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 Commercial Executive Director, is a sales professional and negotiator that will help our commercial/ government/ educational customers come to commercial terms across our business also acting as trusted advisor. They are accountable to build, motivate, and mentor a high functioning sales team with different disciplines to lead and drive digital transformations to Corporate accounts. Engages in talent acquisition, recruiting, succession planning, and change management. The Commercial Executive is a trusted advisor who leads the design and execution of the customer’s commercial strategy and negotiation, selling the right commercial and ensuring every deal is compliant and profitable for Microsoft.
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, 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.
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
Proactive Engagement
- Develops talent and coaches others to optimize workload related to sales execution. Ensures programmatic alignment and oversees execution of escalations correctly. Frequently collaborates with internal sales and management teams through sales process optimizing for the right level of investment and customization. Ensures tasks are accomplished across stakeholders with appropriate breadth and depth. Reviews and leads the presentation of deals that will process, including any standard or custom amendments and documentation and proactively provides feedback to teams. Secures and leverages internal resources for teams to assist with customer queries regarding contract terms. Refines and validates legal amendments reflecting operational and other requirements granted in specific customer situations. Serves as an executive sponsor and leads negotiations on deal escalations. Promotes the development of unique deal strategies to present offers to clients. Demonstrates strong leadership and engagement with all stakeholders to ensure that their teams are executing effectively while reaching milestones and that all internal stakeholders are aligned on closing to avoid deal delay. Coaches and leads own team through the lifecycle management planning and Microsoft Selling process to ensure that all sales motions include checkpoints on deployment and consumption. Leverages deep knowledge of sales science and operational acumen (e.g., pipeline metrics, closed rates, competitive selling) to lay out a strategic sales execution framework. Analyzes and synthesizes multiple data inputs quickly and drives strategic decision making and consistent visibility to ensure the best sales and revenue production and velocity through management team. When applicable, collaborates with sales excellence and sales leadership on forecasting process to drive alignment and accuracy.
- Provides strategic alignment for business opportunities which vary based on deal lifecycle and artificial intelligence (AI) (e.g., upsell/cross-sell, expanding footprint, transformational). Uses knowledge of both customer and Microsoft commercial strategies to seize new opportunities that grow the Microsoft annuity footprint. Establishes and fosters working relationships with internal partners (e.g., account team unit [ATU], specialist team unit [STU], customer success unit [CSU]) to maximize pipeline conversion. Promotes upsells that aligns to proven value across teams and provides strategic direction across teams to secure upsells. Works with account teams to identify growth opportunities and solutions. Coaches others to evaluate and verify multiple equivalent offers (MEOs) that advances internal alignment and maximize business outcomes. Oversees offers. Demonstrates deep subject matter expertise in how our solutions work and applies that knowledge to help teams understand how to monetize products and solutions. Coaches others on limitations on deal making with peers (e.g., understands when it is appropriate and not appropriate to follow through with a deal). Demonstrates expertise of industry knowledge and industry trends. Drives strategic insights into deal making by leveraging audience understanding and knowledge of decision-maker buying criteria. Influences teams. Recognizes and acts on trends across deals to guide teams toward new best practices. Builds customer-centric offers. Drives collaboration with account team to determine how they can best monetize opportunities that are included in the account plan. Serves as a subject matter expert and coaches account and v-teams on complex, compete, and tops deals. Identifies and removes obstacles and realigns to best commercial program.
- Leverages expertise of customer business needs and desired outcomes and implements and proactively monitors use of new tools and processes to achieve revenue goals using ethical selling methods. Mentors others on developing pricing scenarios and proposals. Leads and oversees the analysis of competitive analyses and provides strategic direction to align results to substantially shape commercial solutions. Acts as a trusted advisor both internally and with customers in the sales process. Develops and deploys appropriate monetization of commercial solutions. Provides strategic and operational direction during early engagement, planning and ideation process. Serves as an expert and advises on account territory planning. Develops and aligns novel and innovative close plan strategies across teams. Approves language of renewal or negotiation to customer's understanding. Serves as an expert and resources on customer understanding. Works within portfolio to gain strategic position. Develops and shares best practices for deal making. Coaches teams to build consistency across deals. Examines deals from different angles (e.g., year over year), models different variables to make the most effective deal. Presents and speaks at a C-level audience to understand business solutions outside of technology solutions (e.g., productivity gains, financial impact to a customer, Opex [operational expenditure] versus Capex [capital expenditure]) and understands the terminology of working at this level.
- Leads and coaches customer/partner support/account teams to set expectations on value delivery and ensures that they all teams are aligned on customer/partner priorities, strategies, and budget to better structure deals that drive annuity and cloud growth. Identifies opportunities for teams to develop challenger relationships with customers/partner to understand their priorities and strategies, and structures deals that drive value and contribute to Microsoft growth through attainment of revenue-based, share-based, and/or consumption-based quota. Demonstrates empathy with high-level customers and partners. Grows share and adoption while simultaneously driving business value for customers. Works collaboratively within the customer/partner ecosystem to balance customer/partner and Microsoft needs when crafting value-based solutions. Represents customer and partner requirements in proposals. Translates requirements into proposals. Collaborates with internal stakeholders to solve customer/partner issues. Serves as a subject matter expert on customer/partner priorities and industry challenges and provides guidance to others to solve problems. Validates and implements commercial strategies for customers and partners. Orchestrates critical resources to solve customer/partner issues in deals. Fosters and grows senior leader trusted relationships with customers and partners. Strategically engages with partners (e.g., licensing solution partner [LSP], cloud solution provider [CSP]) on effective ways to establish customer solutions for the benefit of all parties.
- Develops and communicates tactical direction and strategies to various sellers and business stakeholders in order to achieve revenue targets. Coaches others to secure and deploy critical resources (e.g., deal desk, sales support, partners, finance) to drive business outcomes. Provides direction and guidance for high levels of strategic conversations internally or externally. Serves as an expert and resource for others and aligns commercial strategy to customer needs. Drives the planning and execution of strategies with partners to ensure that solutions are aligned to customer commercial strategic needs. Advises and leads cross-functional teams on solution assessment and expected outcomes within local or regional segment/organization to determine how commercial licensing and contracting should be changed to best meet customer needs. Resolves cross-functional issues to successful conclusion. Integrates unique solutions, approaches, or techniques in feedback loop to corporate to improve/simplify contractual commercial to meet business needs or market opportunities. Actively promotes and reinforces cross-group collaboration with prioritization to ensure proper balance of demands. Actively shares knowledge across teams and creates a common or shared vision across a highly matrixed organization (across other Microsoft functional areas).
- Defines and develops innovative practices, strategies, knowledge of industry, competition, and Microsoft offering to accomplish goals. Serves as a subject matter expert on product strategy per solution area. Directs analysis competitive positioning and use cases. Ensures pricing and commercial strategies meet customer needs. Provides strategic guidance and tactical plans internally and externally. Drives agility in aligning business strategies within region. Actively identifies learning opportunities and encourages team to pursue opportunities. Ensures understanding of local subsidiary strategy. Fosters alignment across teams, especially with regard to aligning Microsoft portfolio and customer business outcomes. Fosters sharing of best practices and strategies across internal teams (e.g., product groups, field sales force, leadership). Ensures that teams understand Microsoft/customer business strategies and reinforces the importance of the strategies to accomplishing goals. Leads implementation of initiatives to create clarity in work. Inspires teams to follow through on plans. Coaches team in developing strategies that align with customer segments. Where appropriate, provides guidance and ensures teams develop an industry, regional, and/or country level business strategy that drives consistency across similar customers. Buys engagement from multiple stakeholders to ensure that all Microsoft solution capabilities are represented. Represents critical learnings back to decision makers to localize programs to capture market share.
Mastering Key Skills
- Coaches teams to design deals that enable the company to accelerate the business. Coaches teams around account planning guidance to maximize revenue. Handles deal escalation strategies and tactics for complex deals. Partners with internal stakeholders on annual planning which includes budget planning, territory planning, and portfolio planning with multiple stakeholders (e.g., global partner solutions [GPS], account team unit [ATU], specialist team unit [STU], marketing, business groups [BGs]).
- Serves as an expert on liability and coaches teams to evaluate and recommend risk tolerance strategies. Provides recommendations to teams on when and why risk is worth it (or not) and serves as an escalation point if needed. Develops and communicates frameworks for risk strategies. Builds cost into profit and loss (P&L). Focuses on sustainable business. Coaches and empowers team to evaluate risk and liability as part of deal consideration. Shares best practices and experiences to create efficiencies for teams. Ensures teams can engage with leaders and executives when necessary due to deal size, complexity, or strategic importance. Judges when to take risks (e.g., market making deal).
- Coaches others to apply proven sales methodologies (e.g., Value Selling, Think, Strategic Negotiations). Designs systematic territory or industry wide negotiation strategies that drive consistency in approach while considering customer needs. Clarifies strategy and serves as escalation point as needed. Ensures leadership team is briefed on negotiation strategy. Solicits and receives sign off from leadership teams on largest 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. Shares accountability for negotiation outcome(s).
- Oversees compliance strategy and execution. Coaches team to ensure compliance is embedded in the deal making process. Works within appropriate legal and regulatory environments for customer organizations and industries. Partners with high-risk deal desk (HRDD), finance compliance lead, and leadership team (LT) where applicable and audit teams. Leverages relevant tools including business conduct and integrity, appropriately and confidentially. Identifies and alleviates barriers for others to actively and promptly raise compliance issues directly to the appropriate compliance organization. Participates in compliance investigations. Addresses potential non-compliance issues and redirect appropriately. Serves as a trusted advisor on compliance (e.g., General Data Protection Regulation [GDPR]). 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). Oversees win/win-compliant deal making processes to ensure that they occur while commercial solutions are created.
People Management
- 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.
Qualifications
Required/minimum qualifications
- Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing, Finance, Communication, Education (or equivalent) or related field AND 8+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work or internship experience OR 12+ years sales and negotiation experience OR equivalent experience.
- 3+ years sales management or sales executive leadership experience.
Additional or preferred qualifications
- Master's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing (or equivalent) AND 10+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work OR Bachelor's Degree in Business Management, Information Technology, Law, Marketing, Finance, Communication, Education (or equivalent) or related field AND 12+ years sales and negotiation experience or related work or internship experience OR 15+ years sales and negotiation experience OR equivalent experience.
- 3+ years second level management experience.
- 4+ years sales team management or sales executive leadership experience.
- 3+ years people management experience.
Commercial Sales M5 - The typical base pay range for this role across the U.S. is USD $133,000.00 - $222,700.00 per year. 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 $170,300.00 - $239,800.00 per year.
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.**