Fueling Profitable Growth with Lifecycle Management – Cisco Blogs

A circle is a universal symbol. The application of a circle is used to safely navigate large cities with round-a-bouts and on/off ramps to major highways. To fuel the world around us with windmills. Its concept is used for fun like a Ferris Wheel at the local fair and the beloved Tootsie Pop sucker. It’s also found in even the most remote locations like Stonehenge, the Great Blue Hole off the shores of Belize, and the Temple of Heaven in Beijing.

As a symbol with references to eternity, totality, wholeness, and original perfection, it is key to understand how this same symbol is used at Cisco to ensure sellers, buyers, and service providers all get a full spectrum of success through the Lifecycle Experience. Maria Martinez, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer said, “We deliver the best customer experience in the industry, accelerating success for our customers and profitable growth for Cisco and our partners.”

Cisco helps you and your partner drive recurring revenue by ensuring there’s coverage at every interaction across the customer lifecycle. To help me dive deeper into this program, I asked Ryan Kingston, Director of Lifecycle Services for Americas Distribution, to join me.

Thanks for quickly jumping into this conversation, Ryan!

Absolutely! I am happy to share more about Cisco’s Lifecycle Services and how Distributors and partners can drive in more recurring revenue opportunities. Where do we want to start?

Let’s start right there. Can you share more about the recurring revenue opportunity?

Yeah! Customers are looking for faster access to innovation, enhanced agility, and better financial planning. With that said, we know that 90 percent of value is happening post initial sale and the same 90 percent of top technology companies have customer success capabilities. The original sale to net new logos or net new solutions are shifting to services, software, and other solutions that come after the original purchase.

Those are high percentages. How is Cisco investing in distributors and partners when it comes to lifecycle?

Cisco has opened incentives across the adoption, expansion, and renewal areas of the customer lifecycle. Don’t get me wrong, we are all looking for those initial purchases, but we don’t want that to be the end. 52 percent of profitability comes after the initial sale, so we want you to help those customers adopt other solutions, expand their capabilities, and renew the services they’ve already implemented. All of these phases in lifecycle management are key to continuing the cycle.

That all makes complete sense. What outcomes are we realistically solving for?

We’re doing more and more to make selling Cisco simple, so there’s really five things:

1. Hard Cost Savings
2. Growth
3. Reducing Risk
4. Increased Revenue
5. Improved Efficiency/ Productivity

Through regular engagement, distributors and partners can ensure those customers are extracting the full value of the solution and following the strategic plan for growth. Here’s where you can identify natural opportunities for expansion, so the renewals process is seamless with larger deal sizes.

That really is the hardest part about recurring revenue – knowing where the customer needs added support or is aware of the solutions available to them. Seems through Cisco Lifecycle Selling, this hurdle is gone.

Absolutely! Partners with adoption services have three times the renewals rates and two and a half times software growth when they have a customer success practice. We know customer experience is going to become a TOP brand differentiator so get on the train before you get left behind.

So, how do distributors and partners get started? We want as many aboard as possible.

Cisco has taken the guess work out of this too. There are two specialization levels: Customer Experience Specialized and Advanced Customer Experience Specialized. Learn more and get started here. 

Thank you, again, Ryan! I know Chuck Robbins, Cisco Chairman and CEO, said, “We’ve seen the market shifting towards a subscription economy, where the value of a customer is realized over time instead of just up front and customers demand tangible proof of outcomes.”

With Lifecycle management and recurring revenue there are thousands of possible opportunities and ways to help fuel partner success.

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