Partner Sales Business Development Manager

Meet the Team

As a Partner Sales Business Development Manager, you will operate within a high-stakes, collaborative environment. You will serve as a key point of contact for external partners, maintaining high levels of partner intimacy while working internally with Business Units, Product/Service Specialists, Partner Organizations, and Field Sales teams. This role requires navigating low-to-medium corporate interlock to influence regional leaders and business unit strategy, ensuring that partner ecosystem goals are fully synchronized with Cisco’s broader corporate objectives.

Your Impact

You will hold full autonomy in shaping global strategies for complex, tactically important partners. Your impact will include:

• Strategic Leadership: Driving transformative initiatives like global alliances and new market entries, and influencing C-level decisions to set long-term growth directions.
• Sales & Ecosystem Innovation: Leading Route-to-Market (RTM) innovation and developing programs that boost Cisco 360 and enterprise-wide growth.
• Enablement & Roadmap Influence: Architecting global technical enablement strategies and leveraging partner insights to directly influence product roadmaps and drive competitive differentiation.
• Operational Execution: Overseeing global sales forecasting, leading strategic acceleration workshops to influence high-value pipelines, and establishing frameworks to optimize internal and external team synergy.

Minimum Qualifications

• Strategic Partner Management: Demonstrated experience in managing large-scale global partner relationships, alliance management, or channel business development.
• Executive Influence: Proven ability to influence C-level or VP-level stakeholders, including presenting strategic business cases and long-term roadmap recommendations.
• Complex GTM Strategy: Proven experience developing and executing multi-product Go-to-Market (GTM) strategies that align with market trends and drive organizational revenue.
• Sales Enablement: Demonstrated track record of aligning technical portfolio capabilities with partner needs, including the development of sales playbooks, tools, and technical enablement programs.
• Cross-Functional Leadership: Experience leading large-scale initiatives across global, cross-functional teams, specifically coordinating between Business Units, Field Sales, and external partners.
• Business Acumen: Ability to analyze partner business models, cost drivers, and profitability metrics to inform strategic decision-making.

Preferred Qualifications

• Cisco Ecosystem Knowledge: Deep familiarity with the Cisco portfolio, specifically experience driving "Cisco 360" or similar enterprise-wide growth initiatives.
• Specialized Domain Expertise: Demonstrated success in demand generation, sales acceleration, and driving new consumption models (e.g., SaaS, subscription, or managed services).
• Strategic Growth Metrics: A proven track record of success in metrics-driven environments, specifically regarding revenue/bookings growth, pipeline influence, and the successful delivery of workshops, demos, or pilots.
• Analytical Rigor: Ability to conduct independent market and competitive analysis to identify white-space growth opportunities and innovate partner program structures.
• Mentorship & Scalability: Experience mentoring senior team members and establishing industry-leading technical standards to ensure consistency and scalability across global partner ecosystems.
• Adaptability: Experience working in diverse geo/segment environments, demonstrating the ability to adapt business strategies to evolving market dynamics and varying partner complexities.

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.

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. 

Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location, market conditions, job-related skillset, experience, qualifications, education, certifications, and/or training. The full salary range for certain locations is listed below. For locations not listed below, the recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees are offered benefits, subject to Cisco’s plan eligibility rules, which include medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, paid parental leave, short and long-term disability coverage, and basic life insurance. Please see the Cisco careers site to discover more benefits and perks.  Employees may be eligible to receive grants of Cisco restricted stock units, which vest following continued employment with Cisco for defined periods of time.

U.S. employees are eligible for paid time away as described below, subject to Cisco’s policies:

• 10 paid holidays per full calendar year, plus 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees

• 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday, paid year-end holiday shutdown, and 4 paid days off for personal wellness determined by Cisco

• Non-exempt employees** receive 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year, accrued at rate of 4.92 hours per pay period for full-time employees

• Exempt employees participate in Cisco’s flexible vacation time off program, which has no defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use (subject to availability and some business limitations)

• 80 hours of sick time off provided on hire date and each January 1st thereafter, and up to 80 hours of unused sick time carried forward from one calendar year to the next

• Additional paid time away may be requested to deal with critical or emergency issues for family members

• Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer

For non-sales roles, employees are also eligible to earn annual bonuses subject to Cisco’s policies.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components, subject to the applicable Cisco plan. For quota-based incentive pay, Cisco typically pays as follows:

• .75% of incentive target for each 1% of revenue attainment up to 50% of quota;

• 1.5% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 50% and 75%;

• 1% of incentive target for each 1% of attainment between 75% and 100%; and

• Once performance exceeds 100% attainment, incentive rates are at or above 1% for each 1% of attainment with no cap on incentive compensation.

For non-quota-based sales performance elements such as strategic sales objectives, Cisco may pay 0% up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

The applicable full salary ranges for this position, by specific state, are listed below:

New York City Metro Area:

Non-Metro New York state & Washington state:

* For quota-based sales roles on Cisco’s sales plan, the ranges provided in this posting include base pay and sales target incentive compensation combined.

** Employees in Illinois, whether exempt or non-exempt, will participate in a unique time off program to meet local requirements.