Partnerships Unraveled
The weekly podcast where we unravel the mysteries of partnerships and channel to help you become more successful.
Partnerships Unraveled
Rebecca Javens - The Framework for Partner Focus
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In this episode of Partnerships Unraveled, we sit down with Rebecca Javens, Director of Channels for the Americas at Cisco’s ThousandEyes, to explore her journey from direct sales into the complex world of channel partnerships. With decades of experience in some of tech's most channel-centric companies, Rebecca offers a compelling perspective on partner enablement, strategic channel growth, and what it takes to build thriving partner ecosystems.
Channel professionals will gain actionable insight into Rebecca’s “Scale, Skill, and Will” framework, a method for identifying high-potential partners following a major acquisition. We also discuss how to hire and develop high-caliber channel talent using the ICCE model, and why personal development and mentorship are critical to long-term success in partnerships. Whether you're building a new channel playbook or looking to refine your partner strategy, this episode is packed with practical frameworks and leadership wisdom you won’t want to miss.
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Welcome back to Partnerships Unraveled, the podcast where we unravel the mysteries about channels and partnerships on a weekly basis. My name is Effa, and I'm excited to introduce our special guest, Rebecca. Rebecca, how are you doing?
SPEAKER_01:I'm great. How are you?
SPEAKER_00:Doing great. Thank you very much, Rebecca. Really excited for the conversation and thank you for uh taking the time today. Uh maybe you could give us a bit of an introduction, share who you are and where you come from.
SPEAKER_01:Sounds great. So, Rebecca Javens, I am currently at Cisco. I have been on and off there for many years, uh leading the Thousand Eyes Channel Organization for the Americas. Um, I've been in the tech world since about 2006. Um, and I'm from Southern California, but I currently live in New York City.
SPEAKER_00:Well, uh really excited for the conversation. And you've been in the tech space since uh for a long time, but you haven't been in the channel space uh since the beginning. You mentioned that you started your journey in the direct sales side, but you said that you felt drawn to the partner side and never looked back. Can you tell me, you know, what was the moment that showed you that the channel was where you were meant to be?
SPEAKER_01:Yes, so I um I started in direct sales, I started through um an amazing program at Cisco where they bring in talent, um young talent early in career, um, or at the very beginning of your career. Um, and um at the time we moved out to Raleigh, North Carolina, and um they put us through a year training program. So such uh invaluable experience. And then we went out into the field. So I started in direct sales um in Chicago, and um Cisco is a very strong channel company. Um many years ago, they decided to invest um 100% through the channel, and um, they really value their partner community. And um I just I worked with some really interesting, smart, fantastic sales reps where they helped me so much kind of early on in my career, and also closing some really large deals. Um, biggest deals I've ever closed have been with some of my best partner reps that I still talk to to this day. And um, I I so I think I did that role for six or seven years. And my boss at the time really encouraged me to round out my career a bit more. And I was very drawn to the channel. Um, I was drawn to different executives that I had met. Um, I wanted to learn more about it. And um, I met an amazing leader, Renee Hirschman, uh, who helped me move over to the Cisco Channels team uh with it at in Chicago. And um, I realized quickly that I did, you know, I didn't know what I didn't know. There's a lot to learn about that part of the business, but I felt like it gave me a more holistic view of what it's like to be in tech sales or hardware sales, software sales, um, understanding the partner and the channel aspect of it, um, the profitability, how they build out their business. Um, and it just ended up being the best decision, I think, that I made. I found that I um had a strong desire to work with the channel community.
SPEAKER_00:It sounds like you not only started the right organization, you said Cisco, very channel focused, they really care about their partners. I think that helped you a lot. But also, I think you mentioned that you met the right leader who could maybe mentor you or help you throughout that journey as well. So I feel like that's been a the stars have aligned for you.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I I do think meeting the right leader at the right time, someone that believes in you, uh, someone that um wants to help pave that path. And it took several months. But also when I first started, I was um new in sales, new to tech. Um, and as I built my business as a direct rep, there were partners like CDW that I would just go into their office and walk the floors. They have a really, really big office um in Chicago. And um I just saw how the reps were willing to introduce me to accounts, help me uh build my business, help me build my pipeline. And um, that was really the scale and velocity I needed for the type of segment I was covering within Cisco.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, loud that story. And I want to talk a little bit about 1000 Eyes because I feel like maybe our audience, not everyone might know too much about it. So 1000 was acquired by Cisco, and I think lately uh one of your biggest responsibilities over the time has been kind of managing um the floodgates that opened when Cisco has have acquired Thousand Eyes because Thousand Eyes, a smaller company, Cisco, as you mentioned, is one of the giants in the space. They have thousands of partners around the world, hundreds of thousands. And how did you operationalize um that uh acquisition? Did you have like a framework that you you you used to make sure that you were uh focused and you were uh efficient uh as much as possible?
SPEAKER_01:Yes. So this is my second acquisition. App Dynamics was the first time I came in uh back to Cisco uh when they were acquired and was a part of the channel organization. And then Thousand Eyes, I actually came in at a different part of the acquisition about a year after we were acquired. And I saw a similar trend, um challenge slash opportunity, where once you're a part of a large organization like Cisco, that is a household name and has a very strong, committed, loyal partner community, that you do get, you go from maybe uh 20, 30, 100 focused partners to thousands of partners, different types, small, large, global in nature. And it one of the most important things is to focus and qualify which partners are going to have the highest return, going to be the best fit for both both partnerships. Um, so coming back in through um, I think it was my third time back to Cisco, I brought over a process that I had used at the previous company called scale, skill, and will. And scale, I think, is the most important aspect of it because partners need to have a customer base. They need to have a certain amount of revenue. Um, so looking at, okay, where where are their customers? Are they enterprise? Are they commercial? Are they SMB? Is that a good fit for the product? Um, and if if both parties are going to invest in the um the enablement and the resources and the cost that comes with that, is there a good customer base that makes sense? Um, the second aspect of it is skills. So really understanding the matches between what practices does that partner already have built, and is that a good fit for a product like Thousand Eyes? And at Cisco, it was a great fit for many partners because network is a core of where the product was built and some of our core use cases. And that really aligns well to a lot of the Cisco partners. And then Will is um a little bit more aligned to Medic or MedPick, where is there is there um a champion? Is there an exec sponsor within that partner where they really truly believe that this product uh will change their business in a in a good way? It fills a gap within the industry or within their um customer um environments. Um is it a product that works well? Um is it a product that they can make money with? And then also there's the relationship side of it. Um do they really believe in you and the way that you can help them evolve their business?
SPEAKER_00:I want to sum, I really love that. Thank you for sharing this, first of all, but I want to summarize that for our listeners. So uh we talked about kind of when you were uh when when Cisco Cortas and I, you know, we mentioned that there was a lot of interest from all kinds of partners and you had this framework to make sure that you were focusing on the right partners. So the first thing you look at is scale, whether the uh partner has the opportunity to grow with your uh solution. The second is skill, which is whether they have the right skills to you know sell or manage your solution. The final thing is the will, which is basically do they see the potential in you? Are they willing to grow in that partnership? This is is this something that you've come up with yourself, or was this something that you picked up from someone else?
SPEAKER_01:No, it's something that when I went to Data Robot, it was such a different product being in the AI space. And this was about uh four years ago. Uh AI has evolved and grown and become much more mainstream than it was even then. And uh identifying the partners was the hardest part. And some of the partners that we had relationships with and experience with were not necessarily the best fit. And at that time, trying to build out an AI practice was a huge investment. And so immediately when I came on board, um, I had some great talent over there that I had worked with at App Dynamics um previously. And we're we we sat down, we're like, okay, we have to have a better process for partners because we need to find the fastest path possible to a partner that wants to invest, that's a good fit. But what what are the what is that criteria? And it's kind of a play off of um talent and career development. Um, but we just started mapping it out and putting the criteria into um different columns and categories. And we're like, wow, this actually could work really well. So then I brought it over to Thousand Eyes. That was the biggest challenge when I first started. We implemented uh a process around data and activity tracking. And what I saw is that many of the channel account managers had one or two meetings across many partners, and um, they were spread too thin. So we needed to quickly identify where was the best place to focus, because that's one of my core fundamentals is focus. And um, and and it's found I found that it's a process that's very easy for people. It's simple. It's easy to kind of look, okay, let's start with with scale. What is their overall revenue? How many customers do they have? What segments are those customers in? What types of products outside of Cisco are they selling? What types of services? Um, and it's just it's just something that I found that it's very easy for uh for people to rinse and repeat uh even uh year after year as they really kind of fine-tune where they're gonna spend their time.
SPEAKER_00:So do you you kind of expect your channel ICM managers to be proactive and use this framework and make the decisions themselves whether to, you know, which partners to go after, which partners to invest in. Is that correct?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And we, you know, especially at that time of acquisition in that first year, you get a lot of requests uh around a potential partnership. And it's better for the partner and for a company like Cisco to quickly identify, you know, is this a pla a good place for both of us to spend our time? Because ultimately our goal is to make our partners more profitable.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Well, that makes me think I feel like that requires quite a high level of business acumen and channel knowledge and partner knowledge for your channel account managers to, you know, have that level of interest from partners to be able to qualify that. So I'm thinking you for to execute this strategy, you also need a right team to execute it, right? So, what kind of qualities are you looking for when you uh are hiring channel account managers or anyone else into your organization?
SPEAKER_01:There are several, uh, but I would say there's kind of two things that that I really look for and I found uh lead to success and um not just in this role, but in potential future leadership roles. But the first is coachability. And if you're if you're coachable and you're open to feedback, you're going to have the opportunity to learn from some of the best people as long as you are open to that type of feedback and that and and modifying and changing and evolving your process as you go and seeking out that feedback. Um, and then the other aspect to that I think is curiosity. So if you're coachable, you're typically really curious about someone else's process, what works well, best practices. You're curious about feedback. You know, how did that meeting go? What are some of the things I did well? What are the some of the things I I could improve on? And I think those two paired together make for very successful channel account managers.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I fully agree with you. I feel like you also uh think about it in the long term, right? I feel like those two things combined together show that the Canada has a high growth mindset. That's one of the most important things when it comes to these roles because a lot of things could be learned. I guess in channel roles, sometimes it could people could uh index a bit too hard on relationships or existing knowledge, you know, part that's also important, but I feel like this uh is sometimes I feel like undermined when it comes to channel roles.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. And it the this business and in sales, and you know, whether it's it's being in direct sales or being in in channel sales, relationships are key. But when you are earlier in career and you're just starting out, how do you build those relationships? And a lot of it is building credibility, showing that you have a process, that you're prepared, that you when you when you when you get that time with that executive or that sales leader, technical leader, that it's going to lead to outcomes that ultimately are going to make that person have respect for you, and that builds a relationship.
SPEAKER_00:I fully agree with you. And also I remember from our previous conversation that you also have a framework, a method for hiring. Could you share that with our audience?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, so the framework that I use is a common one. I learned it uh, I think from when I was at App Dynamics, and it's called ICE. I think it's evolved even since then, and um there's even another letter that's been added in. But what I look at is uh intelligence, coachability, character, and experience. And some of the categories are a bit easier, I think, to quickly lean into in an interview or even before um just looking at someone's resume, like experience. Uh you can pull up their LinkedIn, you can see what they've done, and you can test with a few questions. Intelligence, I think, is something that you can quickly ask a few questions. What do you know about the product? Um there, I think it's a it's a more quicker way to qualify, but I find that coachability and character are two very important things, and they're a little bit harder to get to in a 45-minute or an hour interview.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I fully agree with you. I've these those are definitely things, and I don't know, you you kind of mentioned also in our previous conversation that uh your manager was someone who was really good at identifying in those traits, and like he would ask some very specific, also kind of personal questions to do that as well. I feel like it requires a level of um getting personal uh to be able to assess if someone is that has the character that would be a good fit for the position, but also is open to being coachable.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. So I a standard that I use, and everyone at Cisco, and this is very common across the industry, but is building a panel of people that one you really trust, really value their opinion. I think it needs to be a combination of sales leaders or individual contributors, um, and then also some of the teammates from the channel or from the technical side. But really having a panel that you trust. And uh when they do give the feedback, listen to it because it's very easy to get attached to a candidate that maybe isn't the right fit. We're all under a lot of pressure to hire quickly. Um, so I have some some people that I I typically um over and over and over again put on my my panel. And my boss, Craig Vario, I I always tap into him when it comes to character. He has a talent of really getting in quickly. Um, and what and what some of the things he's taught me is just have a couple standard questions that you ask and keep that consistent across that particular interview process. So it may change from each hiring position, but when you are hiring for a particular position, keep it consistent. And one of the things he'll ask is um, what's something that your parents taught you? Um, which is it gets personal really quickly, good or bad, um, because that's your personal life and um your parents do shape you in so many ways. Um but it will say a bit about some of the lessons you've learned in life and and how how you operate now. Um, another question that he will ask is I think, what was your first job? And I think that kind of taps into who you are as a person, but what's that kind of grit and grind? Um, and most people didn't have great first jobs. So it is it is interesting to hear about it and also what they learned. Um, so he has a series of questions, but I I have a couple other people. Um, Tanner Bechtel, who's uh my peer on the um engineering side, he's he has a way about him that he can bring people's walls down quickly and and get them to open up. And um, and it's it's just a great way to, it's not it's not always my strength. Coachability is more my strength. And I have a process um around giving some small feedback, um, suggesting things. Seeing how they take that, do they modify their plan as they go through the process? Do they modify their approach? Um, and just those small things that, hey, if you if you take this small amount of feedback and you listen kind of during this high pressure interview time, those are the things I'm looking for.
SPEAKER_00:It's first of all, I love those two questions, and you shared one of them last time, and I actually had been thinking about it. I think those are really great questions. But I also think that when it comes into real questions, it's not so much about what you say, but more about how you explain uh the thing, right? For example, what has your parents taught you? It's not so much about what they have really taught you, but I guess how um you talk about that experience. And I also want to talk about you mentioned the importance of having a group of people that you trust and rely on. You know, when uh when there are things that you might not be so familiar with or you don't know very well, you can reach out to these people um who can be a mentor for you or who can give you ideas uh on how to overcome challenges such as hiring, as you mentioned. Uh, that's also a really important concept for me as well. I've been you know very uh intentional about collecting those kind of people uh in my professional life, internally, externally, uh trying to learn from uh everyone who can be a mentor from me. Uh for those for you know the people in the audience that are maybe starting out their channel career, maybe they're in their first channel role or they want to step into this world. What's uh what's an advice that you would give to them in terms of creating their personal board of directors, as you call it?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, and I actually got that from one of my managers at Cisco many years ago. But I think a good first step is to get it on paper. Write down some of the people that you respect, some of the people that um have coached and mentored you in the past. Um I think when you start to write it down, you realize that you might have more people than you think. And um, and to round it out, start thinking about the people that you've met over the years. And depending on where you're at in your career, it could be someone that you've worked with, it could be um a friend, it could be a sorority sister, um, it could be a sibling. Um, and just get in writing that down so that you can see really how the community that you have around you. And then I think kind of going back to that uh to curiosity, well, talk to some of those people and say, who are your mentors and and and what why do you go to them? What what kind of advice support and guidance do they give you? And do you have any suggestions of people that I could reach out to? And it may not be a great fit right off the bat, but just that uh continuously being curious and asking questions. And then when you do get to those conversations, uh, I've I've had a lot of people reach out to me over the years, and I've reached out to a lot of people coming with coming prepared. So I think a really easy way to prepare is what what is something about this person that you're drawn to that you think they're they're amazing at, and you you want to ask some questions about that? Or it could be as simple as just a list of questions on how did you build a community of people who who who's who's who are one of your mentors and tell me about them. Um, and that can kind of help guide that person too. That here's someone else that you should talk to.
SPEAKER_00:You kind of also talk when we talked last time, you said that there's something bigger in this world than just hitting your number. And I really love that that kind of stuck with me. I think you also mentioned that, you know, it's kind of important to get uh, you know, mentors, people who can help you, but also from the other side, from a mentor perspective, it's also important and joyful to have mentees or people that who you can kind of teach and help them grow as well. What brings you joy uh when it comes to that role as being the mentor in this relationship?
SPEAKER_01:I so I had I had a a boss a few years ago, um, and he couldn't quite figure out what made me tick, what, what motivated me. And um, you know, they're like we're in sales, and so there is the financial aspect of it. But uh I think I mentioned that you you just um uh referenced it, that we we are here to hit a number. That is our goal. We're here to provide value back to the business, we're here to um to grow the revenue, whether it's with our customers or with our partners. But I think that as you the day-to-day can get um mundane if it's just if you're just focused on a number. And I think that everyone has something a little bit bigger that drives them. And what I found over the years is that coaching and mentoring is something that I that that keeps me going and keeps me motivated and and and brings me a lot of joy. And especially with with my leadership team, in in all of my previous leadership roles, I have uh promoted every single person into their first-time leader role. And that, you know, that may have to change as my as my um my career evolves and I need different types of talent, but it brings me a lot of joy to see someone who has a strong passion for leadership and for them to have that opportunity and to see them just grow and develop and flourish into amazing leaders and then go on to an even bigger role and just see what that career path looks like. And so that that is something that um that I really, really enjoy about my job.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, that's amazing. I it's always good to kind of see leaders kind of tap into more of the personal side, like the personal why of why they're uh you know showing up to work every day. And also I say this all the time, but I'm gonna say it again. You know, we spend so much time with the people that we work with, right? And we have a kind of responsibility to, you know, be there for each other, help each other, and make sure that it's a nice environment that we uh we are you know working at. Uh, Rebecca, I have one last question for you. You know, you said your joy is kind of seeing people grow, helping them grow, and seeing them, you know, become the leaders that they uh become great leaders. My joy is doing this podcast, uh, making great content, interviewing people, uh and making sure that we can make a resource to give back to the community where the next generation of channel leaders can learn from. So I'm always on the lookout for uh names, great leaders uh to have on the podcast. Uh, who do you think we should have next?
SPEAKER_01:Well, I am a huge fan of Anderson Brown. Her and I worked together when I was at App Dynamics. She was uh director for the East on my team and has gone on to do amazing things at other Cisco acquisitions, including where she's at right now with Splunk. She is just always has such great advice, um, such creative ideas. And she's someone that people are drawn to because she has great energy and just uh a presence that people want to be around. So I would highly recommend her. And then um in our partner community, Christine Fierro, who um leads the networking organization for worldwide technologies, is just a great example of a powerhouse of a woman. Um, she's like a shining light, she's someone you want to be around, but also um super smart and um has really grown that business and um the partnerships that she leads um over the years.
SPEAKER_00:Well, amazing. Thank you so much for your recommendations. Anderson, Christine, if you're listening, I'll be reaching out to you. Hope we can get you on the podcast. Uh, thank you so much, Rebecca, for joining us and see you in the next episode.
SPEAKER_01:Thank you so much. It was great to be here today.