Partner Business Development Manager Buying Programs

Cisco Systems, Inc.; London; On-site; GBP 85,000 - 110,000; Full time

Job summary

A leading technology company is seeking a Partner Business Development Manager to drive software buying programs. The successful candidate will expand sales through effective collaboration with partners, focusing on managed services and software solutions. Excellent communication skills and a background in business development are essential for this role, which fosters growth and partnership alignments.

Benefits

Healthcare benefits

Flexible vacation policy

401(k) plan with matching contribution

Qualifications

• Proven track record of driving incremental business growth.
• Ability to influence and build relationships across complex organizations.
• Skilled communicator, able to negotiate effectively at all levels.

Responsibilities

• Drive execution of software and managed services initiatives.
• Engage with teams to provide business updates and strategy input.
• Support partner transformation with new buying models.

Skills

Sales and business development expertise

Relationship building at C-level

Excellent communication skills

Analytical and problem-solving abilities

Familiarity with Cisco’s portfolio

Education

Experience in Cisco partner/channel business development

Tools

Sales management software

Job description

Partner Business Development Manager Buying Programs

In this role, you will drive the sale, expansion, adoption, and profitability of Cisco’s software buying programs (including Managed Service Enterprise Agreements, Whole Portfolio Agreements, Enterprise Agreements, and recurring revenue streams) with our global service provider, channel partner, BT. This is a highly visible and strategic position responsible for the end-to-end execution plan for software, managed services, and services sales—with a focus on scalable growth. You will:

• Act as a subject matter expert on Cisco’s software models, subscriptions, managed services (including MSEA), and Customer Experience (CX) approaches, supporting partner transformation and long-term, profitable growth for Cisco and its partners.
• Develop and execute partner sales strategies for software, managed services, and recurring revenue, collaborating with cross-functional teams to accelerate partner-led sales (including Enterprise Agreements, Managed Services, MSEA, and recurring revenue streams).
• Build and maintain strong alliances with partner executives, sales leaders, service leaders, product managers, Cisco account teams, architecture specialists and the channel account team who lead the partner relationship with BT.
• Serve as a key coordination point for software, managed services, and partner organization initiatives, representing the partner channel in technical, commercial, managed services, and architectural forums.
• Drive innovation and best practices for portfolio transformation, recurring revenue acceleration, managed services growth, and partner software practice development.
• Lead, educate, and scale enablement programs with Partner Account Executives (PAEs), architecture specialists, and Customer Experience (CX) teams to strengthen the software and managed services pipeline and improve customer value realization.
• Facilitate recurring revenue, managed services, and software/services updates, demand generation, and practice build efforts with internal and partner stakeholders.
• Provide strategic input into the evolution of software buying programs, managed services offerings (including MSEA), and recurring revenue initiatives.
• Drive incremental growth in software sales.

Areas of Responsibility:

• Drive execution of software, managed services (including MSEA), and recurring revenue initiatives with BT, focusing on bookings and adoption.
• Enable partner transformation and support for new buying models, managed services (including MSEA and WPA).
• Engage with teams to provide business updates, input on strategy, and innovation in portfolio transformation.
• Represent the partner channel in technical, architectural, managed services, and commercial discussions, ensuring alignment and value delivery.
• Collaborate on business acceleration and lifecycle transformation initiatives to maximize partner and customer value.

Example Responsibilities:

• Support EA 3.0, MSLA, MSEA, and Managed Services deployment for key partners, advocating their needs internally and externally.
• Drive recurring revenue and managed services (including MSEA) updates with partner and CX teams to promote demand generation and practice build.
• Organize and deliver enablement sessions with PAMs, specialists, and partner teams to scale software and managed services (including MSEA) adoption.
• Identify and mitigate risks in major deals, ensuring successful execution and closure.

Meet the Team

You’ll be part of a global, collaborative, innovative team spanning channel, partner, architecture, managed services, field sales, and customer success functions, reporting directly to the Cisco global channel leader for BT. Your role will interface with executive leaders both inside Cisco and at BT, aligning resources and strategy across regional and segment teams to deliver unified, impactful outcomes.

This role is ideal for candidates with a background in Cisco partner/channel business development, software, managed services (including MSEA), or services sales, and recurring revenue models, who thrive in cross-functional, collaborative environments.

Minimum Qualifications

• Experienced sales or business development professional with a proven track record of driving incremental business growth, especially in Cisco based annuity, software, managed services, or services sales.
• Skilled at influencing and building relationships at C-level and across complex, matrixed organizations.
• Excellent communicator, able to facilitate and negotiate at all levels—internally and externally—with executive presence and clarity.
• Able to organize, motivate, and virtually lead cross-functional and cross-cultural teams to achieve shared goals.
• Entrepreneurial, proactive, and innovative, with a results-oriented, action-driven approach.
• Comfortable managing ambiguity, simplifying complex environments, and creating solutions under deadline pressure.
• Strong analytical and problem-solving skills, able to interpret and present data to drive decisions.
• Adept at identifying risk areas in sales and developing effective mitigation strategies.
• Familiar with Cisco’s portfolio, buying models, managed services (including MSEA), and the partner ecosystem; able to articulate value and drive adoption (does not need deep technical expertise, but must know where to access it).

Preferred Qualifications

• Demonstrable record of overachievement against quota and success selling Cisco software and services in a managed services environment.
• Experience in large, complex organizations and fast-paced, changing environments.
• Experience in contributing to the commercial proposal of large, complex, global deals.
• Confidence in leading through ambiguity and finding a way to ‘get things done’.
• Strategic, product, sales, marketing, analytics, and finance acumen to communicate across diverse audiences.
• Ability to scale initiatives through education, enablement, and best practice sharing.

Why Cisco?

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.

Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada:

When available, the salary range posted for this position reflects the projected hiring range for new hire, full-time salaries in U.S. and/or Canada locations, not including equity or benefits. For non-sales roles the hiring ranges reflect base salary only; employees are also eligible to receive annual bonuses. Hiring ranges for sales positions include base and incentive compensation target. Individual pay is determined by the candidate's hiring location and additional factors, including but not limited to skillset, experience, and relevant education, certifications, or training. Applicants may not be eligible for the full salary range based on their U.S. or Canada hiring location. The recruiter can share more details about compensation for the role in your location during the hiring process.

U.S. employees haveaccess to quality medical, dental and vision insurance, a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution, short and long-term disability coverage, basic life insurance and numerous wellbeing offerings.

Employees receive up to twelve paid holidays per calendar year, which includes one floating holiday (for non-exempt employees), plus a day off for their birthday. Non-Exempt new hires accrue up to 16 days ofvacation time off each year, at a rate of 4.92 hours per pay period. Exempt new hires participate in Cisco’s flexible Vacation Time Offpolicy, which does not place a defined limit on how much vacation time eligible employees may use, but is subject to availability and some business limitations. All new hires are eligible for Sick Time Off subject to Cisco’s Sick Time Off Policy and will have eighty (80) hours of sick time off provided on their hire date and on January 1st of each year thereafter. Up to 80 hours ofunused sick timewill be carried forwardfrom one calendar yearto the nextsuch that the maximum number of sick time hours an employee may have available is160 hours. Employees in Illinois have a unique time off program designed specifically with local requirements in mind. All employees also have access to paid time away to deal with critical or emergency issues. We offer additional paid time to volunteer and give back to the community.

Employees on sales plans earn performance-based incentive pay on top of their base salary, which is split between quota and non-quota components. 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 up to 125% of target. Cisco sales plans do not have a minimum threshold of performance for sales incentive compensation to be paid.

Sign up to receive notifications of similar jobs