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Greetings Cisco Partners,

Welcome to my blog on simplifying Cisco’s Lifecycle Incentives (LCI). Let me help you make it easier to get the most out of Cisco’s LCI rewards program.

My post last month discussed LCI Tooling – Updates to streamline your workflow & reward capture. This time I’ll cover how synchronizing the LCI and sales processes changes the game with your customers.

Use LCI to get closer to your customer

The whole point of Cisco’s LCI program is to build a relationship between you and your customer throughout the lifecycle, not just when doing the deal and then renewals.

To accomplish that, it’s essential to identify LCI opportunities as quickly as possible during the sales workflow. And then sales and professional services teams should coordinate LCI planning.

Why, you ask? A techie way to answer that is: parallel and synchronized processes get results faster and are more powerful than serial processes that don’t gather customer feedback along the way.

For example:

• Share your CSP with the customer while they evaluate your proposal. As you work with your customer during the sales process, you should provide them your preliminary Cisco LCI Customer Success Plan (CSP) to ensure it meets their expectations. Won’t they be delighted that you are sharing your strategic plan before they’ve signed the deal! And that you care about their business success. Together, you will be on track to meet their goals.
• Incorporate the CSP in the installation Statement of Work (SoW). The SoW should cover the basics of your LCI CSP and be the result of discussions with your professional services group. By linking the CSP & SoW, the customer’s expectations are set and you and your customer stay aligned on the installation needs and timing. And will be more likely to be accurate!

When sales, LCI, and professional services teams work in parallel, there will be accurate alignment between the deal and the CSP. And, guess what, the LCI team won’t be up all night preparing the CSP to meet Cisco’s deadline. Not only is it already done, it has customer buy-in.

This kind of engagement takes customer experience to a whole new level. They know you will be there for them throughout the process, not just when it’s time for renewal. And that you will teaming with them to achieve their goals. That’s what’s called excellent customer experience.

Some reminders and updates

• Upon booking, immediately register the LCI Opportunity in the Cisco PPE portal.
• Track your workflow activities
  • Typically,
    • You have a full year from the end of the Cisco fiscal quarter in which you booked the business to register and submit the User Activate Proof of Performance (PoP).
    • You have 90-days to register and submit the Adopt CSP from the day you book the business with Cisco.
  • However, due to Cisco Supply Chain Extensions,
    • You still need to register the Adopt opportunity in Cisco PPE within the first 90-days after the booking date.
    • But you now have 180-days to submit the Adopt CSP for LCI business booked in Q4FY22.
• Don’t get complacent – you need to keep the customer installation and implementation moving!

Tips: Did you know that you can . . .

• Use the Netformx PIT LCI Pipeline Report to identify potential LCI Opportunities that are building in your Approved Deals sales funnel?
• Use the LifecycleXpert Opportunity UI to identify LCI Opportunities from your Ordered business.
• Use the LifecycleXpert Activities UI to track the business as it flows through Cisco’s PPE Activity tracking system.

Confused about something? The Netformx team are here to help you decipher the complexities of LCI and to gain maximum value. Just let us know at sales@netformx.com.

Feel free to share this blog with your colleagues.

If you haven’t seen the power and simplicity of LifecycleXpert, please contact your Netformx Account Manager or reach out to us at sales@netformx.com.