Overview
At Small Medium Enterprises and Channel (SME&C), we are leading a high-growth, AI-powered global sales team—one that is deeply connected to our partners and driven by customer success. By uniting our Small Medium Business, Corporate, Strategy, and Partner teams, we are unlocking the largest customer opportunity, backed by the industry’s most significant investments. Leveraging the power of AI and our extensive partner ecosystem, we are redefining how businesses of all sizes adopt technology to drive growth and innovation.
SME&C is more than a sales organization—it’s a culture of innovation, opportunity, and inclusivity. Here, you’ll be part of a diverse, high-performing, and customer-obsessed team where collaboration, connection, and continuous learning fuel everything we do.
If you thrive in a fast-paced, digital-first environment and are eager to make a meaningful impact, explore how SME&C can be the next step in your career. Together, we are shaping the future of business.
The **Account Team Unit (ATU) Sales Leader **plays a pivotal role in driving Microsoft's growth within the Small Medium Enterprises and Channel (SME&C) segment. By leading and developing high-performing sales teams, this role ensures the effective execution of digital transformation strategies for corporate customers. The manager acts as a strategic leader, fostering deep customer and partner relationships, and leveraging industry expertise to guide teams in delivering innovative, AI-powered solutions. Through orchestrating resources, championing customer-centricity, and maintaining business excellence, this role directly impacts revenue growth, customer satisfaction, and Microsoft's competitive positioning in the market. Ultimately, the Account Team Sales Manager is instrumental in shaping the future of business for both Microsoft and its clients.
The Account Team Unit (ATU) Sales Leader is accountable to build, motivate, and mentor a high functioning sales management team with different disciplines to lead and drive digital transformations to Corporate accounts. Engages in talent acquisition, recruiting, succession planning, and change management.
Guides teams to leverage storytelling strategies and create and/or identify opportunities to drive sales. This leader will lead a group of managers and their teams to engage with Corporate customers to address their key business priorities, help customers develop a roadmap to drive adoption and usage. The leader leverages a strong understanding of customers' industries and business priorities to coach their managers and teams to engage through value-added conversations. Understands key drivers of digital transformation throughout the different Microsoft Solution Areas such as Cloud & AI platforms, AI business solutions, security and coaches/empowers their account executives and support specialists to have meaningful conversations, leverage existing programs to accelerate their digital transformation into Microsoft cloud. Manages the development and the delivery of value-proposition presentations and specialized business plans.
Manages and provides direction to their team on how to efficiently orchestrate resources between different sales and specialized roles. Ensures teams excel in key business processes such as territory management, account management, pipeline generation, pipeline management and overall business disciplines. Holds teams accountable for forecasting expected sales revenue.
Proactively cultivates trusting and influential relationships with customers especially at the CXO level. Also the voice of the customer for Microsoft and share industry and competitive knowledge. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth, honing your solution sales and collaboration skills, and deepening your cloud expertise. You’ll also benefit from a flexible work environment that supports partial remote work, enabling you to lead with impact while maintaining work-life balance.
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
Respected leader with the ability to attract, retain, and develop the best resources in the field. Inspire and foster a culture of customer-centricity, sales and consumption, adoption and use through collaboration with peers and extended teams.
Managers deliver success through empowerment and accountability by modeling, coaching, and caring.
- Model - Live our culture; Embody our values; Practice our leadership principles.
- Coach - Define team objectives and outcomes; Enable success across boundaries; Help the team adapt and learn.
- Care - Attract and retain great people; Know each individual’s capabilities and aspirations; Invest in the growth of others.
Driving Business Growth by Customer and Partner Obsession
- Ensures high standards across teams for customer relationships. Serves as escalation point for customer issues. Shares best practices across teams. Acts as executive sponsor for accounts. Is trusted advisor for customers and partners. Helps customers to digitally transform. Coaches teams to identify contacts in new accounts, building customer engagement and digitally transform their businesses. Advocates for customers (voice of the customer) within the organization/Microsoft. Ensures customer insights are gathered and feedback loop to stakeholder groups is followed.
- Ensures that team conducts due diligence to understand customers' priorities and strategies, and plans programs appropriately. Coordinates with colleagues across teams to support programs and processes. Expertise in Industry-relevant Microsoft solutions. Coaches and drives challenger mindset. Coaches team on senior executive engagements and relevancy to board-level approvals. Ensures teams use digital tools and technology to conduct research and engage customers. Builds partner relationships to drive scale and revenue. Coaches and influences partners to consider different solution needs. Engages with C-Suite executives. Coaches teams on how to leverage broader Microsoft organization to better understand customers. Drives active listening and a challenger mindset with teams. Understands market conditions (e.g., within a country, within a vertical, laws, political environment) to inform customer engagements. Manages relationships inclusive of customers, partners, and internal and external stakeholders. Coaches sellers on opportunity reviews to understand stakeholder management impact (e.g., influence, budget).
- Sets standards for customer satisfaction metrics (e.g., timeliness and quality of contact). Incorporates feedback from internal teams and from customers into future engagements. Identifies key trends causing customer dissatisfaction and works systematic efforts to resolve (e.g., process improvements). Sets culture of customer obsession to ensure teams liaise with Customer Experience (CX) to generate outcomes. Takes ownership for issues and reaches out to customers to reinforce engagement. Celebrates success with teams. Shares learnings and simplification ideas from customer issues with broader team to mitigate existing issues. Engages with internal teams to resolve customer issues and drive accountability.
- Empowers teams to define strategies, objectives, and a rhythm of business for territory and account planning across the customer set, clearly articulating standards and priorities
- Directs the development and implementation of strategies for maximizing selling and customer opportunities. Provides guidance on storytelling strategies to lead account conversations, evaluating account performance, developing short- and long-term strategies, and acting upon optimization opportunities.
- Actively maintains strong relationships with key partners towards common objectives and priorities to anticipate customers’ needs. Leads and coaches team to engage with partners to be able to scale our platform solution to our Corporate customers.
**Business Excellence **
- Leads teams in prioritizing and managing renewal process, including creatively addresses renewal options with internal partners and customers to maximize business outcomes and likelihood of renewal (e.g., industry case references, similar customer paths on deployment and adoption; whole stack adoption). Resolves escalations as needed. Understands risks and opportunities for growth. Represents full business picture to management. Drives team to deliver on growth targets and on-time renewals. Leads rhythm of the business with licensing solution provider partners to drive accountability. Verify the T- process is followed and address identified process gaps. Coaches managers and teams to ensure that activities are in place to drive consumption leading up to the renewal process. Drives customers to cloud solutions.
- Coordinates resources across teams to execute territory plans. Leads teams on territory management best practices and techniques. Validates plans, drives accountability, and coaches teams to achieve or exceed plans. Drives strategic partner participation. Holds partners accountable to contribute to territory plan. Coaches on how to plan for both scale and depth, as appropriate (i.e., account approach for top accounts; territory approach for remaining accounts). Ensures future-focused orientation for pipeline coverage.
- Seeks new scenarios where orchestration and collaboration would be needed; triaging gaps. Understands where new relationships may be needed, either internal or external to Microsoft. Ensures clarity of roles and responsibilities and held accountable accordingly. Drives clarity on co-selling with partners with whom the team works. Ensures voice of team is heard so right partners are available. Coaches managers and teams on available resources within the organization and how best to leverage them. Creates clarity of priorities for managers and teams. Protects the team's capacity to deliver on highest priorities.
- Helps teams think more strategically about opportunities. Ensures team has had AI and cloud conversations and aligns deal execution accordingly. Conducts win-loss reviews with team to identify opportunities for future improvement. For complex deals, engages resources appropriately and proactively. Demonstrates heightened deal making and licensing capabilities. Conducts reviews to remove blockers and assist teams in leveraging resources. Ensures teams are abiding by compliance requirements.
- Defines expectations and goals to guide the development strategies to manage pipeline and meet sales goals by reviewing forecasts, assessing and mitigating risks, and ensuring strategy alignment with business priorities.
- Drives engagements with key internal partners, business, and technical decision makers to develop long-range, comprehensive, tailored business strategies that meet Microsoft's and customers' needs.
**People and Cultural Transformational Leader **
- Positions oneself as a thought leader and trusted advisor to executive-level business decision makers across their business areas.
- Directs and facilitates the development and delivery of compelling, value-proposition presentations (e.g., with the use of business cases) and specialized business plans for clients that accelerate the closing of deals, facilitates connections between customers, partners and broader Microsoft solutions, and consistently drives business outcomes.
- Directs and executes talent acquisition, recruiting, succession planning, and change management. Provides guidance to team on how to have hard conversations, navigate employment law, support diversity and inclusion initiatives, and how to motivate/coach someone's behavioral changes.
Maintain Product and Solution Expertise
- Coordinates across teams to share systematic methods for staying up to date on Microsoft offers and solutions. Shares best practices across teams. Develops and implements plan to build and maintain product and solution expertise. Ensures team has time to dedicate to training and development. Holds self and team accountable for creating and executing personal development plan. Completes required and recommended training and certifications in a timely manner. Creates an environment where best practices are shared by the team in self-sustaining fashion. Drives Technical Skills Initiative (TSI) for the team. Develops and maintains own skillset to enhance self and team performance. Leads from the front.
Strategic Thinking & Execution.
- Ability to develop sales and business strategy options, while also being able to successfully execute plans and build strong relationships.
- Excellent Communicator. Strong negotiation, organizational, presentation, financial acumen, written, and verbal communication skills.
- High Performer. Highly driven person who consistently exceeds goals and expectations and has the ability, characteristics, and determination to compete effectively against skilled and diverse competition.
- Collaborative. Work cohesively with members of the Microsoft sales & partners teams, Microsoft partners, engineering, and marketing to solve customer and partner issues, leverage best practices, & deliver results.
- Growth Mindset. Ability to overcome and work around problems that are inevitable in rapidly growing businesses – positive approach to problem solving, learning, and development.
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications
Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Marketing (or equivalent) or related field AND 8+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work experience OR 10+ years sales and negotiation experience
- OR equivalent experience.
5+ years people management experience.
**Additional or Preferred Qualifications **
15+ years software industry sales and negotiation experience with year-over-year growth
- OR Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Marketing (or equivalent) or related field AND 12+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work or internship experience with year-over-year growth
- OR Master's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Marketing (or equivalent) AND 10+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work.
7+ years people management experience.
Experience in complex sales training (e.g., Miller Hyman, Spin, Michael Bosworth, Challenger, Holden, Krauthammer, etc.), extensive presentation skills, effective marketing tactics, negotiation, financial analysis.
Line of Business applications sales experience, business process consulting or automation, CRM, Employee Performance Management (systems and processes).
Purposeful Planner & Executor – Delivers business impact with intentional planning, driving clarity to the team with consistent coaching rhythms, removing blockers and ensuring quarterly business budget goals are met.
Disciplined Operator – Maintains excellence in pipeline generation, management, forecasting and driving integrated territory and budget achievement planning.
Digital Account Management M6 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $76.15 - $116.83 per hour. 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 $98.03 - $127.45 per hour.
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.**