Azure Tech Sales is a Team Sport

An Azure sale isn't your everyday ordinary transaction.  No, to effectively do-the-do requires a true symphony of talented voices.  Listen in as Julie Dabrowski helps us Azure Sellers work nice together.

BIO: Julie Dabrowski is an Azure Data Sales Director in Microsoft’s Northeast Region. She has been with the company for almost 8 years in a variety of roles, including Data Platform Specialist, Account Executive and Services Support Sales Manager. Prior to Microsoft, Julie spent time at both EMC and VMWare in direct and channel sales roles. Julie’s passion and experience is in collaborating with different teams across Microsoft to align and deliver the best possible experiences with our customers that drive differentiated business outcomes. Julie also serves as the Team Manager/Rec Soccer Coach for her two sons.

LINKS: Azure Cognitive Services (Customer Stories); Innovate Faster with Azure Data Services; Artificial Intelligence

CREDITS: Louis Berman (Host); Julie Dabrowski (Guest); Dan Phillipson / PremiumBeat (Music); Anne Lamb (Intro/Outro); East Coast Studio (Editing)

MORE: visit https://azure-success.com for additional episodes, plus transcripts, and more ways to listen to the show. As to your comments and suggestions, please feel free to email your host, Louis Berman, at lberman@microsoft.com

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:01

I think it's up to the specialist and the customer success unit to really dive in and think about how we expand those relationships and how we get to the right people within our customer set to have impactful conversations, to think about what are their goals, what business outcomes are they trying to achieve? And then how can we enable that with, with our technologies,

Speaker 2: 0:23

With our partners, you're listening to as your success, the podcast by and for, as your professionals listen in, and you'll be sure to speak your customers March into the cloud. And now your host, Lois Berman.

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hello, and welcome to another episode of Azure success. The podcast buying for Azure professionals today's episode is a very special episode where we usually concentrate on let's say Azure technologies or topics like dev ops or stuff. But today it's my privilege to have a director specialist on the podcast with me. And we're going to talk about how various people in Microsoft and work together in particular specialist specialists who are sort of like the front line working with customers and people like me, cloud solutions architect who helped deliver some of the goodness of Microsoft. So Julie, why don't you say hi and introduce yourself a little bit and then we'll get into it. Sure. Thanks Louis. And by the way, you've got a great radio personality voice. That's that I get coming through this. So it's, it's awesome. I'm really excited to be here today. This is my first ever podcast that I've gotten the opportunity to participate in. So, you know, I, couldn't be more excited to be here with you today and talk about really our sales orchestration. That's, that's focused around our customers and in their success. So, um, I have been with Microsoft for almost eight years now in a variety of different roles. I've been a specialist myself. I've been an account manager. I led our premier sales team for part of the Northeast. And now, as you mentioned, I'm one of our Azure data sales directors. That's very, very cool. And of course she, she makes it sound like I have a great radio voice. I'm going to talk really low. It always feels like very much the first time. So thank you so much for that. So tell me what various roles are within the sales organization. A lot about what a specialist, anything. Sure. So I would say when you think about Microsoft and just like the scope of professionals that we have here to support our customers, there's a ton of different roles. And sometimes it can be super confusing, especially if you're new to us or I've been here for five years, it's always confusing. It is always confusing. So what I will say is that from an account team perspective, right, we think about we've got the account team themselves, which is an account executive and the account technology strategist, and really, they kind of own the all up relationship within our customers. The second group is the specialist, which is the area that I fall in and across the specialists, you know, we all have different focus areas that we think about for me, it's around Azure data services and the team that I work with, but we've also got specialists focused on business productivity, modern workplace solutions and collaboration on Azure infrastructure, application development. Like you had mentioned earlier, we've got the specialist unit, the customer success unit, which you're part of Lewis and which I am a huge fan of because I feel like that's the organization that really helps bring things to life for our customers. And then certainly there's the partner ecosystem that we try to leverage across the entire sales process. And then we've got our own Microsoft consulting services group as well that we could take away.

Speaker 3: 3:39

Cool. So it goes without saying, but I'm going to say it anywhere that Microsoft is a team sport and particularly selling technical selling is a team sport and we have to work together, but I often feel like I have to make the case for it. So could you help make the case for why working together, selling together, interacting together makes the experience for our customers better? It makes it better for us puts more money in our pockets if we're going to play inside pool and just, just, you know, enhances every bit of it.

Speaker 1: 4:11

Yeah, absolutely. So I, you know, I think from our perspective, and this is a big part of the core kind of culture at Microsoft around being customer obsessed, right? We've got so many talented people across sales and technical roles here that I think in order to really have that obsession, it's great to have the ideation amongst those different teams that can really be thinking and taking solutions to our customers that will have a substantial impact on their business. If I think about it kind of in terms of what that orchestration looks like, right. I think that the account executives and the account technology strategist, they've got certain ongoing cadences with certain people at an organization that we support. I think it's up to the specialists and the customer success unit to really dive in and think about how we expand those relationships and how we get to the right people within our customer set to have impactful conversations and ideate with them as well. Right. To think about what are their goals, what business outcomes are they trying to achieve? And then how can we enable that with, with our technologies and with

Speaker 3: 5:21

Got it. Got it. So how do you feel about, about your other team members? I mean, do you feel they're widely on board with us or, you know, is there still confusion of how to approach our accounts?

Speaker 1: 5:34

Great question. And I think it's interesting because, you know, as you know, the one thing that's kind of constant at Microsoft has changed and we're just starting a fiscal year and there have been some changes to the organization. I would say two years ago, when we introduced this concept for Microsoft of the customer success unit, there were some questions around how best to engage and at what point do we engage? And I think we some very specific alignment, right? And then we iterated on that last June, July timeframe. And we went into more of like a request model, like once a specialist, that to a certain point with a customer and being able to kind of hold their own from a technical perspective, up to a certain point, then we could make a request for a CSA. And I think we've learned a lot from that whole process, because I think at the end of the day, if we've got really good synergies and partnerships between the specialists and the cloud solutions, architects that are supporting our customers, we could do even more. And so I think by having some kind of soft alignment where people are comfortable and have built relationships with those people that they're partnering with, I think we'll have an even broader impact this coming year with that in mind.

Speaker 3: 6:45

That's great. One of the things that we've been having challenges with CSA is we're doing more. It's not exclusively. There's a lot of pins, CSS that are pinned to accounts, but we're doing more and more swarming in that that's bringing different people to bear on a different account. And it turns out there is this tension between being closely aligned with specialists. Now it's like anything else, you create relationships with them and being more transactional through requests, do it, get it done, go onto something else. Can you, can you talk to the relationship and how you think it works the best way

Speaker 1: 7:22

Coming from the kind of the specialist lens? I will say from talking to the team, they feel like they can have the best response times for the customers, the best business outcome focused conversations when they're engaging and partnering with their CSA peers as early as possible in that sales cycle. Right. And I even think before anything happens, just because so many people have so many different experiences and different successes within customers across, you know, Microsoft, for sure we're really able to then go prove it and show it with our customers. And so I think having that relationship is super important. And then what I've seen be really successful is I think as long as everybody has a good idea of what their kind of core strengths are. And, and I think the focus on having infra specific cloud solutions, architects, data specific cloud solutions, architects, I think that will really help and having the ability to say, okay, I don't know that this isn't my area of specialty. So I think I need to pull in or engage somebody else and then making that request and doing the swarm that way. Right? Like having people that are focused on a subset of accounts and then where we need to bring in additional resources, whether it be from within our CSA team, within our national customer success practice, we've got the black belt team that we can certainly bring in. So I think there's a lot of different, different resources, but having kind of that one anchor of specialists and cloud solutions architect to support a customer, I think is super helpful. So we get into figuring

Speaker 3: 8:56

Out how to get all the people on the team to buy into this. And even the mechanics of pitching it, let me play some inside pool. So it turns out, I know it sounds like Julie and I are just having a conversation, but we actually plan what we're going to talk about sort of, and we talk about things in advance, how to talk and things. And, and the question I invariably asked masterly today was tell me something quirky and fun about you. So I can sort of slot that in. And Julie's direct answer was she's not super quirky, which is sort of quirky in its own way. You know, she describes herself as a soccer mom, although to judge from my wife's opinion of looking at her picture and my own experience, you're always very well turned out. You're not my image of someone with your hair flying in every direction and crazy, you know, you seem always very, very, very together. So talk about not being super quirky for a second.

Speaker 1: 9:50

I will certainly do that. I don't know if that's, I don't know if that's a compliment or not Lewis, but I'll take it.

Speaker 3: 9:56

No, no, no, no, no. You, you know, my impression were you aside from ever, ever knows you as being very professional, but I mean just the visual, the first time you look at you and you know, I've been in a bunch of meetings with you, you come across as very, very organized and together and turned out well, that's why me.

Speaker 1: 10:13

Yeah. Well, thank you. So interestingly enough, that's been like a blessing and a curse for me because I think the way I became a soccer mom was when my oldest was, I've got two boys they're eight and six. And when my oldest was starting soccer, they kept sending out these emails. Like we need coaches, we need coaches, we need coaches. I've never played soccer. I honestly didn't even like it until my kids started playing it. I just, wasn't a huge fan. And so I started coaching when he was four and I coached him for a couple of years until he outgrew like the parent coach. And when that happened, Lewis, I think they saw some of the things that you were talking about in terms of like your perspective of me, because I have, now this will be my second year. I've been the team manager for the travel soccer team that my oldest is on. So there's a ton of coordination and orchestration that has to happen in order to have a successful season. So I've kind of pivoted my organizational skills into my home life as well. And take advantage of that for the soccer team. I thought I was going to get out of it this year and they called me out on a call with all the parents at the beginning of the year, asking if I'd do it again. So

Speaker 3: 11:20

That's great. Okay. So back to the races, it's one thing to have a theory of how to work together and have some experience, but how do we convince others, right. And how do we educate our peers and how to work together better? And I'm saying this from the lens of I'm actively involved in this I'm part of a, I don't know if task force sounds incredibly grandiose, but a group of people who are working on a specialist education, right? So that specialist can learn more about what we do. And there are others who are doing in other directions. How do we get our team members to work together? Better?

Speaker 1: 11:57

Great question. And I think it, it really goes back to having a process or a methodology around at what point are certain roles in the organization doing what. And so if I think about really like the different factors or kind of steps in a sales engagement, when we're engaging with customers to try to align our technology to a business outcome, there's kind of the first phase, which I'll think about, and this is something that we do have documented on internal sites about what that orchestration process looks like. But if I think about like the first lead qualification and going out and finding leads, I personally believe that that is on the account managers and the account technology strategist, and the specialists to take advantage of their relationships that they have with customers and try to build those out and, and get sponsors from within the organization within different lines of business that we could potentially impact, right. Based on a lot of the research that we're doing on our customers to really understand what they're trying to drive, what obstacles they're facing and how we can leverage our technology to address it. Right. So I think about from a lead perspective, I would say that that's really something that the account teams and that the specialist teams should be thinking about and kind of having a coordinated plan of how we're going to engage. Once we do develop an opportunity or think we have an opportunity, right? It's important to have a strategy in terms of here's exactly what we're going to do here are the people that, that are going to be involved. And here's a timeline that we have to achieve that. Right. So I think at that point, that's when would start to think about, are there cloud solutions, architects with certain areas of expertise that it makes sense to engage in? Right. So I think if I'm thinking about it at an engagement level, that's the point that I would say, like, let's, let's bring in the cloud solutions architects to start talking about what's the strategy? How do we present that value? Are there PLCs proof of concepts, pilots, demos, we talk about minimum viable products or MVPs, right? So let's figure out what that plan is going to be. And then let's leverage our partner ecosystem to help us with that kind of demonstration, if you will, of what that solution is. And it's important that we have prior to doing that, what the metrics are that are important to the customer. So we could say if we're able to achieve X, Y, and Z, right. Does it make sense to move forward with this? And are you, are you in agreement that that's the plan by this timeline? So I think I'm big on what are the reverse timelines like when does a customer anticipate needing something to be stood up and then kind of working back from there? Right. So I think that's where the cloud solutions architects are working really closely with the specialist and with the customers to getting things from idea into production.

Speaker 3: 14:39

Cool. Well, this is excellent. I'm going to ask you just one more thing. So what would you leave us with? Just one final, Hey, keep this in your mind. Specialist, CSA,

Speaker 1: 14:52

ATS a I apologize. I apologize that you're spilling all the acronyms. What would you leave us as something to keep top of mind to why it is valuable for us to figure out actively not just by default, but figure out actively how to work together and how to work together better. I would take advantage of, you know, my, my biggest thing would be to take advantage of a lot of the cross solutioning and also cross skillset collaboration that we've got going on right now. I know we're doing a lot of internal trainings on the cloud solutions. Architects will present at certain technology or an area of focus to the specialist so they can learn and continue to build on their technical acumen. And then I think vice versa as well, like making sure that the cloud solutions architects are spending time with the specialists to learn more about some of the sales fundamentals and the tools that we're using to better understand our customers, how we're thinking about engaging, what different levels within an account and what different roles that we're trying to get in front of with our customers, and then sharing that knowledge amongst each other. I think everybody can bring something in terms of, here's a great idea that could have an impact based on a success I've had with another customer. So just ensuring that we share that. Cause at the end of the day, we all own our customer success and we all need to have that focus. And so I think being able to think about, you know, at what point to engage and holding everybody accountable to those things will make us all even more successful in this upcoming fiscal year. Excellent. It's been a pleasure talking with you, Julie, Nebraska director of specialists at Microsoft. And you know, again, this is the answer success podcast podcast by and for Azure professionals. There's no question. Julia is a great professionalist. Thank you so much for speaking with us today. Make it sound so Royal us. It's me. Thank you for speaking with me. I loved that. It's been a great first experience, so thank you

Speaker 2: 16:56

Opportunity. You've been listening to Azure success. The podcast buy in for Azure professionals. You can visit our website, azure-success.com for show notes, helpful links and other episodes, but also to leave your questions, comments, and suggestions. Thank you for listening.