The Principal Platform Specialist (PPS) adds value by increasing Microsoft’s relevance with regard to the client’s mission and business critical applications, thereby increasing the penetration of our application platform products and our share of the customer’s wallet.

The Principal Platform Specialist is a senior leader with deep Industry Expertise, Large Opportunity Orchestration abilities, Senior Sales and Pipeline Management skills who can leverage his/her broad Business and potentially Technical acumen to bridge the gap between a business opportunity or challenge and a conceptual solution consisting of products and services from Microsoft and its Partners. The PPS is a recognized “go-to” resource by Customers, Partners and Colleagues within his/her Accounts and Industry affiliation.

The Principal Platform Specialist (PPS) role is unique in their approach to engaging with their customers. Armed with deep account knowledge and a long term vision, the PPS will be responsible for identifying, qualifying & leading sales opportunities related to business and mission critical applications in a given set of targeted customers. This will be done by leveraging a business centric selling approach with the CIO, Business Decision Maker (BDM) and Business Unit IT communities within the targeted account(s), to shift their view of Microsoft to that of a credible, Tier 1 partner.

The PPS will be responsible for leading the creation of solutions, based on the Microsoft portfolio of products and the Microsoft ecosystem (ISV/SI solutions), in order to address the customer’s validated business challenges and initiatives. This strategy will manifest itself in a large product and solutions pipeline and subsequent Tier 1 solution wins.

Candidate Profile

• Experience: 8–10 years of related experience

• Strong proven track record of consistently meeting/exceeding quota targets using a consultative/solution selling approach

• Proven record of effective account management- planning, opportunity generation, communication, needs analysis, project management

• Strong knowledge of competitor landscape

• Ability to articulate the value of technology to a non-technical audience if senior business decision makers and persuade others through compelling arguments

• Strong understanding of partner ecosystems and the ability to leverage partner solutions to solve customer needs.

• Builds and leads teams through influence:

  - Demonstrates from experience, the ability to recruit and convince others to participate in achieving group goals.

  - Keeps the group working toward a common shared outcome or goal

  - Effectively utilizes and leverages virtual team resources

  - Provides examples of and demonstrates communication capabilities with presentations, articles, whitepapers, etc

• Bachelor’s degree or MBA

• Field of Study: Business Administration, Computer Science
• Professional Training and Certification:  Sales and partner management, complex sales training (e.g., Miller Hyman, Spin, Michael Bosworth, Holden, etc.), sales methodologies (equivalent to MSSP), Six Sigma, ITIL, CMC etc. certification a plus, or equivalent experience, presentation skills, effective marketing tactics, negotiation skills, financial analysis, Line of Business applications, business process consulting or automation, CRM (Siebel or other)