Now Hiring - Director, Partner Marketing - Global Channel Sales (GCS) in Redmond, WA

Responsibilities

• Drives and leads partner-centered learning across solutions/lines of business by evaluating internal and external data and reports, through discussions and direct facing with senior-executive level partners, and by generating and leveraging insights and collaborating with a broad network of critical stakeholders. Translates insights into actionable plans and defining key outcomes to rally the team around. Synthesizes and consolidates information gathered from research in order to build partner strategy and drives the development of competitive insights that can be used by the partner. Evaluates potential opportunities and risks involved with specific partner collaborations through opportunity sizing and risk mitigation.
• Creates, drives, and influences solutions strategies/content roadmaps (e.g., product, enablement, recruit, incentives/investments) with partners and internal/external stakeholders (e.g., Partner Development Manager [PDM], Channel Manager) based on research and expert-level understanding of the partner’s financials and strategic priorities, as well as business, industry, and competitive landscapes. Provides strategic input on partner marketing plans and market opportunities and leads the management of planning activities against key scorecard metrics and goals.
• Identifies and engages in opening up short to mid-term growth opportunities/plans for Microsoft growth through partnerships to drive key performance indicator (KPI) accountability against internal goals. Influences at a worldwide and corporate level to help drive strategic action. In partnership with internal counterparts and sales teams, drives development of data-driven solution area strategy including growth targets, partner capacity, projections (e.g., reach, frequency, yield targets), and capability to co-sell and capitalize on market opportunities.

• Executes, defines and develops marketing strategies to ensure market, channel, partner readiness for new solution/offering launch. Collaborates across cross-functional teams to execute and strategize on solution/offering launch strategies within a go-to-market planning cycle to ensure full-funnel marketing. Continuously optimizes and owns consistent experiences across partners/the channel by leveraging marketing materials and toolkits to execute on-time and align to budget.

• Designs, executes, and localizes end-to-end partner experiences (e.g., digital marketing, partner events, lead sharing, and demos) by leveraging marketing assets and through the assistance of other teams. Develops and mutually creates new partner capabilities and opportunities through partner experiences to help provide a competitive advantage and to land key product messages with partners. Drives partner-to-partner collaboration of marketing activities to build impact of partner experiences and programs.

• Contributes to the investment process by helping to identify, executing on, and scoping new/existing business opportunities to drive strategic impact for Microsoft (e.g., revenue upside, new device growth, optimization of investment buckets). Makes recommendations on and executes best uses of investment landings across functions and groups and establishes return on investment (ROI) and related benchmarks to ensure performance goals are met. Complies with budgeting and investing practices to ensure alignment with expectations regulations.
• Ensures privacy, brand, marketing funding, statement of work, store-specific developer policies, and marketing proof of execution compliance of products, processes, programs, and policies are followed across teams and functions. Seeks exceptions to policies with appropriate Corporate, External & Legal Affairs (CELA) stakeholders.

• Owns/drives trusted executive-level partner marketing relationships in order to work towards mutual business objectives and alignment to partner's priorities to establish trust and credibility. Advises and aligns partners on best practices as a subject matter expert. Engages with, identifies, and influences key executive-level external partner stakeholders and decision makers on different teams. Drives effective communication of marketing messages and product/program incentive changes through and to partners and across communication channels. Identifies and anticipates gaps in partner capabilities and capacity and drives plans to address current and future gaps to build partner capability and capacity and drive partner sharing.
• Leads cross-functional stakeholders to market products and enhance offerings. Builds trust and credibility in existing relationships with internal teams, while applying expertise to cross-functional and partner teams to help ensure the partner is integrated into all of the relevant internal workstreams and motions (e.g., engineering, marketing, sales, services). Manages and balances escalations to and from stakeholders. Connects customer/partner opportunities with executive internal stakeholders (e.g., product management, category, business development, sales) through partner capability sharing, and advocates for customers/partners to internal teams.

• Uses subject matter expertise to provide feedback across partners and customers on how products and processes may be improved to simplify product optimizations and workflow or better serve partners/customers or internal stakeholders. Shares and scales successes, thought leadership, opportunities for improvement, best practices, and learnings internally and externally (e.g., case studies, industry events, training contributions) to help drive digital transformation and to rally internal and external audiences around Microsoft's world view. May brainstorm new initiatives and product/projects for partners in unexplored areas (beyond current offerings).

• Leads the mapping of accounts with partner solutions and sales plays by identifying sales plays aligned to co-sell prioritized partners. Drives demand generation to build partner co-sell pipeline through solution area sales plays execution and with partner-to-partner (P2P) interactions.

• Lead the overall marketing strategy definition, review, and end-to-end execution including campaign development and solution launch plans aligned to partner solutions built for the Microsoft Cloud.
• Lead creation of ‘better together’ messaging and marketing content, offers and incentives, as well as joint PR and event marketing.
• Understand partner’s business, plans, and objectives in partnership with global and field Partner Manager personnel and ensure alignment of Go-To-Market activities and marketing plans to deliver tangible impact and progress against those goals
• Ensure measurement (Key Performance Indicator and Objective and Key Result) are in place to track impact to sales pipeline, Microsoft Cloud revenue generated from joint solutions’ sales, campaigns, or offers brought to market. Ensure good budget management practices and defined ROI for all marketing funds invested.
• Leverage global investments and Strategic partnership investments to build a set of globally scalable Go-To-Market programs to optimize Global Telco partner’s impact at the Microsoft subsidiary level, including working with the subsidiary Partner Marketing Managers to drive alignment on partner selection and Go-To-Market execution
• Leverage industry expertise to become a thought leader and trusted advisor to the partners and deliver briefings to partner executives
• Land and lead the creation of new capabilities and opportunities through partner experiences to help provide a competitive advantage and to land key product messages with partners.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree in Business, Marketing, Business Development, Business Management, Communications, or related field AND 7+ years sales, marketing, or business development experience
  • OR equivalent experience.
• 7+ years in a customer and/or partner facing role, optimally dealing with a variety of audiences – customers, partners (Communication Service Providers, Independent Software Vendors (ISV), System Integrators (SI), start-ups, Managed Service Providers (MSPs), strategy or marketing.
• 5+ years working directly with partner ecosystem, the ability to provide valuable business and marketing technical guidance to them and to secure their commitment to use business solutions

• Telco knowledge and experience with Telco’s Go-to-market approach, lines of businesses (Mobile, Fixed/Landline), business models and functions (Network, Product Dev, Sales/Marketing, Managed Services, Wholesale, etc.) and Product Packaging/Channel Selling motions.
• Exceptional Product Management and/or audience marketing experience is required, including modern marketing practices, and advanced skills at writing marketing materials, value propositions, and messaging
• Ability to articulate both business and technical value of Microsoft cloud services to business and technical decision makers
• Demonstrated track record of creating repeatable best practices on demand generation and awareness campaigns, workshops, metrics, and sales readiness
• Passionate, results-driven, and organized approach; with an attention to detail: A self-starter who can create and deliver scalable plans from concept to delivery, including the ability to prioritize and manage multiple projects, effectively driving to measurable results.
• The ability to work cross-team in ambiguous and changing environments, along with excellent listening and partnering skills. Must be comfortable working in a highly matrixed environment, and leading program v-teams or workstreams aligned to shared goals and measures.
• Engagement expertise: Storytelling skills and passion for delighting partners, advocating on their behalf, creating great partner experiences, and understanding the linkage between these experiences and business success
• Brings demonstrated experience proposing, creating, and managing executive-level proposals and presentations
• Executive Relations: The ability to interact confidently with leaders in a highly-matrixed organization to present/defend/clarify concerns or issues regarding an existing project, program, or solution. This includes the ability to confidently address difficult questions, handle pushback from a high-level audience, and maintain an executive demeanour while engaging in challenging or sometimes high-pressure situations