Strategy & Planning Manager
About The Position
The Sales Capabilities & Readiness team within Cisco's WW Sales Strategy, Planning & Operations organization is seeking a Strategy & Planning Manager. This high-performing group focuses on building capabilities that define, enrich, segment, and plan for customers at scale. The team owns platforms, systems, and processes that transform customer data into actionable inputs for sales planning, coverage, and go-to-market execution. They operate at the intersection of sales strategy, data, and product management, modernizing customer planning with current tools and emerging technology. The role involves partnering with Sales leaders, Operations, IT, and design teams to bring new capabilities from concept through launch and adoption. This position offers the opportunity to contribute meaningfully as an individual and grow into leading defined capabilities end-to-end, owning requirements, stakeholder alignment, delivery coordination, and user readiness. The ideal candidate is energized by structured problem-solving, cross-functional partnership, and building foundational, meaningful solutions for sales teams.
Requirements
- Bachelor's degree in Business, Economics, Information Systems, Data Analytics, or a related field.
- 3–6 years of experience in sales planning, sales operations, business analysis, product management, or a related strategy/operations role.
- Demonstrated ability to own projects or workstreams from definition through delivery — with increasing independence over time.
- Strong analytical and problem-solving skills; comfortable working with data to inform decisions and recommendations.
- Excellent written and verbal communication; able to translate between business stakeholders and technical partners.
- Organized and detail-oriented, with a bias toward action and follow-through in ambiguous environments.
- Collaborative mindset; able to build trust and influence across teams without relying on formal authority.
Nice To Haves
- Experience in sales capabilities, readiness, planning, or enablement functions within a large enterprise.
- Exposure to CRM, sales technology, or master data management platforms (e.g., Salesforce, Anaplan/Pigment).
- Familiarity with customer hierarchy, segmentation, coverage, or territory planning concepts.
- Experience partnering with IT, product, or engineering teams on capability or feature delivery.
- Comfort with requirements documentation, user acceptance testing, or launch/change management activities.
- Comfort applying modern productivity and analytics tools, including AI-assisted approaches, to accelerate analysis, documentation, and workflow design.
- Experience with tools such as Jira, Figma/Make, Cursor, Tableau, Snowflake, or similar collaboration and analytics platforms.
Responsibilities
- Own capability delivery end to end — from requirements and prioritization through stakeholder alignment, business acceptance testing, launch readiness, and adoption.
- Define and socialize requirements for capabilities — including workflow, policy, data, and user experience needs — using team templates, collaborating on Figma mock-ups with design partners, and evaluating opportunities to apply automation and intelligent tooling where they improve user outcomes.
- Partner with Sales stakeholders to understand current-state processes and tools, identify pain points, and shape future-state capabilities that improve how teams define, segment, and plan for customers.
- Coordinate cross-functional delivery with Operations, IT, TPM, and UI/UX teams — ensuring capabilities are planned, integrated, and deliver value across sales and GTM platforms, and partnering on solutions that incorporate intelligent features with appropriate human oversight.
- Support business acceptance testing (BAT) — documenting test cases from acceptance criteria, validating solutions against business needs, and providing sign-off for release.
- Contribute to launch readiness — partnering on user communications, training materials, release notes, and adoption activities so new capabilities land successfully.
- Analyze data and process gaps to inform recommendations — using structured analysis, modern analytics, and AI-assisted methods where appropriate to support prioritization, decision-making, and continuous improvement.
- Track and communicate progress on your owned capabilities — providing clear status, risks, and recommendations to team leadership.
Benefits
- medical, dental and vision insurance
- a 401(k) plan with a Cisco matching contribution
- paid parental leave
- short and long-term disability coverage
- basic life insurance
- grants of Cisco restricted stock units
- 10 paid holidays per full calendar year
- 1 floating holiday for non-exempt employees
- 1 paid day off for employee’s birthday
- paid year-end holiday shutdown
- 4 paid days off for personal wellness
- 16 days of paid vacation time per full calendar year (non-exempt)
- flexible vacation time off program (exempt)
- 80 hours of sick time off
- Optional 10 paid days per full calendar year to volunteer
- annual bonuses (for non-sales roles)
- performance-based incentive pay (for sales roles)
Stand Out From the Crowd
Upload your resume and get instant feedback on how well it matches this job.
What This Job Offers
Job Type
Full-time
Career Level
Mid Level
