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David McNicholas

David McNicholas

With more than 15 years of success leveraging a sales methodology that weighs technology solution against financial investment, business outcome, and corporate growth goals, David McNicholas has created an Executive Relevance Selling (ERS) approach that has proven successful for many sales teams. ERS is a formal, comprehensive approach to empowering resellers to sell profitable solutions into sophisticated, competitive markets, growing revenues and profits by 20%+ through investment-centric quantifiable business outcome assessments. David regularly shares best practices and advice on how to grow your business.

Cisco Partner Summit: Trusted Partnerships are Key to Tapping into Successful Shift to Digitization

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At the kickoff of this year’s Cisco Partner Summit in San Francisco, Cisco CEO Chuck Robbins spoke about “Unlocking the Digital Economy,” saying that technology has never moved faster in history. During his presentation about digital transformation and the opportunities it is creating for Cisco partners, Robbins said that 25 percent of the global economy in 2020 will be from digitization and that those businesses, cities and countries that already understand that digital transformation is required to succeed will be change agents.

Those who are in ahead of the curve, such as Accenture Cisco, are redefining business models, investing in technology and evolving their talent and cultures. Robbins shared that Accenture Cisco has begun major formal digital transformation initiatives with Heads-of-State in six countries.

With massive disruption happening to entire industries, huge opportunities exist for new revenue streams and competitive differentiation. Your customers are turning to you to help navigate this historic transition. Robbins talked about how Cisco has navigated recent partnerships and acquisitions successfully to create the right ecosystem of products, offerings and trust.

To prepare to sell into the digitized future, Cisco partners must remember that customers no longer want to buy products. They want to invest in business outcomes, so you must be prepared to approach your customers from a business outcome perspective, rather than a product perspective. This might be hard, Robbins shared.

“We all must be prepared to move at an uncomfortable speed,” Robbins said. “If you wait for all the answers to everything, you will die.”

Robbins outlined how technology from Cisco performs in four focus areas: It is designed to be Simple, Intelligent, Automated and Secure. To that end, the company continues to innovate and invest in strategic acquisitions and partnerships.

“The market wants us to help them transform to the future, and all of this relies on digital-ready networks, as well as secure technology and incredible flexibility, said Robbins.”

In addition to digitization, Robbins said that cloud will continue to be a huge market that permeates everything that customers of Cisco partners are trying to do. He also reminded the audience that cloud, like all other technology, must be positioned as a business solution.

The three-day Partner Summit gave Comstor and other Cisco partners a chance to learn more about Cisco priorities and positioning, as well as technology updates and future strategy. It gave us all an opportunity to learn, network and grow our partnerships for future success.

While I was there, I enjoyed following the #CiscoPS16 Twitter stream. Here are a few of my favorites:

 

 

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  • David McNicholas

    With more than 15 years of success leveraging a sales methodology that weighs technology solution against financial investment, business outcome, and corporate growth goals, David McNicholas has created an Executive Relevance Selling (ERS) approach that has proven successful for many sales teams. ERS is a formal, comprehensive approach to empowering resellers to sell profitable solutions into sophisticated, competitive markets, growing revenues and profits by 20%+ through investment-centric quantifiable business outcome assessments. David regularly shares best practices and advice on how to grow your business.

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