Strategic Deals Leader

Pursuit Lead – EMEA Strategic Engagement Team – Saudi Arabia

What You'll Do

Cisco is looking for a Pursuit Lead to join its EMEA Strategic Engagement Team, located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is a senior strategic sales role leading and driving the largest transformational opportunities across Enterprise and Public Sector, including country-level Key Projects associated with Saudi Vision 2030. The role requires “large deal” experience in software-driven IT infrastructure and service delivery and will play a pivotal part in Cisco’s Growth Plans for the Saudi Market.

Who You'll Work With

The Strategic Engagement Team (SET) helps our customers transform their infrastructure, reduce operational costs and accelerate their digitisation in an increasingly software-driven, AI-enabled, cloud-first world. We work with Cisco’s largest customers and partners to structure multi-year transformational deals and strategic buying programs, including “Cisco-as-a-Service”, “Strategic Relationship Agreements” and “Whole Portfolio Agreements”, that deepen our relationships and drive better business outcomes for our Customers, Partners and Cisco.

The Strategic Engagement Team are engaged by account teams and leadership on Cisco’s largest opportunities to provide cross-functional pursuit leadership across the lifecycle of the deal. We lead, orchestrate and structure cross-architecture, multi-tower, multi-year, service-led deals that deliver on transformational business outcomes for our customers and partners. The SET Pursuit Lead works with other key roles in SET and supporting teams, including Commercial Leads, Enterprise Architects and Service Design Leads, to qualify and structure a solution proposal through to contracting and delivery handover, in close partnership with key customer stakeholders, local Sales leadership and Account Teams and supporting Cisco functions.

The SET Pursuit Lead in Saudi, will represent the broader EMEA SET team locally on the ground, alongside two senior Industry Sales Specialists, in Smart Cities, Sports Media Entertainment, and Hospitality, representing huge growth areas in the Kingdom.The role will work closely with the Cisco Saudi Leadership and Account Teams, to qualify, prioritise, orchestrate and lead the largest deal pursuits, with a combination of EMEA SET and local country resources and functions.

Minimum Requirements:

The SET Pursuit Lead role requires a strong mix of complex sales pursuit experience, deal architecture and shaping, including commercial and contracting experience within a Services-led IT technology environment. Candidates should have a background in sales and/or delivery experience in Professional Services, Systems Integration, Managed Services or IT Outsourcing. As an individual, the role requires the following core competencies and attributes:

• Consultative solution seller who clearly articulates and quantifies business value proposition, including customer outcomes, metrics and KPIs.
• Sees the bigger picture, envisions future state and more importantly, how to get there (transformation journey).
• Orchestrates cross-functional pursuit teams and resources with clear methodologies, tools and processes, best practices and reusable assets. Manages key stakeholder communication and executive escalations.
• Takes ownership and responsibility. Leads cross-functional pursuit teams with authority, influence, confidence and trust. Continually drives deal momentum across the deal lifecycle.
• Understands value and price-to-win strategy, financial metrics and commercial models, consumption pricing, risk/reward, different route-to-markets, contractual structures and T&Cs.
• emoves barriers, breaks silos, challenges convention, resolves issues and mitigate risks - both internally and within the customer / partner organisation.
  
  

Responsibilities:

The Pursuit Lead will work individually or in tandem with other members of the SET team to deliver the following key responsibilities:

• Identification, qualification and prioritisation of large strategic sales opportunities within the theatre in accordance with agreed qualification criteria.
• Customer and partner workshops to understand, validate and shape requirements and establish business value.
• Work directly with customer or partner to assess commercial requirements and business drivers as well as fit with Cisco’s commercial solutions and capabilities.
• Once qualified – Create a bid / pursuit strategy for the sales opportunity which identifies:
• Value Proposition – identifying and quantifying key Cisco values, differentiators and Customer benefits
• Key stakeholder relationships
• Cross-functional resources required to pursue, timelines, risks and non-standards
• Architecture solution – initial baseline including products and estimated volumes
• Services Strategy – including where Cisco will take delivery responsibility versus the customer or partners
• Commercial strategy – including contractual structure, any risk/reward for Cisco and appropriate consumption price model
• Work closely with the Account team, Sales Engineering and Services Organizations, to create an overall proposition/offer to the customer which will encompass:
• Business Value Proposition
• Architecture/Technical Solution
• Services Strategy, Design and Scope
• Commercial & Contractual Framework
• GTM/Adoption Approach to accelerate uptake
• Deal orchestration and governance of cross-functional resources: Product, Services, Finance, Legal, Business Operations, both direct and virtual, to deliver a comprehensive, holistic and assured Cisco solution/offer.
• Work with commercial solution providers (e.g. Cisco Capital, Commercial Finance, Global Infrastructure Fund) and stakeholders to qualify and agree appropriate commercial solution and construct.
• Work with the necessary product and service P&L holders, Finance, Legal and Ops stakeholders to model, assure and approve the commercial offer, including any potential Cisco risk/reward.
• Work with Account Team, CX Service Delivery, Finance and Legal on commercial negotiations through to contract agreement.
• Build multi-level relationships with key internal stakeholders and engage appropriate cross-functional resources to ensure broad agreement on the deal construct. In addition, ensure all required deal assurance and approvals are obtained.
• Build direct relationships with key external stakeholders, at CxO level, and use these relationships to understand the customer’s requirements, validate the proposed Cisco offer approach against those requirements and regularly review and communicate progress (internal and external) throughout the deal pursuit.
  
  

Operational Excellence:

• Participate in regular review of the SET sales funnel and report on deal status, decisions and next steps on all active deals. Diligently maintain deal data in SFDC in conjunction with the local Account Teams.
• Provide regular executive stakeholder deal reports and updates, including status, progress, roadblocks and other key dependencies. Drive momentum and proactively escalate any resource constraints or risks affecting the execution of the deal in timely fashion.
• Share information and best practice across the global SET community – on wins, case studies, lessons learned and replicable solutions.
  
  

Why Cisco

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At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Simply put – we power the future.

Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere.

We are Cisco, and our power starts with you.