Senior Consultant, Partner Sales

Ciena; London; On-site; GBP 50,000 - 90,000; Full time

Job description

Ciena is committed to our people-first philosophy. Our teams enjoy a culture focused on prioritizing a personalized and flexible work environment that empowers an individual’s passions, growth, wellbeing and belonging. We’re a technology company that leads with our humanity—driving our business priorities alongside meaningful social, community, and societal impact.

Blueplanet, the Software division of Ciena, provides market-leading, vendor neutral, intelligent automation software and specialized professional services to help clients modernize their IT and network operations. Driven by policy and AI-based insights, Blueplanet delivers the closed-loop automation tools needed to align IT and networking processes—critical to facilitating digital transformation and an adaptive network. If you want to be part of the company that delivers these outcomes, then the Blueplanet division of Ciena is the place to be. (Visit www.blueplanet.com.)

How You Will Contribute:
Reporting to the sales head of the International Region, as a Partner Account Manager, you will be responsible for driving growth through Value-Added Resellers and Distributors (VAR & VAD), Systems Integrators and Solution Provider partner channels. You will interact regularly with existing partner executives and demonstrate a strong direct sales attitude, supporting partners on relationship management with key accounts and bringing new sales opportunities to the table through your own personal network. This role involves extensive travel and partner engagement.

Your core role will cover the following key activities:

• You will be responsible for building and maintaining trusted relationships with partners that support increased market share and spend with Blueplanet.
• You will establish an enabling function, connecting sellers from Blueplanet with counterparts in Global Systems integrators to encourage & initiate joint selling and engagement strategies into Blueplanet named accounts.
• Drive growth and expansion of our reseller base and develop an active enabling function to rapidly identify, qualify and onboard new, network centric resellers to build a go to market momentum to drive increased revenue across our software portfolio.
• Where necessary, you will engage directly with customers and prospects in support of partner resources where they are not established as a directly managed account.
• In an effort to build a strong pipeline, you will define, develop and plan sales strategies and work closely with marketing to raise awareness of Ciena / Blueplanet and attend networking events.
• You will ensure that sales targets are achieved or exceeded.
• You will advise partners on network & OSS solutions and services that best fulfill their customer requirements, undertaking full assessments and analysis of client needs.
• You will align the Blueplanet portfolio within partner services and ensure partners sales teams are aware of positioning and benefits.
• You will support pricing negotiations and conduct face to face channel meetings with partners and clients to achieve sales in line with Blueplanet pricing policies and client requirements.
• Align and engage internal Blueplanet resources to build out and drive a long-term managed services strategy. Communicate back to account management team and sales VP’s key information that will help drive stronger corporate relationships with the partner and Blueplanet.
• Prioritize resources, OPEX and market development fund investment to achieve short and long-term sales growth.

The Must Haves:

• Proven experience in Sales and Partner Sales in Enterprise and Service Provider markets driving OSS, Optical and IP Routing and Switching business.
• Demonstrated knowledge of the telecom industry, Tier 1 Operations, Tier 2 Operations, Regional Service Providers, MSOs, Indirect channel, SC Operators and Cloud Providers.
• Ability to understand and analyze customer requirements to define appropriate customer solutions.
• Demonstrated comfort with interacting at senior levels of partner companies.
• Effective communicator (executive presence, synthesized messaging (+) strong written/verbal/visual/video/social skills).

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