At IBM Global Sales, we bring together innovation, collaboration, and expertise to help clients solve their most complex business challenges. Working across industries and geographies, you’ll partner with colleagues, clients, and partners to co-create solutions that drive digital transformation and lasting impact.Success in Global Sales is built on curiosity, empathy, and collaboration. You’ll connect technical understanding with strong people skills, building trusted relationships and shaping solutions that improve business and society. With world-class onboarding, continuous learning, and a supportive culture, IBM offers the tools and opportunities to grow your career. Join us and be part of a global team that’s passionate about driving innovation and making a difference.

As a Principal in our Deal Strategy (DS) team, you will lead DS engagements in the APAC region. You will be key to building relationships and collaborating with the Field Sales Org, including Sales leadership, Regional Sales Directors (RSDs), and Account Executives (AEs), and Solution Engineers (SEs). You'll dive deep into products/offerings and value propositions, ensuring you're well-versed to work effectively with internal teams including our Customer Success Group (CSG), Finance, Product, Operations, and others. Together, we ensure that our deal structures and proposals are strategically tailored to meet our customers' needs.

Your role on the DS team goes beyond just working on deals. You'll be our ears on the ground, providing valuable feedback from the field about trends, competitive insights, and customer feedback. This information is crucial for continuously refining our pricing, deal structures, and overall value proposition. Additionally, you'll play a pivotal role in facilitating training and education, helping to instill best practices across our Field Teams. In short, your work will impact our direct sales efforts and contribute to our broader business strategy's ongoing evolution and success. This position reports to our Sr. Director, Global Deal Strategy.

What you’ll do

● Collaborate with sales teams on our non-standard deals by structuring strategic and competitive proposals that meet customer needs and are beneficial to long term growth.

● Co-create the value proposition of offerings with our Value Engineering and sales teams and brainstorm on potential deal strategy plays in early customer engagements.

● Perform deep-dive discovery and qualification with account teams and customers to understand the business problems we are solving for and work towards mutually beneficial outcomes.

● Serve as a subject matter expert in value selling methodologies including best practices for deal structuring, complex pricing strategies, and commercial levers.

● Manage cross-functional stakeholders timing and expectations during the deal cycle for multiple in-flight deals occurring in parallel. This may include leading working sessions, performing analysis and consolidating approvals for innovative, strategic deals that fall outside standard processes.

● Identify opportunities to build repeatable, scalable processes within our team and our hand-offs to internal stakeholders.

● Continuously update your expertise in our portfolio, including on-premise, cloud, and hybrid deal constructs, to provide informed advice and support

● Bachelor’s degree with experience in roles such as Management Consulting, Deal Strategy, Finance, Deal Pursuits, & Growth or Strategy.

● Exceptional critical thinking skills with the ability to absorb and synthesize complex concepts in varied situations into logical, data-driven decisions

● Experience constructing strategic hypotheses with deep understanding of the big picture view of the operational implications.

● Proficient in financial analysis and partnering on the development of business cases, with a bias towards data driven decision making

● Deep understanding of various software selling models (SaaS, perpetual, on-demand, consumption, etc.) and a strong interest in Data, Enterprise Architecture, and Infrastructure

● Knowledgeable about the Data and SaaS/Cloud industries, with a keen aptitude for learning about Data in Motion and our portfolio

● Demonstrated ability to meet timelines on multiple projects while simultaneously managing stakeholder expectations and managing risk.

● Capable of building relationships and solving problems with cross-functional teams in a remote environment

● Strong communication skills, both oral and written, able to effectively convey information across different teams, roles, and levels

● Relevant experience putting together proposals for executives or customers coupled with past experience or interest in go-to-market strategy and execution

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