Technical Account Manager

Job Summary

As a Technical Account Manager (TAM) at NetApp, you will blend deep technical expertise with exceptional customer success skills to deliver outstanding customer experiences and drive significant business outcomes. Your role will involve leveraging your sales engineering skills to provide technical guidance, support product adoption, and provide consultancy to help ensure the successful implementation and integration of NetApp solutions. By combining technical acumen with customer success strategies, you will establish NetApp as a trusted partner in our customers' success.

Key Responsibilities

• Technical Consultation: Consult with customers to provide technical advice on NetApp products and services, focusing on key areas to enhance their technical environment and achieve business goals.
• Technical Relationship Building: Develop and nurture strong technical relationships with customers, becoming a trusted technical advisor and advocate throughout their journey with NetApp.
• Onboarding and Adoption: Facilitate smooth onboarding and integration activities, collaborating with customers to co-create technical success plans tailored to their specific needs and goals. Conduct guided demos tailored to customer environment
• Technical Health Checks: Conduct technical health checks with customers to assess product adoption, address technical challenges, suggest possible solutions, and identify areas for improvement.
• Proactive Technical Engagement: Use advanced data insights and technical knowledge to monitor adoption and/or utilization, guiding customers to recognize greater value from NetApp solutions.
• Technical Asset Management: Provide technical assessments consulting with the customer & the CSM to maintain and optimize the customer inventory of technical assets and services while identifying and qualifying opportunities to expand, replace, or optimize their environments.
• Technical Renewal and Expansion: Collaborate with Renewal Specialists and Field Sales to design and implement technical health plans with the goal of value realization, ensuring successful renewal of customer workloads on NetApp’s portfolio.
• Best Practices Development: Develop, document, and share technical best practices with team members to continually improve the quality, effectiveness, and efficiency of our processes and playbooks.
• Technical Strategic Initiatives: Lead and contribute to strategic technical initiatives that enhance customer success, drive innovation, and support organizational goals.
• Cross-Functional Collaboration: Work closely with Renewal Specialists, Field Sales, and other technical teams to ensure an exceptional customer experience and drive the technical customer success strategy with wider account team members.

Who You’ll Work With

• Professional Services
• Support Teams
• Sales Teams
• Technical Teams
• Customer Technical Stakeholders

TAM Competencies

Account Management

• Assigned ownership of key account(s) (for example, Strategic or Top 100 accounts, or a growth account within a district). Has advanced knowledge and expertise in account management. Demonstrates a deep understanding of customer needs and business objectives. Actively contributes to improving account management processes and practices.

Customer Communication

• Facilitates and supports communications up to the VP level within an organization. Proficient in handling customer requests and complaints and turning them into positive experiences. Gathers and synthesizes customer needs, contributing to customer-centric policies and training.

Relationship Management

• Influences and drives actions on both short- and long-term time scales. Develops and executes account plans that align with customer goals and NetApp objectives. Drives significant business outcomes by building Customer Success Plans and identifying critical customer KPIs, demonstrating the value of NetApp solutions in achieving strategic objectives.

Coaching and Training

• Able to plan and coach new hires from Day 1 until they are fully up to speed at the required job level. Provides structured onboarding and ongoing coaching support.

Role Development

• Manages key account(s) and develops long-term account strategies with the account team. Develops leadership skills while mentoring junior TAMs. Makes an impact at the geo level within the TAM organization.

Specialization / Innovation

• Possesses at least one advanced specialization and serves as an SME in soft skills, renewals/modernization, a process, a tool, or a product. Actively contributes to innovation.

Technical Aptitude

• Proficient in managing capacity and making space recommendations; managing storage and recommending add-ons; cluster expansion; and data/workload migrations. Able to manage systems and recommend Tech Refresh, Renewal, and Keystone. Requires minimal support from a Technical Specialist.

Critical Thinking / Problem Solving

• Proficient in handling complex and critical escalations and lifecycle management and renewal/modernization activities. Provides guidance and support to junior team members.

Renewals and Upsell

• Able to drive cross-functional collaboration on renewal/modernization and cross-sell/upsell opportunities.

General Business Acumen

• Has deep storage market and industry knowledge. Understands customer needs across market verticals. Recognizes and addresses customer needs and goals and provides recommendations to meet them. Understands how to position CSO services in the right business context. Able to articulate the value of both NetApp products and services.

Skills and Competencies

• Bachelor’s degree required with 5-7 years of B2B customer-facing experience, including roles such as Customer Success, Sales Engineering, Technical Support, Sales Architect, or Technical Account Management
• Strong technical proficiency in NetApp products and storage domain, with the ability to understand customer needs and leverage product capabilities or internal resources to meet those needs
• Proven ability to build and maintain strategic technical relationships with customers
• Excellent communication skills and emotional intelligence (EQ) to address complex technical challenges and build trust with customers
• Demonstrated success in fast-paced and dynamic environments, capable of handling multiple high-priority tasks and adapting to changing requirements
• Expertise in data analysis, providing actionable technical insights, and making strategic recommendations
• Proficiency in MS Office required; experience with Gainsight, Salesforce, and technical tools relevant to the role is a plus
• Capable of working independently and collaboratively with global internal and external teams
• Language proficiency may be required for CSM roles in specific areas

Key Performance Indicators:

• Net Retention Rates
• Customer Health and Adoption Scores
• Customer adoption of Health Plan recommendations
• Expansion of the NetApp Customer Success Portfolio

Business Objectives:

• Successful renewal/retention of customer workloads on NetApp’s portfolio
• Grow NetApp’s footprint by expanding current workloads and developing customer advocacy at the technical level
• Improve customer satisfaction and maintain a high level of strong customer experience