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Move from perpetual to subscription model is forcing sales team to not only think about the buying aspects but also on the consumption side of the solution as well. Since the revenue is deferred and recognized only after the service is delivered, knowledge of Customer Success and drivers of consumption has become very critical for sales team. Channel partners are brought in early in the sales cycle discussion to help understand what kind of specialised services that partners can offer to drive adoption and expansion of the solution.

The combined power of Cisco and Partner service portfolio is critical to drive Customer Success and Renewals as these services are targeted at cutomer value realization from the product or the solution

For customers, unlocking value from complex technology products requires them move beyond out-of-the-box use cases that customer initially purchased for. To reap full benefits of the technology and drive business outcomes requires customers carefully evaluate all the use-cases and execute the ones that are closely aligned to the business objectives. Cisco partners plays a pivotal role in execution of these use cases and offer value-added-services where needed to deliver customer outcomes.

However, these partner capabilities around adoption and rich services needs to be pitched upfront to the customer during the sales cycle, so that customer is fully aware of how the product is delivered end-to-end. Thats where the Lifecycle selling approach and methodology comes to help.

Cisco channel partners play a central role in increasing the TTV (Time To Value) of Cisco products and solutions by delivering specialised services for the entire lifecycle, from initial adoption to scaling and renewals. Increased TTV makes renewals less cumbersome.

For example, to expedite initial provisioning and change management for Cisco ACI, Partner can position their automation services. Another example where Partner can offer Solution Accelerators for Cisco DNAC that provides advanced feature deepdive session for the customer IT teams.

Lifecycle Selling with Channel Partners

Cisco’s E2E (End-to-End) Lifecycle selling methodology forces the approach of aligning early with channel partners on customer business outcomes and services needed to deliver the outcomes. Cisco and partner sales team collaborate to understand what the customer outcomes are, what services are needed to deliver these outcomes and who would be delivering these.

Cisco has built a digital platform called DLSE (Digital Lifecycle Selling Experience) to enable this collaboration between Cisco and partner sales teams to produce a joint delivery framework as shown below. The framework calls out who is accountable and responsible for each deliverable along the product lifecycle.

This is a culture change for Cisco and partner sales team that shifts their approach and mindset from ‘buying’ to ‘buying and consumption’ of the products. It allows sales teams to think about Customer Success during the buying phase and orchestrate cisco-partner joint delivery model for entire product lifecycle for customers.

To this end, having a Partner PoV (Point of View) during sales cycle and aligning their specialised services to deliver Customer Success and differentiated outcomes is critical.

Further Resources

https://ciscopartnerjourneys.com/en/us/login