner solutions using Microsoft Cloud services, and delivering joint GTM & sales growth through GTM and ISV Co-sell activation. .

As the EMEA GPS ISV Lead:

• You will develop strategies with major ISV global partner, to ensure strategic alignment and drive growth across EMEA. You will provide direction on the development at scale of mutually beneficial account plans that account for both ISV and Microsoft priorities, strategies, and goals. You will ensure accountability for regional teams to leverage trusted advisor relationships and expertise to clearly articulate short- and long-term business opportunities for partners and ways to pursue them. You will direct long-term strategies to influence C-suite/board level across complex stakeholder maps.

• You will create the strategic vision for developing and executing ISV business plans that leverage creative solutions, drive growth for the partner and Microsoft, and streamline cloud consumption and digital transformation across EMEA.

• You will guide and hold teams (both directly, at the EMEA HQ level, and indirectly, across the GPS ISV regional communities) accountable for creating regional and local strategies to align capacity and capability of ISVs to compete, gain, and win share for Microsoft solutions to expand platform and sockets for services. You will identify long-term strategies to monitor market landscape and partner's impact and leverage their end-to-end understanding to influence the local strategy in business planning decisions.

• You will develop innovative strategies at a regional scale for initiating and leading seamless and successful digital transformation processes of ISV plans and strategies around solutions and services. You will guide, challenge, and set up structures for key team members to stay on top of the pipeline by deeply integrating themselves with partners and being proactive in challenging ISVs needs and goals.

• You will ensure ISV advocacy is a guiding force within the culture of the EMEA team and hold multiple teams accountable for advocating internally and escalating urgent ISV issues. You will act as a thought leader for the team and organization for ISV advocacy, providing expert level coaching and guidance to EMEA team members on escalation processes and resolution tactics.

Responsibilities
Responsibilities

• Support the development and execution of customer and partner engagement models across proactive and reactive technical enablement and GTM resources and programs.

• Sales & Consumption: Manage and deliver revenue and consumption results for the named set of EMEA ISVs and GISVs in the Region .

• ISV Co-Sell Effectiveness: Optimize the EMEA ISV customer co-sell motion with customer and account teams to build an effective operating model to drive ISV MACC / ACR consumption.

• Community Advocacy: Lead & deliver the EMEA ISV community sales motions acting as the model partner lead, deal & licensing strategist, & sales execution SME including differentiated value propositions & objection handling. Work closely across the assigned areas to create a sales playbook with best practices ISV customers.

• Executive Briefing & Critical Deal Facilitation: Lead C-level dialogue with customers around ISV workloads in one-to-many venues (e.g. EBCs).

• Field Landing & Readiness: Ensure successful rollout across the world to help land sales initiatives/readiness plans in partnership with the Readiness Leads. Includes as appropriate engagement in virtual training, executive meetings, field readiness events, etc.

• Closed Feedback Loop: Facilitation and delivery of closed feedback loop with key executive sponsors, field leadership, and cross-organizational partners including Engineering, Product Marketing, WW Customer Success, Inside Sales, GPS, Services.

• Field Connection & Immersion: Service as voice of field, customer, & partner by establishing field relationships and ongoing engagement to formalize connection channels, listening systems, escalation management, and field council.

• Best Practice Sharing:

• Partner with internal stakeholders and business sponsors to maximize sales synergy via knowledge transfer and best practices sharing. Own Sales Manager connection and ROB to build community and a platform for sharing best practices across sales leadership.

• Engage with customers to gather field insights and blockers to feed into the business strategy and orchestration process

• Synthesize findings into insights across sales projects, including implications that inform sales go-to-market objectives. 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. Assists with creating frameworks and methodologies to drive problem solving and insights.

• Through strategy and a sound experience model, enable field sales teams to drive business and technical outcomes, providing value to our customers throughout their journey in a customer centric manner.

• Communicates with field sales on business updates and plans within assigned areas.

Qualifications
Required

• Highly driven leader who consistently exceeds goals and expectations

• Extensive experience in managing and working across teams is required. Proven track record of driving decisions collaboratively, resolving conflicts and ensuring follow through

• Proven track record of building deep relationships with senior executives and growing cloud consumption share in large or highly strategic accounts

• Exceptional verbal and written communication up to the executive level

• Solid interpersonal skills, coaching skills, cross-group collaboration and proven ability to influence across organizational boundaries

• Strong knowledge of Born in the cloud B2B software solutions and platform landscape (AWS, Google, Microsoft, etc.) business drivers, and emerging trends required

• Presentation skills with a high degree of comfort with both large and small audiences

• Strong ability to execute and drive for results, especially in regard to leading WW teams to implement new sales strategies and execute effectively against these strategies

• Highly effective in a global, complex, matrixed environment, including excellence in impact and influence, cross-group collaboration and field community leadership

• Bachelor’s degree or equivalent required; MS / MBA a plus.

Preferred

• At least 10+ years of recognized and rewarded experience selling Application Innovation and Data/AI business solutions to enterprise/ISV customers and 5+ years of sales experience for Cloud Application Development & modernization technologies such as server less, Kubernetes, RedHat OpenShift, Azure App Servies, Azure Data services, low-code platform, etc.

• Strong understanding of cloud computing technologies, with a focus on open source

• Understanding of the broader tech ecosystem (Startups, Digital Natives and ISVs), their business drivers, and emerging trends as well as the impact of these on ISV and SI partners and their customers.

• Demonstrated experience and success engaging with senior executives (CVP level and above)

• Ability to work in an abstract, cross-organizational boundary and cross-discipline manner

• Ability to lead across a multi-disciplinary virtual team

This role is geographically flexible and may be based in any EMEA (Europe, Middle East, and Africa) region country with an established subsidiary

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.

Work site
Up to 50% work from home

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Netherlands

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Sweden

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Denmark

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Spain

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Portugal

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Italy

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Ireland

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Belgium

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United Kingdom

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France

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Germany