Client Partner

Key Responsibilities:

• Generates demand and selling Cloud Managed Services solutions

• Generates demand by assisting clients to identify and qualify current needs and effectively articulate how the company can add value through its Cloud services and solutions offering.

• Addresses the objections that a client may pose in moving to a Cloud managed services solution.

• Appropriately allocates sales time between assigned clients and new prospect opportunities; yet ensure focus remains on the top clients/prospects and balance opportunity size with likely outcomes.

Sales partnership -

• The success of the services agenda and successful sales will rely on successful partnership with others; this will include regional leads and services teams to work on the best outcome for the client.

• Engages and coordinates with partners and/ or vendors to drive select deals through vendor-based opportunities.

• Engages with the broader organization such as the Offer Management, Commercial Architecture and delivery teams to promote and support high-value services opportunities.

• Participates in regional sales governance processes and deal Clinics to profile opportunities.

• Managed Services industry trusted advisor -

• Builds deep and long-term relationships with client leaders in a Managed Services opportunity and executes a competitive win strategy through understanding the client’s business requirements and competitive landscape.

• Maintains a high level of relevant service knowledge to have meaningful conversations with clients; including the industry that the client operates in.

• Contributes to the knowledge base of the company's services solutions within a services practice by sharing best practices with internal teams as well as client teams; ensuring that internal teams are aware of typical client challenges.

Deal construct –

• Helps build and support commercial solutions for Managed Services solutions and design deals that meet client’s needs and ensure win/win solutions for both client and the organization.

• Constructs the managed services deal including the commercial modelling, negotiate contractual terms, mitigate legal risk and obstacles, and move the proposal to close to meet assigned quota.

• 
  Drives the sales process -

• Manages a pipeline of opportunities and creates and documents a shared strategy to meet sales target such as net new customer pursuit plans to land new logos, activities to achieve client satisfaction, minimize churn, cross-sell, upsell, revenue, and margin goals.

• Collaboratively works with extended sales teams and commercial architects to successfully position the service and see the opportunity through to closure.

• Partners with internal teams to ensure scope of work and proposals are tracked, managed and delivered on time.

• Develops and implements an opportunity plan, to provide regular check-ins with the primary point of contact and have an established process for getting buy-in from all stakeholders.

• Ensures DATA is accurate based on sales reporting standards to provide DATA-driven insights.

• Supports the negotiation of deals with clients and leads the internal account management team to enable conclusion of services deals.

• Contributes to the knowledge base of the company's solutions and services by sharing best practices, industry and technology trends with internal stakeholders and clients.

• Participates in regional reporting cadence as it relates to regional performance and major deal reviews.

Knowledge and Attributes:

• Good knowledge of cloud infrastructure principles and products.

• Good understanding of and the ability to position organization's services offerings that may span multiple technology domains across Cloud Infrastructure Managed Services, Support Services, Consulting Services and Technical Services.

• Good understanding of platform delivered services and how to articulate the value of standardized, centralized and optimized services.

• Conversant with a business outcome led approach to sales.

• Proficiency in working with major cloud platforms such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and others.

• Good understanding of broader IT infrastructure components, such as servers, storage, virtualization, and DATA centers.

• Understanding how networking works in a cloud environment to enable the design of effective solutions.

• Good understanding of financial statements and metrics, including revenue, expense control, and growth relative to market in order to hold strategic client conversations.

• Have the legal knowledge to discuss contracting with the client and understand how to position terms as a value exchange.

• Client-centricity coupled with problem solving.

• Familiarity with cloud security best practices, identity and access management (IAM), encryption, DATA protection, compliance standards, and security monitoring within cloud environments.

• Understanding of hybrid cloud architectures and strategies.

• A comprehensive understanding of cloud infrastructure technologies and an awareness of IoT concepts and how they impact cloud infrastructure design.

• Good business acumen and negotiation skills to craft solutions that are beneficial to the company and the client.

• Ability to proactively and independently identify and qualify opportunities, an entrepreneurial mindset if key.

• Natural team player – ability to coordinate and liaise with delivery teams across multiple business areas.

• Quick learner to understand any new solutions that are ready to take to market.

Academic Qualifications and Certifications:

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent in a Technical or Sales field or related.

• Certifications such as Scotworks and Solution selling is desired.

• Solution Selling/SPIN certifications is desired.

• Desired technology certifications include (any one or more) - Azure (AZ900 – Azure Fundamentals), AWS (AWS Cloud Practitioner), VMWare (VTSP or VTSP for AWS/Azure), ITIL (Version 3 or later).

Required experience:

• Demonstrated impressive track record of managed services solutions to large enterprise accounts. These typically involve selling complex solutions and services to the C-suite in large enterprise accounts.

• Proof of structuring large, multi-year profitable contracts.

• Seasoned ability of building strong relationships with clients across all levels.

• Seasoned experience of networking with senior internal and external people in the specialist area of expertise.

• Experience in managing the entire sales process, contracting process and legal implications of a deal.

• Seasoned sales, client engagement and business development experience with requisite understanding of relevant markets and market penetration strategies.