Leader, Strategy & Planning Operations

Cisco•Research Triangle Park, NC

1d•$151,000 - $195,200•Remote

About The Position

Global Specialist Sales is establishing a formal Incubation organization to provide Cisco's newest platforms and solutions with a dedicated path from inception to market readiness. This organization aims to guide products through customer validation, go-to-market (GTM) readiness, and eventual integration into mainstream Portfolio or Hyper-Specialist coverage. The Incubation Sales Vice President is assembling a central team, including Sales, GSI/Partnerships, Distinguished Solutions Engineering, Forward Deployed Engineers, and Sales Planning & Operations (SP&O), to manage each product's progression through defined stage gates based on product-market fit, operational readiness, and alignment with Core business units. As the Incubation SP&O Leader, you will be the primary operating partner to the Incubation Vice President and leadership team, responsible for developing the essential sales-facing infrastructure to translate strategy into an executable GTM and sales operating model. This foundational role involves creating processes from scratch, adapting to a dynamic product roadmap, and ensuring each Incubation product can scale effectively from initial customer acquisition to a repeatable and successful sales motion.

Requirements

12+ years of experience in sales strategy, sales operations, business/GTM planning, or an equivalent role, ideally within a technology or software sales organization.
5+ years experience crafting or coordinating sales compensation plans and territory/coverage models.
Consistent track record of building GTM processes or sales motions from scratch, with a high degree of comfort in ambiguous and evolving environments.
4+ years experience partnering directly with senior sales leadership (VP-level or above) as a trusted operating partner.
2+ years of proven people leadership experience or clear readiness to lead a small team.
Cross-functional collaboration skills, with the ability to work effectively across product/BE teams, Finance, Enablement, and Partner organizations.

Nice To Haves

Bachelor's degree in Business, Finance, Economics, or a related field.
Excellent written and verbal communication skills, with experience preparing high-level materials for executive audiences.
Experience supporting a new-product-introduction (NPI), incubation, or early-stage/emerging-business function.
Familiarity with Cisco's sales organization, systems, and planning cycles.
Experience with GSI/strategic alliance or partner GTM motions.
Background in security, cloud, or AI/infrastructure markets.

Responsibilities

Serve as a strategic sparring partner to the Incubation VP on GTM strategy, resourcing, and portfolio prioritization.
Lead the SP&O operating cadence, including QBRs, forecast reviews, and leadership reporting.
Define GTM strategy and sales plays tailored to the product maturity curve.
Build sales readiness for new products, including process design, tools, customer intake, and cross-functional onboarding.
Support the stage-gate/graduation framework that governs a product’s path from Incubation to Core or Hyper-Specialist coverage, using data-driven criteria to assess readiness.
Determine comp plans and territory/coverage models in partnership with Finance.
Define and supervise metrics to quantify success for both individual products and the function overall.
Hire, lead, and develop a team of 2–3 SP&O professionals.
Set the quality bar for the team’s output and assign coverage across products, partnerships, and "flex" capacity for new-product readiness.
Represent Incubation SP&O in planning sessions with Central Global Specialist Sales, Business Entities (BE), Enablement, Finance, and Customer Experience (CX).