Distinguished Field Solution Architect

Description
Bring your IT career and talents to CDW, where you can have a greater impact, be inspired by our mission and excited about your career and future. A Fortune 200 leader, we're the driven professionals and technology experts companies turn to most to solve their IT challenges. The Distinguished Field Solution Architect (FSA) role focuses on pre-sales solution design/technologies. This role is responsible for working with internal and external sales teams to plan and organize sales strategies. The incumbent analyzes the sales environment including customer expectations, competitive environment as well as the customer's technical environment and define actions to be performed in the sales cycle timeframe. The Distinguished FSA is a field-based technical presales role. They are expected to spend most of their time onsite at CDW customer locations in their local markets. The Distinguished FSA develops and maintains strategic relationships with Sales Management of the teams they support and is seen as the go-to person for multiple solutions/technologies; is on the forefront of new and emerging solutions and implications for CDW offerings and services. The Distinguished FSA is responsible for driving a variety of initiatives and projects, coaches and/or mentors others FSAs; and strategically works with sales, partners and customers to uncover and increase emerging business opportunities. The Distinguished FSA is an industry recognized thought leader that has mastered multiple solutions/technologies. Provides insight and expertise on new and emerging solutions to best position CDW's approach, preparation, and delivery of new and emerging solutions. Responsibilities:
* Technology Leadership: Performs a technical leadership role in Alphas, Betas, and Pilots; participates in industry and technical advisory boards; provides insight on industry direction and roadmaps; serves as subject matter expert for team leads, services readiness, and management for building new best practices or offerings. Serves as the "go to" resource for both peers and management for uniquely challenging customer scenarios.
* Determines and defines services that complement and/or round out proposed hardware and software engagements; estimates required engineering effort.
* Serves as subject matter expert for the creation of new tools and processes of emerging and evolving technologies (e.g. services calculators, SOW templates, demonstration environments, customer presentations, etc.)
* Develops training materials for team members to use with CDW audiences.
* Promotes a culture of knowledge sharing and collaboration by organizing knowledge bases, contributing regularly, and encouraging team members to contribute.
* Coaches and mentors team members to improve their technical, consulting, and sales skills.
* Acts as a resource to FSAs for advice and recommendations on technical design issues and product choices.
* Conducts technical assessment and expertise evaluations during the candidate selection process.
* Assist managers with new hire FSAs', leads shadow assignments; proactively provides assistance and guidance to new hires to accelerate productivity.
* Sales: Follows up on implemented solutions and identifies new opportunities that complement the work that was completed.
* Advises team members and sales prior to customer calls and/or sales strategy sessions.
* Assists customer in understanding their equipment maintenance contracts, upgrade needs, and renewals; analyses the most cost-effective approach for the customer (e.g., renew the contract or purchase new equipment and contract).
* Incorporates financing (through manufacturer or third party) as part of the sales proposal and discussion; looks beyond the current infrastructure/problem toward a three to five year roadmap.
* Articulates to customers the ITS Practice (Integrated Technology Solutions Practice) value proposition to customers, account managers, and partners and uses it to generate additional revenue opportunities to CDW.
* Guides (compares and contrast) customers in their decision making within all tiers of CDW technologies (e.g., Cisco vs. McAfee/Juniper) as well as with external competing technologies/solutions (e.g. Dell vs. NetApp/EMC).
* Initiates new event ideas; collaborates with Partners and Sales to design events that can be replicated by other FSAs; secures funding to support CDW customer events.
* Presents technical topics at technology showcase events, such as key-notes at national industry or technology conferences and/or participates on Partner Technical Advisory Boards.
* Develops assessments improvements and demos for FSAs to use as sales tools, identifies new ideas for cross-sell opportunities, teaches FSAs in Sales on how to use these tools.
* Collaborates with Partners, Inside Solution Architects (ISA), and Account Executives (AE) to drive mapped opportunities; fine tunes strategies and approaches to achieve greater sales results.
* Operates in a regular cadence with multiple partners to educate, plan, and execute on joint strategies in collaboration with multiple stakeholders (ISA, AE, Sales Managers, and Field Sales); understands partner alignment in geography and leads customer opportunity mapping exercises; coordinates on-site partner visits.
* Shares best practices and effective territory planning approaches with peers to leverage successful approaches across the team.
* Shares best practices and tactics for enhancing profitability and closing deals.
* Regularly creates forward-thinking thought leadership deliverables (e.g., external monthly blog posts, internal technical strategy documents); provides insight into emerging technical trends affecting CDW's portfolio; regularly contributes to major industry publications and/or speaks at national conferences
* Sales Support: Responds to questions about partner registrations, associated registration issues, and customer engagement history.
* Manages competing priorities and sets expectations with sales and other stakeholders through proactive communication, planning, and potential for return on investment.
* Leads the development of Bills of Materials, Statements of Work, RPFs, RFIs, and proposal content for cross- technology solutions with high levels of accuracy and quality.
* Maintains pre-sales pipeline data, develops plans, and takes actions to move opportunities to closure. Requirements:
* Bachelor's Degree or equivalent experience
* Ten-year minimum technical pre-sales or technical architecting experience
* Experience with IBM Power, storage and tap.
* Stay up to date on products, applications, technical service, market conditions, competitive activities, advertising, and promotional trends through the reading of pertinent literature, seminars, and online training
* Proven project management skills
* Proficient in Microsoft office applications
* Proven success and experience selling technologies solutions and services
* Knowledge and proven success of engaging and working with sales teams
* Ability to execute on territory goals and metrics
* Ability to adapt and change to the business needs of the practice and team coverage model
* Strong interpersonal and presentation skills, including consulting skills
* Effective communications skills both orally and written using a variety of styles and techniques appropriate to the audience
* Strong passion for learning and teaching others
* Motivated and self-starting
* Ability to think creatively and come up with proactive ideas that will increase sales
* Proven ability to proactively collaborate and build relationships, take initiative, and creatively problem solve
* Must be able to communicate effectively and in a constructive manner with management, peers and coworkers
* Ability and willingness to travel up 20% or as needed to other CDW locations, meeting and client sites
* Ability to understand, remember, and apply oral and/or written instructions or other information. Ability to organize thoughts and ideas into understandable terminology. Ability to multi-task, organize and prioritize. Ability to apply common sense in performing job. Ability to understand and follow basic instructions and guidelines. Ability to travel as needed.
* Obtain and maintain relevant industry standard certifications Pay range: $131,200 - $172,200.00, depending on experience and skill set. Annual bonus target of $40,000. Subject to terms and conditions of plan. Benefits overview: https://cdw.benefit-info.com/ Salary ranges may be subject to geographic differentials
Who we are:
CDW is a leading technology solutions provider to business, government, education and healthcare organizations across the globe. Our fingerprints can be found on technology in workplaces of more than 250,000 companies; from fresh-faced start-ups to international conglomerates. With the breadth of products and services we offer, there is no request too big or too small.
What you can expect from us: Culture, coworkers, careers.
CDW is not only the People Who Get IT but the People who get People. Our relationships are fueled by our deep expertise and grounded in the CDW Way. Our empowering leadership makes things happen and inspires their teams to do the same. From the teammates beside us to the leaders who guide us, we move forward together. At CDW, you'll work with people who inspire you. People with positive, success-driven attitudes who you will learn from and forge strong relationships with. Bring your best true self- and your best ideas- to CDW. Because diverse perspectives bring forth better problem solving- and better solutions for our customers on a rapidly evolving technology landscape.
Equal Opportunity Employer, including disability and protected veteran status
Benefits overview: [https://cdw.benefit-info.com/](https://cdw.benefit-info.com/)