Jeremy Sawyer: Scaling Co-Sell with Cisco’s Cloud and Channel Partners

Chip Rodgers  0:00  
It okay. We are here again at Cisco Live. It's been a fantastic day. So much going on and so many partners here. Great energy. A lot of sessions. I was actually over earlier, Jeremy at the like, at the the network operating center. Oh my god, the technology is like I was geeking out at all the hardware

Jeremy Sawyer  0:24  
saying what they've been able to do. It's and it's always packed, yeah,

Chip Rodgers  0:28  
yeah, everybody, everybody's just crowded around there. Wants to see what's the latest, latest new, new things, absolutely. So I'm excited to be joined right now by with Jeremy Sawyer. Jeremy is Senior Director of partner global partner sales, global partner sales, and you have a number of jobs, actually, day

Jeremy Sawyer  0:52  
jobs, night jobs, we all have to put in our fair share, right? Absolutely. So I run our global strategic partner team that's dedicated towards our cloud software and technology partners like AWS and Microsoft and Google, as well as apple and a few others that we look after that what we would consider our non traditional partnerships, but they're the partnerships that create significant value with customers by merging our technologies or or what our technologies can provide together. And then, addition to that, I also run the strategy organization for our global strategic partner organization, which takes my team and adds our global sis like Accenture, our our industry partners like Rockwell and Schneider and others. It's kind of still that non traditional partnership, but more in a verticalized or a targeted approach methodology, so

Chip Rodgers  1:54  
specific industries or certain technologies, IoT or

Jeremy Sawyer  1:59  
opportunities, integrators, people, people that take a multitude of technologies, maybe from three or four vendors, and bring them together to create something of value for their customer. Could be whether it's thought leadership in the boardroom on how do I roll out the next hybrid workforce? How do I create the next building that's sustainable, you know, or, or it could simply be reselling across the globe. How can I take a multi country customer and and deliver the services that that we need across

Chip Rodgers  2:35  
the world? Yeah, yeah, that's a lot going on there. A

Jeremy Sawyer  2:39  
little bit, it's a little bad. It's a little bit it's fun, though, it's fine, like,

Chip Rodgers  2:43  
that's good. So, Jeremy, let's talk a little bit about, you know, I think we started off talking about the cloud, the cloud providers. And, you know, we're standing in front of the the CO sell booth here, and Cisco has had a major initiative around cosell. You're co selling with your with the hyperscaler partners, tell let's talk a little bit about what that, what that means for Cisco, and how are you, how are you doing it? What's that? What is that? What does that look like? What are the solution, those kinds

Jeremy Sawyer  3:12  
of things. So we work with the hyperscalers to try to deliver a value to a customer from from a relevant standpoint, right? It's, it's, it's not a secret anymore that people are moving to the cloud, and they're, they're shifting their business models, whether it's the data center or it's their workloads or their applications, you know, and they're trying to get closer to their their customers and and actually take advantage of new economic and new commercial models. And so as we, as we look at the cloud providers, we we look at the technology that's tangential, right? We don't Cisco, while we have our security cloud and our networking cloud, which is that that kind of a accumulation of products that create a certain value, we don't have an is environment that that we are leveraging. So we look at those iOS environments as an opportunity, and so our technology fits into that, whether a customer is leveraging SD wan to on ramp applications or to secure their workloads in the cloud, leveraging our security

Chip Rodgers  4:17  
so, so critical, really, everybody's thinking About that,

Jeremy Sawyer  4:20  
everybody, everybody. So from a co sell perspective, we work with the cloud provider to ensure that our technology is actually creating additional value with inside their environment. And then each of those, the the hyperscalers, as we call them, they have their own programs. They have their their CO sell program, where their sellers are actually taking advantage and getting compensated on sales of a third party, ISV software and whatnot and so, so we lean in get our products certified, if you will, and then we work alongside them as we talk to customers, right? So, so we. Leverage our work span friends here in the platform to actually bring together pieces of information that allow us to connect sales teams from one partner to another and to us, and actually start to talk about value towards the customer, so that we create more value. That's kind of the one plus one equals three, right? We just do it by itself. It's one plus one equals two. So this is an opportunity for us to create additional value, and that is the ultimate goal of the CO sell program that we work with from a cloud provider standpoint. So we're leaning into their cloud co sell. But I'd be remiss if I didn't say we're also building our own COSO, and so that's part of the global strategic partner org, where we actually, we actually are creating that same motion to gage ISVs, to build on platforms with Cisco as well. So we're kind of mimicking, maybe taking a little bit of their best practices and trying to put it in place. So we've seen the value that it creates for them, and we believe that it's going to create that same value for

Chip Rodgers  6:07  
us. Yeah, that's tremendous. So it's really interesting that, and you talked about the how, you know, Cisco technology, plus the hyperscaler, you know, being deployed on the on in the cloud, that it's you've got to, you got to be able to demonstrate that value to the to the field, right, to all their they've got sellers all over the place and getting them, you know, getting them connected and understanding, so that they're like, Oh, well, let's, I got a customer here that could really use this Cico technology. Let's bring them in

Jeremy Sawyer  6:43  
Absolutely, absolutely. It's a proactive right? We talked a little bit of a go with with amid, and drew that squiggly line and said, This is what it looks like in Salesforce. And when we're trying to figure out, and when we when we take a proactive approach to trying to drive value, it becomes more of a straight line. It becomes more simplified and streamlined, because we can actually have those things and have those conversations well in advance of each of us getting in front of the customer. And oftentimes it doesn't mean that we always get ahead of it, right? So we do have to have a way to bring it back together. But the streamlining effect when we can get ahead of the game is that rather than meeting in the lobby of the customer, we've actually planned, prepared, and we have the story that we walk into the boardroom together with and and that makes a significant difference to the customer's perception of how well we're going to work together. Because I over over my tenure here, I can tell you what I've heard from customers is that they didn't believe that we would be able to work together, because we didn't walk in with that story that created that extra value. And when we do, the questions are more about how, how are we going to do something, versus, can we do so

Chip Rodgers  8:04  
that's, that's terrific and, and so you're, you're delivering value to the, actually, to all three parties, right? Cisco, it's valuable for Cisco, valuable for the cloud, for your partners, and for and for end customers,

Jeremy Sawyer  8:21  
absolutely, absolutely Well, four partners Cisco. Cisco is a predominantly channel based company. We have a number of channel partners that resell Cisco. They don't just resell us. They provide this additional service layer that creates its own value inside that customer. And when you look at what we do, we don't look at it from the standpoint of it's Cisco plus AWS with the customers, Cisco plus AWS with a channel partner who's going to deliver that motion for us. And so we actually look at it in this kind of multi ecosystem approach that allows us to keep that streamlined, so you get every asset, the strength from each group focused at that customer to make sure that they're getting the value one right. They understand it before they buy it. Want them to buy it, then we also see them actually achieve it by adopting it. And that's where that channel partner comes in and helps with those types of things and can create that value for us. So it's a, it's a, it's a great teamwork effort, if you will, when we when we drive it, yeah,

Chip Rodgers  9:31  
that's fantastic. And if you then, if you can make that repeatable and scale it,

Jeremy Sawyer  9:36  
you're in business. Stopable, right? It's a scale. Scale is critical, not and that's where, you know, I often think in terms of people process and technology and and if you, if you think about people process, technology, throw a lot of people, it gets expensive. Yeah, I have a lot of process. It takes an awful long time if I can figure out how to minimize the number of people. And process to make those connections by leveraging technology, leveraging a sandbox like work span, I can actually simplify that connection point, and I can the cost to serve the process, if you will, becomes lower for me, and it also allows me to be faster to market and faster to that revenue

Chip Rodgers  10:21  
beat your competitors. That's the plan.

Jeremy Sawyer  10:23  
That's the plan. Jeremy,

Chip Rodgers  10:25  
this has been fantastic. I really appreciate you taking some time and sharing all about Cisco, co selling, working with cloud providers, delivering value to customers. That's what it's all about. So really appreciate you taking the time and sharing all that. It's my pleasure. Thank you and thank you all for joining as well, and we'll see, I think, maybe one or two more conversations this afternoon. Thanks everybody. Anytime.

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