Overview
Do you want to be a key commercial sales leader at one of the largest cloud companies in the world at the most exciting transformative time in the industry? The France Deal Desk Director is a senior sales leader with exceptional stakeholder relationships, commercial acumen and coaching skills who has a proven track record of building commercial proposals and negotiating complex and strategic deals. The Deal Desk Director is a critical business role that looks left-right across the France business coaching and guiding the sales teams to create customer centric offers which maximize profit and accelerate revenue and consumption for Microsoft. It is a senior leadership position which influences the development of local and worldwide corporate commercial programs and initiatives and drives the sharing of best practice of deal making.
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.
Responsibilities
People Management
- Leads a diverse team of 7 Deal Managers across France creating clarity, generating energy and driving impact across the team, creating a common or shared vision across a highly matrixed organization (across other Microsoft functional areas).
- Model: Lives our culture; Embodies our values; Practices our leadership principles.
- Coach: Defines team objectives and outcomes; Enables success across boundaries; Helps the team adapt and learn.
- Care: Attracts, develops and retains talent in the team driving a culture where every member of the team feels valued and has the ability to make an impact.
Commercial and Deal management
- Coaches the team to build customer-centric offers, whilst negotiating the best commercial and contract structure to win deals, maximize profit for Microsoft and accelerate the business.
- Demonstrates customer understanding and connects with customers as appropriate to understand business drivers impacting commercial needs (e.g. productivity gains, financial impact to a customer, Opex versus Capex).
- Drives the creation of best practices for deal making across the team using internal benchmarking data and building consistency across deals.
- Encourages teams to examine deals from different angles (e.g. year over year, renewal vs expiring, revenue growth, profitability), modelling different variables to make the most effective deal. Analyzes multiple data inputs quickly and drives strategic decision making to ensure velocity through management team.
- Defines and briefs France leadership and sales teams on negotiation strategies for the largest and most complex deals. Oversees establishment of the strategy for the negotiation approach by formulating plans with all required stakeholders to ensure that the entire sales team up to top management are aligned.
Strategic Commercial Insights
- Cross group collaboration with Microsoft HQ and Engineering Groups highlighting local trends and challenges to find solutions, plus staying aligned on product & licensing roadmaps, commercial strategies and competitive intelligence.
- Drives strategic insights into deal making by leveraging knowledge of customer buying criteria.
- Recognizes and acts on trends across deals to guide teams toward new best practices.
- Takes ownership of process improvement projects or recommendations for new commercial solutions often working with the Corporate product groups to validate scenarios and proposals, and to support the rollout of programs.
Collaboration and alignment with teams across the business
- Fosters sharing of best practices and strategies across internal teams (e.g. broader Deal Desk org, product groups, and field sales force).
- Assesses when executive engagement is necessary due to deal size, complexity, or strategic importance.
- Ensures that teams understand Microsoft/customer business strategies and reinforces the importance of the commercial strategies to accomplishing these goals.
- Influences the development of local programs and offers according to market requirements. Works collaboratively with the partner ecosystem to drive Microsoft strategy and business outcomes through partner commercial sales.
Managing risk and compliance
- Secures approvals and sign off from Deal Desk Leadership as required on deals.
- Oversees compliance strategy and execution. Coaches team to ensure compliance is embedded in the deal making process. Exemplifies and leads the driving of a culture of compliance through the sales deal execution related parts of Microsoft policy (e.g., anti-corruption policy).
- Leverages understanding of liability to evaluate and recommend risk tolerance strategies. Articulates when and why risk is worth it (or not) and focuses on sustainable business.
- Coaches and empowers team to evaluate risk and liability as part of deal consideration and shares best practices and experiences to create efficiencies for teams.
Qualifications
Minimum/Required Qualifications:
- Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Finance, or related field AND extensive experience in Commercial or Sales Management Roles, with Customer facing and Opportunity/Deal Orchestration
- OR equivalent experience.
- People management experience or proved experience in coordinating teams.
Preferred Qualifications
- Experience managing/building high performing teams.
- Demonstrated Organizational Leadership, Business & Commercial Acumen, & Negotiation capabilities.
- Demonstrated communication and analytical skills with the ability to distill complex thoughts and strategies into simple, actionable recommendations.
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.
