Industry Sales Executive - Hospitality

Industry Sales Lead, Hospitality – EMEA Strategic Engagement Team – Saudi Arabia

Cisco is looking for an Industry Sales Lead, Hospitality, to join its EMEA Strategic Engagement Team (SET), located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. This is a senior industry sales role responsible for developing and leading Cisco's sales strategy, industry value proposition, local industry relationships and sales opportunities in the rapidly growing Hospitality and Tourism sector in Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Vision 2030 is driving huge country investments and growth in Hotels, Resorts, Smart Cities, Sports Stadiums, Media and Entertainment, including global sporting events from Football, Boxing, Golf, Formula 1, Asian Games, FIFA World Cup and future Olympic bids.

The role requires previous industry sales experience and relationships in the Saudi Hospitality Sector across building contractors, real estate, major city development projects and hospitality brands. The candidate must be able to work collaboratively with Cisco's local cross-functional teams to drive consultative, outcome-based solution selling through an industry lens to drive pipeline growth in products and services and large deals in the Hospitality sector.

Who You'll Work With

The Strategic Engagement Team (SET) helps our customers transform their infrastructure, reduce operational costs transform their employee/customer experience and accelerate their digitisation in an increasingly software-driven, AI-enabled, cloud-first world. We work with Cisco's largest customers and partners to structure multi-year transformational deals and strategic buying programs, including "Cisco-as-a-Service", "Strategic Relationship Agreements" and "Whole Portfolio Agreements" and Industry Solutions, that deepen our relationships and drive better business outcomes for our Customers, Partners and Cisco.

The Strategic Engagement Team are engaged by account teams and leadership on Cisco's largest opportunities to provide cross-functional pursuit leadership across the lifecycle of the deal. We lead, orchestrate and structure cross-architecture, multi-tower, multi-year, service-led deals that deliver on transformational business outcomes for our customers and partners. The SET Pursuit Lead works with other key roles in SET and supporting teams, including Commercial Leads, Enterprise Architects and Service Design Leads, to qualify and structure a solution proposal through to contracting and delivery handover, in close partnership with key customer stakeholders, local Sales leadership and Account Teams and supporting Cisco functions.

The Industry Sales Lead, Hospitality, will be part of a team of 3 senior sales professionals representing the EMEA SET team locally on the ground in Saudi, alongside another Industry Sales Lead (for Sports Media Entertainment) and a Large Deal Pursuit Lead, forming a strong team to pursue the largest opportunities in Saudi Hospitality and broader Smart City projects. The role will work closely with the Cisco Saudi Leadership and Account Teams, to qualify, prioritise, orchestrate and lead industry deal pursuits, in collaboration with EMEA SET and local country resources and functions.

Minimum Requirements:

• Demonstrate a strong mix of industry knowledge and local industry relationships, with a track record of driving business value through technology in the Hospitality and Tourism market.
• 10 years+ experience in selling industry solutions to senior executives across IT and Lines of Business.
• Business development and strategy experience required, with a strong operational approach and ability to close deals and deliver results.

Demonstrated ability to provide thought leadership, think strategically, and effectively communicate vision (both written and verbal)

• Demonstrated ability to build and lead change and growth in a matrix-managed team culture
• Strong leadership abilities in guiding and enabling a sales organization on how to take complex technology and sell it in a more simplified, comprehensive way – based on industry/customer requirements.
• Participate in regular reviews of the SET and Industry Sales pipeline and report on progress, deal status, decisions and next steps on all active deals. Diligently align deal data in SFDC in conjunction with the local Account Teams.
• Provide regular executive stakeholder pipeline/deal reports and updates, including status, progress, roadblocks and other key dependencies. Drive momentum and proactively escalate any resource constraints or risks affecting the execution of pipeline/deals in timely fashion.
• Share information and drive industry best practice/solutions across the global Cisco community – on wins, case studies, lessons learned and replicable industry solutions.

Operational Excellence:

• Proven ability to team and work effectively across functions