Account Manager - Telco

Role Overview

Account Manager - Telco at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), based in the United Arab Emirates. This is a hybrid role requiring an average of 2 days per week in an HPE office.

Company Overview

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is the global edge-to-cloud company advancing the way people live and work. We help companies connect, protect, analyze, and act on their data and applications wherever they live, from edge to cloud, so they can turn insights into outcomes at the speed required to thrive in today's complex world. Our culture thrives on finding new and better ways to accelerate what's next. We value varied backgrounds, offer flexibility to manage work and personal needs, make bold moves together, and are a force for good.

Role Purpose

Manage one or several larger accounts or act as the account lead for a substantial part of a top account. Understand the customer's IT and business objectives, priorities, requirements and challenges, and add value by implementing HPE's strategy. Drive business performance for all HPE Business Units and manage the portfolio mix to optimize profitability of the account.

Key Responsibilities

Account Strategy & Business Value

• Articulate a two-way connection between the customer's core KPIs, business priorities and initiatives, and the plan to support the customer with IT solutions.
• Influence the decision-making of customer executives through describing the value of HPE's solutions and their relevance to the customer's priorities.
• Position HPE strategy and solutions in such a way that the customer sees HPE is critically important to their business.
• Understand the innovation agenda and digital journey of the customer when appropriate, and provide input into them.
• Build a business value framework for the customer.
• Develop and execute a comprehensive account business plan for defined accounts.
• Manage the collective effort to build and maintain both strategic and tactical elements of the plan.
• Share and align the plan with relevant stakeholders of the account.

Growth & Portfolio Management

• Build and execute a plan to drive growth and profitability across HPE's portfolio in a structured and recurring way.
• Drive growth in HPE's strategic value portfolio through positioning these solutions with the customer.
• Formulate and present technology choices for the customer that will expand HPE's presence and margin in the account.
• Leverage HPE programs and tools (for example, Executive Sponsors, Business Unit deal support, and supply chain programs) to improve business performance.
• Contribute to internal reviews connected to deals and sales planning.

Pipeline & Deal Management

• Engage with the customer to identify opportunities.
• Translate customers' business challenges and goals into IT opportunities.
• Ensure a strong and rightsized pipeline funnel from the account team.
• Lead pipeline building activities for the account, involving account team members as appropriate.
• Identify and develop opportunities for short and mid-term success.
• Proactively lead early engagements.
• Own accountability for deal closure.
• Ensure ownership throughout the team for the deals in the pipeline.
• Drive deals to closure through a multi-disciplinary team, including partners.

Relationship Management

• Develop and maintain a professional relationship network within the customer to maximize efficiency and effectiveness for HPE.
• Understand and leverage the underlying principles for the customer organization's functioning.
• Build influential relationships with executives.
• Define an effective engagement model with the customer's key influencers and decision makers.
• Develop and maintain a view of the partner landscape in the account.
• Develop partner relationships.
• Run an active governance process for the partner network for the account.
• Work with the Partner Business Manager to assess and update the partner strategy for the account.

Expertise & Market Positioning

• Develop and update expertise in IT technology.
• Engage as appropriate with the customer's CTO/CIO.
• Articulate relevant modern trends in IT and present them to executives within the customer when appropriate.
• Describe HPE's portfolio and reference its use in other customers.
• Constantly develop information technology industry knowledge to position HPE's portfolio in the account.

Team Leadership & Governance

• Build, develop and lead the extended account team.
• Run governance with the extended team and empower account team to engage on different levels within the account.
• Establish a recurring process to provide feedback to account team members and the relevant managers.
• Orchestrate, engage, guide and provide feedback to extended account team members.
• Act as the customer's advocate inside HPE.

Customer Satisfaction & Experience

• Provide feedback into other HPE organizations and coordinate with other customer-facing HPE organizations to improve the customer experience.
• Utilize HPE tools and processes for customer advocacy.
• Leverage existing tools, processes and resources to assure customer satisfaction and loyalty.

Planning & Execution

• Plan for accounts to deliver results through the financial year and beyond.

Qualifications & Experience

• University or Bachelor's Degree preferred, or equivalent experience.
• Engineering or technology education, advanced degree or MBA desired.
• Typically 6-10+ years account management experience.
• Experience in IT industry preferred.
• Experience working within an IT department and/or working within customers is a plus.
• Experience in vertical industry preferred.
• Experience in different sales roles is a plus.

Skills & Competencies

• Drives Results: Shows strong will to win, is persistent in face of obstacles and has a clear results orientation.
• Strategic Planning: Skillfully articulate a vision for the future and a path to achieve it in an account business plan, aligned with HPE strategy, direct leadership, and the HPE Business Units.
• Sales Execution: Efficiently deliver on short-term sales engagements and objectives.
• Continuous Learning: Continuously and actively pursue own learning.
• IT Industry Acumen: Build and maintain thorough knowledge of cutting-edge IT industry developments and technology trends with potential impacts to customers.
• HPE Portfolio Knowledge: Build and continually update thorough understanding of HPE products, solutions, and service offerings, their value propositions, competitive differentiators, and benefits to customers and their customers.
• Team Leadership: Lead teams (including dispersed and indirect team members) successfully through sales engagements in a complex matrix organization.
• Network/Relationship Building: Create strong professional relationships; understand and leverage the value of networks and collaboration.
• Two-Way Communication: Listen actively to understand perspectives of others and articulate value propositions, plans, and proposals in language relevant to the customer, partner or internal stakeholder.
• Influencing and Negotiating: Understand and proficiently leverage influencing and negotiation techniques.
• Business Acumen: Understand how different parts of a business interoperate to produce business outcomes and how actions impact company results. Have thorough understanding of general business concepts and the economy. Understand financial reports and make relevant conclusions for planning. Apply similar principles to public sector organizations.
• Operational Excellence: Show predictability and operational excellence both internally and externally.
• Integrity: Act with integrity throughout complex situations even if under pressure.
• Vertical/Industry Knowledge: Understand the customer's industry landscape, enterprise architecture, and partner and influencer ecosystem, and use this knowledge to build and advise the customer on its digital journey plan.
• Consulting: Synthesize relevant skills and knowledge to guide the customer through a process of achieving business outcomes leveraging HPE's portfolio.

Additional Information

Work Arrangement

• Hybrid role requiring an average of 2 days per week from an HPE office.

Benefits & Support

• Health & Wellbeing: Comprehensive suite of benefits supporting physical, financial and emotional wellbeing for team members and their loved ones.
• Personal & Professional Development: Investment in career development with specific programs to help reach any career goals, whether becoming a knowledge expert in your field or applying skills to another division.
• Unconditional Inclusion: Unconditionally inclusive workplace that celebrates individual uniqueness. Flexibility to manage work and personal needs. Bold collaborative culture that is a force for good.

Job Classification

• Sales role at Expert level.