Senior Manager, Sales-Led Sponsorships

What You’ll Do

Cisco's Global Sponsorships team is seeking an organized and motivated Senior Marketing Manager for its team dedicated to helping Cisco Sales teams create new opportunities and increase pipeline through strategic sponsorship relationships.

You will be responsible for consulting with Sales, Field Marketing, and business groups to craft and deliver comprehensive strategies and sets of activities that align efforts into a coherent stream of work that will help Cisco sales-makers acquire new customers, cross-sell new solutions to existing accounts, and increase share of wallet within existing accounts by demonstrating sponsorship opportunities uncovered by the sales team.

Responsibilities include:

1. Gain a detailed understanding of the VP’s priorities and transformation plans for sales-led sponsorship opportunities to articulate plans to build on existing work already underway.
2. Bring innovative ideas and approaches that will assist in transforming sales-led sponsorships for the Sales and Marketing teams across Cisco.
3. Drive cross-organizational collaboration, alignment, and execution around assisting Sales teams in assessing sponsorship opportunities that are part of a sales transaction.
4. Work with teams to pursue sales-led sponsorship deals through to revenue and the activation of sponsorship assets.
5. Use a consultative approach with Sales teams on how to structure sponsorships and associated assets, generating the greatest value for Cisco and enabling Sales to create new value with potential clients.
6. Anticipate challenges and proactively find opportunities that would require executive engagement.
7. Create metrics that layer up to organization objectives and key results for Marketing and Sales and generate a scalable, repeatable process for new opportunities.
8. Partner cross-functionally to establish and report key performance indicators, track program results against intended business outcomes, and assess the overall efficiency of the initiative.
9. Lead and mentor teams cross-functionally and collaboratively towards successful sales-led engagements throughout the organization.

Who You’ll Work With

You will work closely with Regional Sales, Field Marketing, Global Events, and Central Marketing teams to cultivate cohesive unified plans that drive sales. You will collaborate cross-functionally with peer groups and sales teams to help build customer value for specific transactions, generating new sponsorship opportunities.

Who You Are

We are seeking a Swiss Army Knife of sponsorship sales enablement who can get on the phone with the Sales team and engage as a SME in the selling cycle itself, holding your own with the client. The ideal candidate for this role is someone who can move easily between thinking strategically and acting efficiently on tactics while developing strong, consistent processes for cross-functional engagement and execution of sales-led sponsorships and initiatives.

You are a marketing professional with a background in business development, sales operations, and sales engagement who can parachute into opportunities and act as a SME in sponsorships for the Sales team to overcome deal stalls. You know how to work with sales teams, how to structure a deal, and how to operationalize it. You have strong communication and organization skills, an analytical mind, and can work with a team of marketing, sales, and analytics professionals while managing critical initiatives.

Minimum Requirements:

1. Bachelor’s degree or equivalent experience in marketing, business, or related field.
2. 10+ years combined experience in business development, sales, sales operations, or field marketing.

Preferred Qualifications:

1. Understanding of corporate sponsorships and how they work.
2. Collaborative leadership style with the validated ability to develop complex, multi-dimensional engagement plans that incorporate all facets of sponsorship marketing, including sponsorship scoping, asset identification, tactical deal flow, and collaborating with Sales team strategy.
3. Excellent communication and interpersonal skills.
4. Ability to influence without authority with experience interacting with, presenting to, and influencing at all levels of leadership.
5. Strong ability to use data to influence and inspire others and navigate varying opinions to gain support for developing engagement strategies and events.
6. Budget, cost, and profitability leadership skills.
7. Ability to optimally move in a fast-paced, constantly evolving team environment.
8. Excellent planning, organization, and time management skills with the ability to prioritize and delegate tasks when appropriate.
9. Ability to plug into a sales team with credibility, contribute to the team, and understand the sense of urgency that sales teams will have.

Why Cisco

#WeAreCisco. We are all unique, but collectively we bring our talents to work as a team, to develop innovative technology and power a more inclusive, digital future for everyone. How do we do it? Well, for starters – with people like you!

Nearly every internet connection around the world touches Cisco. We’re the Internet’s optimists. Our technology makes sure the data traveling at light speed across connections does so securely, yet it’s not what we make but what we make happen which marks us out. We’re helping those who work in the health service to connect with patients and each other; schools, colleges, and universities to teach in even the most challenging of times. We’re helping businesses of all shapes and sizes to connect with their employees and customers in new ways, providing people with access to the digital skills they need and connecting the most remote parts of the world – whether through 5G, or otherwise.

We tackle whatever challenges come our way. We have each other’s backs, we recognize our accomplishments, and we grow together. We celebrate and support one another – from big and small things in life to big career moments. And giving back is in our DNA (we get 10 days off each year to do just that).

We know that powering an inclusive future starts with us. Because without diversity and a dedication to equality, there is no moving forward. Our 30 Inclusive Communities, that bring people together around commonalities or passions, are leading the way. Together we’re committed to learning, listening, caring for our communities, whilst supporting the most vulnerable with a collective effort to make this world a better place either with technology, or through our actions.

So, you have colorful hair? Don’t care. Tattoos? Show off your ink. Like polka dots? That’s cool. Pop culture geek? Many of us are. Passion for technology and world changing? Be you, with us! #WeAreCisco