Strategy & Planning Manager

Job description

The application window is expected to close on: 07/26/2026Job posting may be removed earlier if the position is filled or if a sufficient number of applications are received. Meet the Team You will join the Sales Capabilities & Readiness team within Cisco's WW Sales Strategy, Planning & Operations organization — a high-performing group building the capabilities that define, enrich, segment, and plan for our customers with our sellers at scale. Our team owns the platforms, systems, and processes that turn customer data into trusted inputs for sales planning, coverage, and go-to-market execution. We operate at the intersection of sales strategy, data, and product management, modernizing how sales defines and plans for customers using current tools and emerging technology. We partner with Sales leaders, Operations, IT, and design teams to bring new capabilities from ideas through launch and adoption. This is a team where you will contribute meaningfully as an individual and grow into leading defined capabilities end to end — owning requirements, stakeholder alignment, delivery coordination, and user readiness. If you are energized by structured problem-solving, cross-functional partnership, and building things that are foundational and meaningful to our sales teams, you will thrive here. Your Impact As a Sales Strategy & Planning Manager, you will help drive strategic capabilities across Unified Customer Definition, Segmentation, and customer-centric sales planning — including capabilities that leverage automation and intelligent tooling to improve how sales teams work with customer data. You will be a hands-on owner of one or more capabilities on the roadmap: translating business needs into clear requirements, partnering with IT and design to shape solutions, and ensuring capabilities land with the right users at the right time. You will not just support initiatives — you will lead them — bringing clarity to ambiguous problems, keeping stakeholders aligned, and driving execution with rigor and momentum. You will work closely with senior leaders and experienced teammates who will coach and stretch you, with room to grow your scope as you demonstrate impact. What You Will Do • 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. Minimum Qualifications • 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. Preferred Qualifications • 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. #WeAreCisco #WeAreCisco where every individual brings their unique skills and perspectives together to pursue our purpose of powering an inclusive future for all. Our passion is connection—we celebrate our employees’ diverse set of backgrounds and focus on unlocking potential. Cisconians often experience one company, many careers where learning and development are encouraged and supported at every stage. Our technology, tools, and culture pioneered hybrid work trends, allowing all to not only give their best, but be their best. We understand our outstanding opportunity to bring communities together and at the heart of that is our people. One-third of Cisconians collaborate in our 30 employee resource organizations, called Inclusive Communities, to connect, foster belonging, learn to be informed allies, and make a difference. Dedicated paid time off to volunteer—80 hours each year—allows us to give back to causes we are passionate about, and nearly 86% do! Our purpose, driven by our people, is what makes us the worldwide leader in technology that powers the internet. Helping our customers reimagine their applications, secure their enterprise, transform their infrastructure, and meet their sustainability goals is what we do best. We ensure that every step we take is a step towards a more inclusive future for all. Take your next step and be you, with us! Why Cisco? At Cisco, we’re revolutionizing how data and infrastructure connect and protect organizations in the AI era – and beyond. We’ve been innovating fearlessly for 40 years to create solutions that power how humans and technology work together across the physical and digital worlds. These solutions provide customers with unparalleled security, visibility, and insights across the entire digital footprint. Fueled by the depth and breadth of our technology, we experiment and create meaningful solutions. Add to that our worldwide network of doers and experts, and you’ll see that the opportunities to grow and build are limitless. We work as a team, collaborating with empathy to make really big things happen on a global scale. Because our solutions are everywhere, our impact is everywhere. We are Cisco, and our power starts with you. Message to applicants applying to work in the U.S. and/or Canada: The starting salary range posted for this position is $114,900.00 to $172,400.00 and reflects the projected salary range for new hires in this position in U.S. and/or C