Khosrow Salmanzadeh
Chicago,IL
Summary
Global Customer Success Solution Architect with 20 years of experience driving business growth. Increased customer retention by 15% through the development of innovative Customer Success programs. Expert in maximizing solution adoption and renewal growth, leading to a 35% increase in new product implementations. Developed and enabled key top channel partners. Fluent in English and Spanish. Excellent communication skills and extensive experience working with clients and partners.
Overview
20
20
years of professional experience
Work History
Leader, CX Global Solution Architect – SD-WAN
Cisco Systems
2022.01 - Current
- Leading the strategy, planning, and delivery of Customer Success initiatives for Cisco's SD-WAN solutions
- Enabling Global Customer Experience Managers and Specialists to deliver value for our customers
- Liaison between global sales strategy team, product management team, Renewal and operation team in order to drive more customer engagement and adoption of the product
- Responsible for designing, launching, leading and tracking results, impacting $550 M ARR ( Annual Recurring Value ) driving adoption and impacting renewal’
- Create, launch, and track programs to drive solution consumption and integration
- Use Case development through Design Thinking and Scrum workshops with the internal and external teams
- Channel partners & MSP adoption programs
- Interview panelist and Early in the Career mentor.
Leader, Customer Success Manager
Cisco Systems
2021.01 - 2022.01
- Lead a team of Customer Success Managers for Latin America and covering over 40 countries
- Accelerating customer success by managing a team of highly skilled Customer Success professionals, covering over 40 countries and territories
- Providing the voice of customer/theater requirements into the operations and program management team for the process, and tool improvements
- Retaining customers and growing Annual Recurring Revenue by 13% as well as 25% increased solution consumption
- Guiding and supporting partners and distribution Customer Success transformation
- Hire, build, and train the team to drive adoption and accelerate value realization.
Customer Success Manager
Cisco Systems
2018.01 - 2021.01
- Recipient of Cisco’s prestigious Sales Champion FY20 award for leading new and innovative initiatives that helped customers and channel partners transform their operational business model
- Directly impacted the retention model of 12 key public and financial customers with over $25M in recurring revenue
- Increased new and renewal sales revenue by 8%, exceeding $4M of incremental ARR
- Developed Customer Experience strategy jointly with external and internal stakeholders
- Resulted in over 60 critical accounts activation and engagement
- Hosted well-attended partner and customer events focused on Data Center and SD-WAN in the region
- Events included 640 attendees, representing 175 partners, 220 customers, and 28 countries
- Drove Solution Lifecycle Acceleration in order to accelerate the consumption and product usage of Security and Enterprise Networking products for Cisco’s top 40 customers in Latin America.
Partner Success Manager
Cisco Systems
2015.01 - 2018.01
- Helped Cisco’s 10 largest regional partners capture the industry transition to subscriptions by establishing an end-to-end customer engagement model
- Generated over $18M in services and recurring revenue
- Grew partner services revenue by 8% overall
- Transformed Cisco’s top 20 regional partners with customer success models
- Aligned people, processes, and technology to Cisco’s VALUE Framework methodology
- Led the digitization transformation for 22 partners to align with Cisco’s DNA and SaaS strategy
- Responsible for onboarding, mentoring, technical and business knowledge transfer, and KPI development
- Drove adoption activities through weekly, monthly and quarterly partner progress, and pipeline planning meetings
- Exceeded internal adopt and expand targets by 15% annually, corresponding to $23M in revenue
- Captured lessons learned in a white paper titled 'Drive Improved User Adoption and Engagement with Analytics.' Published on Cisco’s external website to drive partner automation and use of data analytics.
Business Development Manager
Cisco Systems
2007.01 - 2015.01
- Launched Smart-Care, Cisco’s new cloud-based service offering
- Grew revenue from $50K to $16M within 4 years
- Consistently exceeded annual targets and yielded a growth of over 75% in the last 3 years
- Drove business transformation of 4 of Cisco’s critical partners through managed services adoption
- Developed and executed partner training, certification, business development, and go-to-market strategy
- Contributed to quality and feature improvement of the program with liaison between the field and the development teams
- Program modifications led to new services delivery model and 35% revenue growth.
Business Development Manager
Tech Data Corporation
2005.01 - 2007.01
- Recognized as Cisco’s #1 distribution partner in the region for services
- Increased market share from 40% to 65% in Central America
- Maintained over 60% market share Y/Y
- Received 4 consecutive Over Achievement awards for exceeding targets in highly competitive market
- Converted 3 critical and high revenue accounts with over $7M in annual sales from the competition.
Education
Masters Degree/Postgraduate Diploma in Communications and Real-Time Electronic Systems -
University of Bradford
Bradford, England01.1995
Bachelors Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering -
University of Bradford
Bradford, England01.1993
Skills
- Motivating Teams
- Influencing Others
- Continuous improvements
- Coaching abilities
- Strategic Planning
- Processes and procedures
Criticalskillareas
- Partner Enablement
- Partner Success Practice
- Agile / Scrum Process
- Sales Marketing
- Cloud/Managed Services
- SaaS Lifecycle Model
- Global Account Management
- Customer Success/Experience
- Team Leadership
- Software Defined Networking
- Cybersecurity
- Retention and Renewal Growth
- Success Plan Creation
- Use Case Development
- Journey Mapping
Professional Development
- Advanced Project management: Stanford University
- PMI Agile Training
- ITIL V4 Foundation
- Certified Scrum Master – Scrum Alliance
- Professional Scrum Master I – Scrum.org
- Professional Scrum Product Owner I – Scrum.org
- Cisco Customer Success Specialist
- Cisco Consultant Development Program: (CDP2)
- Azure Fundamental
- AWS Cloud Practitioner
Languages
Spanish
Full Professional
English
Native or Bilingual
Timeline
Leader, CX Global Solution Architect – SD-WAN
Cisco Systems
2022.01 - Current
Leader, Customer Success Manager
Cisco Systems
2021.01 - 2022.01
Customer Success Manager
Cisco Systems
2018.01 - 2021.01
Partner Success Manager
Cisco Systems
2015.01 - 2018.01
Business Development Manager
Cisco Systems
2007.01 - 2015.01
Business Development Manager
Tech Data Corporation
2005.01 - 2007.01
Masters Degree/Postgraduate Diploma in Communications and Real-Time Electronic Systems -
University of Bradford
Bachelors Degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering -
University of Bradford
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