What Profitable Partners Do Differently

Register now for Cisco Partner Summit 2025- November 3-5, San Diego, California.

When I recently took on this role, I made a commitment to our partner community: you'll get consistency, honesty, and transparency from me. As we approach my first Cisco Partner Summit as the Global Partner Sales leader, I want to share a simple approach for our partnerships.

After 25+ years at Cisco, I've learned that the most powerful concepts are often the simplest ones. That's why I want to talk about two questions that should guide how we work together, and a framework I call "durable growth."

The Questions That Drive Growth

These two questions work together but serve different purposes. The first drives how we collaborate internally at Cisco, ensuring every team is focused on advancing opportunities for our partners. The second is about our external partnership success, though there's natural overlap as internal alignment directly impacts partner profitability.

First: Are we moving deals forward? This isn't just about closing business. Are you positioned early in opportunities? Are you leveraging our joint portfolio to create competitive differentiation? Are you using deal registration as an investment in mutual success? When customers understand the mutual benefit of what we can deliver together, our win rate approaches 100%. I'm not aware of a deal we've lost when customers truly comprehend the complete value we deliver together.

Second: Are we building profitable partnerships? Profitable partnerships are the foundation of durable growth. When you make money with Cisco, you can reinvest in your business, expanding expertise, hiring certified engineers, and reaching new markets. That reinvestment creates a flywheel: deeper capabilities that fuel customer outcomes, which in turn drive more growth.

Partner profitability is at the core of the new Cisco 360 Partner Program. It builds on the most trusted partner program in the industry while evolving to meet today's market. It honors past investments, rewards current value creation, and positions us together for future market opportunities.

Customers aren't just buying technology; they're buying outcomes. Partners who deliver those outcomes win. The Cisco 360 Partner Program recognizes and rewards that value, helping you translate customer impact into profitable growth.

I often ask partners: would you rather compete deal by deal, or build relationships that expand organically? Partners who sell point solutions compete on price every renewal cycle. Partners who deliver integrated outcomes become trusted advisors who capture multiple opportunities within the same account. Only Cisco offers the portfolio breadth to expand margin profiles across architectures, industries, and customer needs at scale.

What Durable Growth Means for Your Business

Partner growth with Cisco should be four things:

Consistent. When you deliver consistent results, customers become loyal advocates who expand their investments and refer new opportunities. Consistency turns projects into relationships.

Predictable. When your Cisco practice delivers predictable results, you can expand into adjacent markets. Predictability allows you to plan for growth rather than hope for it.

Ahead of market. We're in markets experiencing unprecedented demand in AI infrastructure, cybersecurity, and campus modernization. Partners who capture disproportionate share position themselves ahead of the curve.

Profitable. When you make money with Cisco, you invest in our mutual success. You develop specialized expertise and become the partner customers seek out, not settle for.

Why Your Partnership with Cisco is Different

Our "One Cisco" strategy delivers deeply integrated solutions combining networking, security, collaboration, and observability to solve customers' biggest AI-era challenges. With Splunk, you have a defining moment to redefine offerings and differentiate in the marketplace.

Whether you're powering AI-ready data centers, creating future-proofed workplaces, or building digital resilience, you're positioned to deliver durable growth spanning multiple customer needs. You're not just selling products; you're architecting comprehensive solutions that create lasting competitive advantages.

Here's what makes us different: we've built our business model around your success, and we're committed to true collaboration at every step. We work alongside you to understand market challenges, co-create customer solutions, and ensure you have the support needed to win. Our incentive programs are designed to help you build profitable practices. Our enablement is competitive advantage.

The new Cisco Partner Incentive unifies incentives like VIP into a simple framework rewarding partners across the full lifecycle from landing opportunities to adoption, expansion, and renewal. With more investment flowing into lifecycle and services, partners continue earning today while opening greater opportunities tomorrow.

Cisco Partner Summit 2025: A New Perspective

I'm honored to host Cisco Partner Summit this year. I don't come from a traditional partner background, but these aren't traditional times. What I bring is 25+ years of watching our partner ecosystem deliver extraordinary results.

Successful partnerships aren't built on what we can do for you. They're built on what we accomplish together. When we combine Cisco's innovation with your market expertise and customer relationships, we create solutions no competitor can match.

Partner Summit 2025 is where we'll show you how to turn these concepts into revenue growth. You'll see how Cisco 360 creates new pathways to profitability and understand how our innovations combine to create competitive advantages. You'll leave with a clear innovation, solution, and partnership roadmap.

The Choice Ahead

You have choices about where to invest your time, people, and resources. Every vendor wants your attention. Every technology shift creates new opportunities and competitors.

But the future belongs to partners who understand what's coming before it becomes obvious to everyone else. Partners who build capabilities today for tomorrow's opportunities.

Join us November 3-5 in San Diego, California. Are we moving deals forward? Are we building profitable partnerships? Let's turn these two simple questions into durable growth for your business.

Because when we get this right, when we consistently move deals forward together and build mutually profitable partnerships, we don't just grow. We dominate.

I'll see you there.

Register now and secure your spot at Cisco Partner Summit 2025.

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