Cisco has been driving some fundamental changes to transform how they engage with customers. We caught up with Alex Montuschi, Digital Performance Manager EMEA at Cisco, who is specifically looking at implementing a new way of using social analytics and selling as a part of their overall go to market strategy.

1. Digital Transformation: What
it means for Cisco
Fanni: Before we talk about ‘social’,
can you explain to our readers why
Cisco introduced ‘digital
transformation’ in label of its
marketing department?
Alex: This is simply because all
processes are becoming more digital,
including marketing. It is becoming
increasingly hard to distinguish
between traditional marketing and the
more contemporary methods. As a
result, we are transforming the whole
company, not just marketing.
Fanni: Social media has been around
for a while now, what has changed in
the last few years for you?
Alex: Before, everything used to be
website centric. Web was at the core of
the engagement. Now, ‘social’ is in the
driving seat.
It is important to see that this is no
longer only about students. Our target
audiences are senior decision makers,
such as CIOs and CXOs. We have done
a lot of research about their buying
behaviour which shows—what one
would expect—that they are very time
poor and decisions within a ‘mobile’
environment. As a result, they require
information to be short and concise
and this is where social media is
becoming extremely beneficial. The
era of reading lengthy white papers is
over.
The funnel is in focus of the
campaigns
Fanni: What impact does this have on
your campaigns?
Alex: Over the past year there has
been more focus on analytics and
intelligence to create full visibility over
our customers’ behaviour patterns.
Marketing is putting a lot more
emphasis on the concept of ‘integrated
journeys’ across various channels and
various stages in our funnel.
We spend a lot of time looking at how
to tie top-of-funnel metrics with
bottom-of-funnel results, tracking
each point in the customer journey
across paid, owned and earned.
Fanni: So what role does social media
play in this integrated approach?
Alex: We are using ‘social’ for various
components. On one side, Social
listening enables us to track trends, get
feedback on products, pick up on what
people are saying about our brand and
then to use this to enhance what we
offer. On the other side, social selling
enables our sales people to connect
with customers and nurture
relationships further down the funnel.
Fanni: This sounds like social
listening must have a huge impact on
how you generate content?
Alex: Absolutely. The content team is
going through a lot of changes. It isn’t
enough anymore to share the same
The role of social media in modern selling at Cisco. Digital
transformation at its best.
INTERVIEW
with an industry expert
Cisco has been driving some fundamental changes to transform how they engage with customers. We
have previously interviewed Pascal Lendermann, Head of Operations & Digital Services EMEAR at Cisco
a few months ago on how Trovus is helping Cisco add science to the art of marketing. This time, we
caught up with Alex Montuschi, Digital Performance Manager EMEA at Cisco, who is specifically looking
at implementing a new way of using social analytics and selling as a part of their overall go to market
strategy.
Alex Montuschi is Digital
Performance Manager for Cisco
across Europe, the Middle East
and Africa. Working with local
and global teams across the
business to drive incremental
revenue from Digital Channels.
An Italian in London, passionate
about marketing in a digital world.
A rational optimistic, relentless
inspiration seeker, always looking
at innovative ways to
communicate and engage with
customers.

2. content as you publish on your
website. The concept specifically needs
to be designed for social consumption,
just think about infographics or short
videos as an example. The whole idea
is to allow readers to understand the
core message in a few seconds.
Fanni: Moving on from social
listening to social selling. What role
does social selling have in your go to
market strategy?
Alex: When talking to our sales
teams, it is proven that customers are
more educated than before. Studies
have shown 57% purchase decision is
complete before a customer even calls
a supplier and the buying journey is
increasingly happening online. As a
consequence, it becomes extremely
important to nurture relationships
through various media channels.
We are working with a selected
number of sales people to use a form of
social selling. Sales reps leverage their
own professional brand and social
network to gather insights and
connections, then use this information
to discover new opportunities and get
business done.
We have created our own Cisco Selling
Index to measure what’s the social
impact and effectiveness of each sales
rep. gives us and the sales teams a
good idea on the level engagement
and sales we generate through social
platforms.
Fanni: How receptive were your sales
teams when they were faced with
social selling?
Alex: There was a mixed response as
one would expect. We have
implemented an element of
gamification, where we established a
point gaining system for particular
activities. You can see a league table of
the best performers and it seems to be
working extremely well.
Though the real game changer will be
when we will be able to prove the real
impact of social media on converting
to deals.
Value attribution
Fanni: Now that you mention proving
the value in social, let’s talk about
value attribution. How do you
measure the effectiveness of your
social media?
Alex: At present, we can only make
an attribution to the last click to action.
Because social media is never the last
touch point, currently we do not
attribute any value to it.
To be able to attribute the real value of
each tactic, we are in the process of
mapping all the touch points of the
customer journey.
We know technology and data are
enabling us to do this but it does take
some time to make sure all available
datasets are integrated.
Thanks to advanced data analytics and
technology, we are very close to
creating full visibility over customer
journeys (including known and
unknown customers) which will enable
us to attribute value to each touch
point, including social media.
The future of marketing for
Cisco
Fanni: What is your vision for the
future of marketing teams?
Alex: Nirvana would be to achieve
true ‘one to one’ marketing.
Technically this is now possible once
you have the real-time data and
dynamic content.
Fanni: Thanks Alex, to wrap up your
interview with one final question...If
you could have one thing, what
would it be?
Alex: A single customer view across
all channels and devices. We are within
reach of having the right tools to
achieve this.
INTERVIEW
with an industry expert
Cisco Confidential 1© 2013-2014 Cisco and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.
Proposed Social Media KPIs
# Engagements
(clicks+likes+shares+comm.)
Share of
Voice
#
Mentions
# Campaign Impressions
# Reveals
% Engagement rate
% Engagement to Revel
$ Influenced SQL
Value
# Posts
#
Influencers
REACH
AWARENESS
RESPONSE
REVENUE
# MQLs % Revel to MQL
# Influenced SQLs
QualitativeQuantitative
Sentiment
# Followers
% Reached Followers
Perception
-
# SQLs $ SQL Value
Engagements per Follower
The image below demonstrates proposed social media KPIs