Simplicity, Alignment, and Value Exchange. Together.

Shortly after being named the leader of Cisco’s Global Partner Organization, I championed three strategic imperatives that are vital to our partners’ and Cisco’s continued success:

Simplicity: removing complexity and making it easier for our partners to work with us

Alignment: ensuring our sales and marketing teams’ go-to-market motions are in lock-step

Evolving the Value Exchange: delivering a mutual exchange of value that reflects the new technology landscape

Given today’s radically changing market dynamics, I’m convinced these have never been more important. It seems like the entire business world has been turned on its head. Whether it’s how companies purchase, deploy, consume, or service technology, these seismic changes require us to adapt to new ways of doing business. Add to this the incredible opportunities digitization brings and your head starts to spin.

So, yes, anything Cisco can do to help our partners be successful is critically important.

We’re making solid progress with these strategic imperatives. Our most recent milestone was through our new Brand Campaign. With the theme “There’s Never Been a Better Time” (appropriate on so many levels!), we are using this campaign to break new ground. For the first time ever, our partners can use our brand campaign to spark new conversations with customers, drive sales, and differentiate themselves in the market.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BRUuwRmT7UY&index=1&list=PLF390A3A7152E5BF4

We are now giving our partners access to our creative assets, which reflects a new way we’re exchanging value with them. Partners can leverage the investments we’ve made in our brand assets to develop their own campaigns. They’ll also be able to influence and shape future offers and campaigns by giving us feedback on which campaigns they want and when.

I can’t think of a better way for our joint sales and marketing teams to be more aligned on our messaging and marketing priorities than this brand campaign. It’s designed for partners to connect to specific campaign topics such as security, retail, manufacturing and finance. These topics are strategic focus areas for our partners, as well our company.

It’s also simple for partners to leverage these brand resources in Engage, our online suite of digital marketing services. With Engage, partners can launch their own digital marketing campaigns by accessing copy, creative assets, digital ads and social media content. New training courses help partners learn how to create a compelling value proposition and co-brand with us. Using Engage, partners will find everything they need to get started and keep the momentum going.

We’ll continue working to achieve the full benefits of these strategic imperatives around Simplicity, Alignment and Value Exchange. Cisco’s new brand campaign is just the latest example, but it reflects how important our partners are and demonstrates our continued investment in their growth and profitability.

Be sure to join the brand campaign conversation using #NeverBetter.

Partners, learn more about our new brand campaign and how you can leverage Cisco’s brand . Connect with your Cisco rep to tell us your story of how we have or can change the world together.

If you are not a partner with Cisco, learn how to get started today.

Questions or Comments? Feel free to connect with me on Twitter.