As the Azure SMB Partner Marketing Lead for Japan, you will be responsible for

• Defining, developing and executing partner marketing strategies to ensure market, channel, partner readiness for new solution/offering launch. Designs, executes, and localizes end-to-end partner experiences.

• Driving and leading 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.

• Contributes to the investment process by helping to identify, executing on, and scoping new/existing business opportunities to drive strategic impact for Microsoft.

• Conducts and helps manage others to conduct analyses to measure success metrics of GTM campaigns.

• Owns/drives trusted senior executive-level partner marketing relationships in order to work towards mutual business objectives and alignment to partner's priorities to establish trust and credibility.

• Leads cross-functional stakeholders to drive impact. Uses subject matter expertise to provide feedback across partners and customers on how products and processes may be improved to better serve partners/customers or internal stakeholders

Responsibilities

Strategic Planning

• 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.

Go-To-Market Planning

• 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.

Partner Experiences

• 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.

Business Operations

• 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, and Legal Affairs (CELA) stakeholders.

Analytics and Insights

• Conducts and helps manage others to conduct analyses to measure success metrics of products/projects (e.g., return on investment [ROI], return on spend). Helps to determine/define methods to consume and interpret data, as well as metrics that need to be analyzed, to complete analyses. Identifies trends in partner and competitive data to help assess the impact of a campaign/project, as well as long term needs and risks. Changes and adapts partner strategies based on feedback and evaluation of data. Helps to change and adapt partner strategies based on feedback and evaluation of data.

Relationship Building

• Owns/drives trusted senior 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.

Thought Leadership

• 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).

Sales Plays

• 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.

Qualifications

Required/Minimum Qualifications

• Japanese fluency / English business level

• 10+ years channel marketing/ partner marketing/ business development experience.

• Bachelor's Degree in Computer Science, Information Technology, Business Administration

Microsoft is an equal opportunity employer. Consistent with applicable law, all qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to age, ancestry, citizenship, color, family or medical care leave, gender identity or expression, genetic information, immigration status, marital status, medical condition, national origin, physical or mental disability, political affiliation, protected veteran or military status, race, ethnicity, religion, sex (including pregnancy), sexual orientation, or any other characteristic protected by applicable local laws, regulations and ordinances. If you need assistance and/or a reasonable accommodation due to a disability during the application process, read more about requesting accommodations (https://careers.microsoft.com/v2/global/en/accessibility.html) .