Wendy Bahr Named Cisco VP US/Canada Channels

Cisco has named Wendy Bahr as the replacement to former US/Canada VP Chuck Robbins. The move was widely expected by industry watchers. Wendy joined Cisco in 2000 as an Operations Director of Network Service Providers, after spending 10 years with Verizon, including roles as Sales Director of the Enterprise Sales Group, and also in the State and Local Government sector. She moved into the Federal Enterprise Organization in 2004 as the Operations Director of Federal Civilian Agencies, and has also led the U.S. commercial organization. I spent a few minutes on the phone after her promotion was announced. This isn’t exactly a transcript, but it’s pretty fresh on my mind and my notes. Ken: So what would you consider to be your primary role and challenges? Wendy: To listen, be the partners’ advocate within Cisco, focus on profitability, and create innovative programs and the right kind of support that insures success for the partners and Cisco. We’re not changing our charter; we’re continuing to evolve on the platform that’s been well established. This is a very complex function within the corporation. I spent my first five years at Cisco working on the direct sales side with a variety of different segments, service provider, federal, etc. So when I came into the channel, the first thing I noticed was the degree of complexity in insuring the balance between the needs of Cisco from a business and shareholder perspective with the needs of the partner community, which sells greater than 80% of our products and services. So we’re always looking and cause-and-effect and the interrelated dependencies that make this role so interesting and challenging. Our partners must be successful in order for Cisco to be successful. And Cisco must be successful in continuing to innovate and develop new technologies and programs. It’s a unique balancing act. Ken: So what are some of the initiatives you’re looking at, moving forward? Wendy: Our focus is on how Cisco and our partners can scale to what is an enormous opportunity across many new technologies and business models, whether its software as a service, solutions sales etc. So one of the tenets moving forward is to continue to look at ways to scale our talent, retain our talent, and provide the right kind of collaborative tools that allow us to do more and be more productive. We want to better interact with the partners and improve the partner experience as they connect with Cisco, whether it be the channel team or the direct team. We want to work more closely together and share information. So we’ll be out there listening to identify any gaps so that we can look downstream to ensure that are programs are meeting the needs of the partners and at the same time meeting the needs of Cisco from a growth perspective. Ken: How will your leadership be different from Chuck’s? Wendy: I’m not sure I’m as funny as Chuck (laughs). I don’t know that I can keep up at that level. But in many ways we’re similar – our communications style, the way we interact with partners, our commitment to relationships. I also think we’ve both had experiences that led us to this role, and those experiences help define how you approach business. So I’m looking forward to using my past experience, my deep knowledge of service providers, having been at Verizon before coming to Cisco, and spending time inside Cisco’s SP organization. Also, my experience with the federal organization. Also working closely with the commercial and the enterprise teams. I’ll take that experience and apply it to the innovation, and the communications, and the programs across the U.S. and Canada. But I think fundamentally, you’ll see a lot of similarities between my style and Chuck’s style, as well as Keith’s style. The art of working with the channel is to ensure that our partner base, routes to market and program are presenting a level playing field to our partner community. That means we have to make sure that we’re maintaining balance in terms of partner capacity, capability, ensuring that you’re looking at adaptive channel models All of those are key components to producing a successful channel strategy. So listening to the various constituencies and building that feedback into the overall plan is a critical skill.