Partner Development Manager

The Global Partner Solutions (GPS) team is a sales organization accountable for the commercial partner business at Microsoft, and the mission is to build and sell Microsoft Cloud services & advanced AI solutions with partners, empowering people, and organizations to achieve more.

As a Partner Development Manager, we are looking for you to bring your work ethic, enthusiasm, optimism, and passion for the customer to foster growth and change within our partner ecosystem. You will be working with a set of innovative Services Partners that advise, consult and guide customers on their digital transformation journey. You will leverage your challenger mindset, sales management skills, technology, and industry knowledge, and best in class interpersonal abilities to enable our partners to bring market-defining innovative solutions, based on Microsoft’s Cloud & AI offers, to our customers. This opportunity will allow you to accelerate your career growth as you work with highly complex partner organizations, build strong relationships in the C-Suite and collaborate across multiple stakeholders to accelerate performance and resolve complex issues.

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**:
Partner development and growth
- You will develop and execute a strategic and tactical partner business plan aligned with Microsoft goals and objectives for managed partners to grow their business. You will promote cloud consumption and digital transformation; plans will consider short and long-term goals and performance expectations aligned with partner needs and capabilities.
- You will develop a go to market plan and co-sell execution tactics, lead partner pipeline reviews and coach partners to transform their strategies around sales and consumption. You will facilitate collaboration between partner and Microsoft sales teams to overcome obstacles, compete, and create proposals to meet consumption and revenue targets. You will work with your partner on top opportunities following the Microsoft sales methodology and prioritize transactions through the marketplace, where possible.

Partner performance and Impact
- You will be responsible for your partners’ performance with Microsoft and accountable for keeping a regular rhythm of connection with executive, sales and delivery teams to identify and resolve blockers in execution, and to accelerate performance. You will drive adoption, usage and performance of programs and investments that contribute to sales and consumption. You will be responsible for the correction of errors plan when execution is below expectations.

Executive Relationship Building
- You will build a trusted-advisor relationship with C-suite leaders of complex partners and align their priorities, strategies, and goals with Microsoft’s to build mutually beneficial account plans and achieve strategic alignment and growth.

Partner skills and capacity building
- You will lead the integration of capability and capacity plans for your partners utilizing the right mix of sales and tech training to upskill the partner. You will enable partners to build high-impact Microsoft offerings and practices to grow their business and deliver cloud consumption and digital transformation.

Advocate for Partner and Team Mobilizer
- You will represent the partner and lead the orchestration resolution to complex and urgent escalations. You will guide internal groups to prioritize partners' solutions and issues. You will engage across groups internally and with the partner organization to accelerate performance and execution.

**Qualifications**:

- Bachelor’s degree in Business administration, Business Science, Computer Science OR advanced degree in Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics (STEM) or related field OR equivalent experience
- Several years of Sales, Sales Management, Partner Management, Business Development, or Partner Channel Development in the technology industry, consulting industry or equivalent experience.
- Proven experience with Consultative Selling or Consulting in the Austrian market and developing tactics to manage pipeline, sales opportunities and meet sales goals by reviewing forecasts, assessing, and mitigating risks, and ensuring strategy alignment with business priorities.
- Proven history as a strong negotiator with an ability to influence and achieve mutually satisfying agreements through negotiations.
- Executive relationships: ability to interact confidently with senior leaders to present and address concerns regarding an existing project, program or solution.
- Experience communicating with proficiency in English (both written and verba