Hi, I worked for Cisco 8 years and if I boil it down to its core— all I really did was forecasting and processing deals from partners. Maybe issue a deal id/ discount when the situation seemed to require it.
This characterizes a large number of the Cisco sales force. Sure there are exceptions to this. Some people work hard with end users and complex deals, but I will bet that it represents 80% of sales.
"However when we pay people a significant salary, comission and benefits and they don't do 3 fundamentals:
Call the customer
Understand the use case
Support the partner
Then it is no longer a sales role, at best it is very expensive processing and admin”
This above^^^^^ 1000% Truth.
Yeah and now they are whining that they have to actually do something.
Originally forecasting was always Cisco's strength as sales was held accountable to what you committed/upsided.
It was a means to an end.
Over time, it morphed into the ultimate end.
The forecast became more important.
If an AM was questioned about missing the commit/forecast? It was always the partner's fault! (Nevermind that the partner has their own policies, process and procedures which take time).
They target the I in 50-plus white males who have deep customer relationships.
Having been a 50-plus white male at Cisco most of my "peers" were worse than useless, making mistakes that cost more than anything they created. There were major failures in every other demographic as well, but in general to cause real damage you have to be high enough up in the organization and those positions are most often held by older people. It's time for people to drop the self idolatry and improve themselves and their peers that can grow and get rid of the rest regardless of anyone's demographic.
Take some time to study the Dunning-Kruger effect, described on Wikipedia as "a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities." Their initial work was published in 1999 which is after too many of you stopped reading anything new.
The culture is built on forecasts which is fine this is a sales org we need predictability
The problems come with the partner led motion, yes some amazing partners there who really champion Cisco
However when we pay people a significant salary, comission and benefits and they don't do 3 fundamentals:
Call the customer
Understand the use case
Support the partner
Then it is no longer a sales role, at best it is very expensive processing and admin
Having been on forecasts where AMs are forecasting upwards of 500k without even saying Hi to the end user is deplorable
Cisco is the best place to work because you can do 4 emails a day call a partner for your forecast give him 2 points for his troubles and sing like a canary to your leader
It is accurate that Cisco needs I vs AI. They will overlook this fact, though. They target the I in 50-plus white males who have deep customer relationships. Customers are waking up to the fact that more and more those bringing value are being removed from Cisco.
They've focused a great deal on the field teams facing customers; this impact is already being reflected in reduced sales. We need the people that are being let go if business is going to grow.
Cisco needs some I. Not AI...just I
Plenty of human middleware across all sales teams
Agree. I saw AM‘s - in particular in charge for SMB - just at Cisco for order taking, but they had no clue about the business.. just expensive order takers. And guess? Lot of them survived this LR round.