Imagine you’re one of a seller’s customers and you’ve just spent $2 million on Cisco security products. You’ve spent months negotiating discounts, explaining budget pressure, and hearing that the seller has pushed internally to get you “the absolute best deal possible.”
Then LinkedIn serves you a photograph of your AE holding a giant HAWAII boarding pass because they crushed their sales target
@fx Ex Cisconian here...
Trust me - many Cisco folks hate the GSX thing also..
A week plus downtime away from customers, with little real 'learning'....
and almost invariably GSX comes after Cisco let go of some thousands (sometimes many thousands) and it was very hard not to look at that, do the maths and say..
"You know we could have saved hundreds of jobs not holding it...."
But the annual Cisco bloodletting (both the fear and the impact on individuals) is something you probably dont see nearly as widely advertised..
And yes, I got invited on some of those other things too..
And yes, pictures of going on Sales clubs / parties I found tasteless...
Sure all US companies do it, but you dont need to rub collages (and customer's) faces in it..
Peace
@109 software PHARMACISTS.
software PHYSIOTHERAPISTS
software ATTORNEYS
software PILOTS
software GEOSCIENTISTS
Such bullsh-t.
BTW using Software ENGINEER is illegal in some countries and subject to injunctions! Can't wait for those penalties to be everywhere
@z2 why do csco need real engineers? we got p.tels with fake qualifications and I.T civil engineers working at cisco building IT infra, you know it takes a civil engineer to build infra right... yuk
@ek I don't believe real "engineers" are employed at the organization though. Using a protected-by-law professional title (that is drawing controversy) does not make one a P.Eng.
I’ve always found winners of club Cisco to be a-s- licking dou--e bags.
@ma what do you expect from a .atel ? Wake up you d-mb a.s, You are just a seller for them.
"sellers"?? WTF did that become a thing?
@jp no one said they weren’t valuable. It’s just the bragging about their trips on LinkedIn and beating their quotas selling tocustomers
I’m not in sales, but they are a critical part of the business, the same as product and engineering.
A great salesperson absolutely can deliver enormous customer value while also generating enormous revenue. That’s how enterprise selling is supposed to work.
It’s the decision to broadcast the entire chain publicly that makes it look bad
Its very often not the best sales people either , its the ones who know how to brown nose all year round . I have seen many top performers overlooked in favour of those who are in the click.
Not only do Cisco sellers work hard, they're under tremendous pressure to meet quota, quarter after quarter.
I gave you an upvote because in some sense you are right. The problem is these people should have had the messaging skills not to show what was happening behind the curtain.
Customer here. This and the yearly sales kickoffs in Vegas are things I’m no longer willing to accept. Problem: all other vendors also waste customer/shareholder money on things like that
@ek: the OP is saying the same as you...with "crushing the sales target".
The issue is:
The giant Hawaii boarding pass proves the deal was highly profitable, meaning they prioritized their commission over your financial constraints, and most importantly made it all public. It mainly can help destroy the foundation of transparency required for long-term business partnerships.
You sound like a bunch of disgruntled & jealous engineers. Not only do Cisco sellers work hard, they're under tremendous pressure to meet quota, quarter after quarter.
A few years back, Chuck fired off a company-wide email complaining that certain sales reps thought they could hand out customer discounts without regard for what was actually best for Cisco. He sounded genuinely fed up, like something specific had set him off.
I've always wondered what actually happened behind the scenes to trigger that. Anyone know the real story?
Yeah just saw it on the LinkedIn feed. The parade of the sales pi-ps. Classy.
Conflicted Salesmanship: Celebrating customer overpayment. Bring the customer back some trip t-shirts.
Any Presidents Club guy I've known is the biggest dou--ebag
Cisco has spent years changing the language from vendor → partner, sales rep → trusted advisor, selling products → delivering outcomes, transactions → customer lifetime value.
Then once a year LinkedIn becomes:
“Here are the people who sold the most”
The problem isn’t President’s Club. It’s making an internally meaningful sales incentive part of your external customer-facing brand.
Is publicly celebrating quota attainment and President’s Club is consistent with the trusted-advisor/customer-outcomes model enterprise technology companies say they want?