Sales Excellence Manager - SME&C

The Sales Excellence Manager plays a pivotal role in driving sales growth across the SME&C ANZ business through strategic, mid- to long-term account and business planning. This role partners closely with segment leads and cross-functional peers to shape and execute segmentation and territory strategies that align with business priorities.

As the primary orchestrator of the Account/Portfolio Partner Business Plan, the Sales Excellence Manager activates sponsorship within segment leadership and ensures a predictable Rhythm of the Connection (ROC) to foster alignment and accountability. Acting as a subject matter expert in sales motions and opportunity management, this role guides sales teams and leaders in executing high-impact strategies and priorities.

This role is ideal for a strategic thinker and collaborative leader passionate about enabling sales excellence and delivering measurable business impact.

Responsibilities

• As primary orchestrator of the Account/Portfolio Partner Business Plan, activates sponsorship within segment leaders. Coaches managers and sellers on account/portfolio/partner business planning fundamentals, habits, and plan quality. Drives reinforcement and review of quality plans across region(s).
• Guides sales teams/leadership on sales motions/strategies for opportunity management (e.g., up-sell, cross-sell, renewal, recapture) as a subject matter expert. Clarifies accountabilities and operationalizes the prioritized sales plays and industry solutions. Guides sales teams/leadership to generate new business and accelerates the closing of existing opportunities.
• Drives sales growth through mid to long term account or business planning. Analyzes the outlook and generates business insights to benchmark performance and/or define sales/ organizational/partner strategies. Contributes to integrating strategy components (e.g., programs, blueprints), cascading, aligning, and executing the defined strategy across region(s).
• Defines and drives a predictable rhythm of the connection (RoC) in collaboration with peers and/or leadership. Leads end-to-end RoC activities to enforce great discipline and ensure quality outcome delivery. Provides in-depth business insights and recommendations to effect positive changes. Leads efforts and coaches less experienced team members to streamline and improve the RoC cadence across region(s).

• Drives sales process discipline, adherence to standards and excellence in execution, or pipeline health in collaboration with sales managers. Holds sales managers accountable for account plan quality and completeness. Helps ensure consistency and excellence in the sales process across the segment(s)/region(s). Shares best practices and provides thought leadership across teams.
• Leads analytics on key revenue drivers (e.g. by channel, by product, by geo) and generates data-based insights. Leverages and develops reporting and analytical capabilities to generate data-based insights and enable visibility into revenue and forecast for sellers, sales managers and leaders, or partners.
• Acts as a subject matter expert to convey the value of tools and drive the effective and rigorous usage of common and/or new processes and tools developed for the wider business to improve internal and external communications and engagements. Owns consolidated input from the supported area into the feedback loop. Leverages the feedback to influence engineer/partner teams on improving tools.

• Drives optimization and improvement in sales team processes and capabilities across the region(s). Assesses and anticipates customer/partner needs and applies or develops methodologies and resources to transform seller capabilities, sales processes, and/or partner engagement processes. Models transformation to a coaching culture.
• Coaches and builds relationships with sales managers on executing key priorities. Identifies where coaching may be needed based on data-driven insights. Influences sales managers to become more effective coaches to their teams. Guides sales managers to achieve increased individual and team capability, employee satisfaction, and collaborative selling efforts. May coach and guide large deal pursuit.
• Partners with Area Transformation Leads, Area Capability Leads, and Business and Sales Operations (BSO) to remove sales roadblocks, drive utilizations of investment, increase customer/partner-facing time, and enhance seller/partner capability and effectiveness. Shares insights and influences sales managers' strategies to anticipate and mitigate risks. Integrates feedback on sales challenges or blockers. Guides relevant teams to develop actions based on the feedback.
• Drives awareness and clarity of Corporate or TimeZone programs. Intakes and drives the adoption of plans to create new habits among sales teams or partners.

• Supports segment leader capacity as a senior leader. Advises on and contributes to various aspects of business management (e.g., employee engagement, resource allocation, change management, building high-performing teams) in collaboration with leadership and cross-functional teams. Represents the segment as an internal advocate and an extension of the segment leadership.

Qualifications

Minimum Required Qualifications :

• 8+ years’ experience in sales, sales operations/management, account management, program management, business development, marketing, consulting, or a related field OR equivalent experience.
• 5+ years of experience using data to drive business outcomes or inform business decisions.
• 5+ years of experience managing relationships with stakeholders, clients, and/or partners/customers.
• 5+ years managing projects, including planning, managing timelines, and tracking progress, and/or change management experience. 

Preferred Experience

• Demonstrated ability to lead cross-functional projects and collaborate across Sales, Finance, and Operations teams.
• Experience supporting field sales or managing investment/resource planning in a global or regional organization.
• Familiarity with deal structuring, forecasting, or incentive-based programs that support customer success or cloud adoption.
• Proven ability to design and scale operational processes, tools, and best practices to drive efficiency and enablement.
• Experience preparing executive-level presentations, performance reviews, and storytelling through data.
• Understanding of financial governance, compliance protocols, and working closely with finance and legal teams.

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran status, race, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application or the recruiting process, please send a request via the Accommodation request form.

Benefits/perks listed below may vary depending on the nature of your employment with Microsoft and the country where you work.