Job: Consulting Solution Area Specialist - Data & AI

Company: Microsoft

Location: Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa ·

Date Posted: 5-8-2024

The organization is at the forefront of innovation, driving value across customers' digital and AI transformation journeys through repeatable and customized solutions powered by Microsoft Cloud and AI. The Consulting Solution Specialist is responsible for identifying, qualifying, leading, managing, and closing strategic industry cloud opportunities on prioritized accounts aligned to documented customer business value and outcomes. They have in-depth knowledge of advanced cloud solutions and cross-check with key competitors. The role involves driving advanced workloads and usage, accelerating Microsoft Cloud differentiation (Data and Generative AI) against competitors and winning more market share. The Specialist ensures all applicable leads and qualified opportunities are linked to customer priorities in the account plan, maintaining accurate Sales Stage, Forecast Recommendation, and Due Dates in required systems of record. They coach peers on good practice for ensuring accuracy in deal commitment forecasting and use required tooling to report out the state of the business. The Specialist drives discussions of terms and conditions with executive-level customer stakeholders, maintaining productive working relationships with those involved in negotiation and building and executing negotiation activities into the close plan for the opportunity. They will role model and demonstrate customer and partner obsession through customer business outcomes leveraging solution area expertise, providing an impactful point of view (POV) where Industry Solutions Delivery (ISD) can accelerate consumption. The Specialist will work seamlessly with the wider account team, building and strengthening relationships across the Microsoft teams to drive consumption through Industry Solutions projects and programs. They will continuously build sales expertise, learning and evolving industry and solution knowledge to support customers and the wider Microsoft team. They will champion and adhere to Microsoft processes and methodologies, including strategy selling, pipeline hygiene, logging and maintaining all opportunities for ISD opportunities, continuous qualification, Opportunity Review Board (ORB) submissions, and close plan ownership. This role offers the opportunity to accelerate career growth, grow solution area expertise, develop leads, qualification of strategic opportunities, and ownership through to successful deal closure, leveraging cutting-edge solutions for customers that grow cloud consumption.