Alliances Leader

Overview
Summary
The Alliances Leader is responsible for leading C1's strategic relationships with Strategic partners and driving measurable business growth. This leader will own the development and execution of the joint business strategy, including executive relationships, revenue and pipeline growth, go-to-market execution, partner investment, sales alignment, enablement, and integration of partner capabilities into C1's portfolio of solutions, professional services, and managed services. The position requires a highly collaborative and commercially oriented leader who can operate across C1 Sales, Capabilities, Solutions Architecture, Services, Marketing, Operations, and executive leadership while building strong relationships throughout the partner organizations.

Candidates are to bring deep experience and established relationships with leading customer experience and unified communication partners, such as Zoom and Genesys. Expertise across these partners is preferred. The successful candidate will be expected to develop strong strategic leadership across both partnerships.

Responsibilities
Essential Functions

Owns the overall strategic relationship between C1 and assigned strategic technology partners, such as Avaya, Zoom, HPE, Dell and Microsoft
Develops and executes comprehensive partner business plans focused on revenue growth, profitability, pipeline creation, market development, and strategic alignment
Builds and maintains strong executive relationships across C1 and partner organizations
Establishes regular executive governance, business reviews, relationship mapping, regional alignment, and joint planning
Drives revenue and pipeline growth by identifying joint opportunities, target accounts, competitive displacement opportunities, and new routes to market
Develops and executes joint go-to-market strategies, including account mapping, sales campaigns, customer events, workshops, enablement, and demand-generation activities
Works closely with C1 Sales and Sales Engineering leadership to increase partner awareness, seller engagement, opportunity creation, and field execution
Collaborates with C1 Capabilities, Solutions Architecture, Professional Services, Managed Services, Marketing, and Operations to align the partner strategy with C1's portfolio and customer offerings
Identifies opportunities to expand C1's solutions, services, managed services, and recurring revenue capabilities around the assigned partners
Represents C1 with senior partner executives and serves as the primary internal advocate for strategic partnership
Works with partner organizations to maximize available investments, incentives, MDF/MVF, enablement resources, and other programs that support C1 growth
Develops joint sales forecasts and monitors partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline, bookings, revenue, gross profit, and other agreed business metrics
Uses data and market intelligence to identify performance gaps, competitive opportunities, and areas requiring additional investment
Educates and aligns C1 sellers, engineers, and leaders around partner strategy, differentiation, capabilities, and market opportunities
Monitors industry trends, competitive dynamics, technology roadmaps, and market changes impacting the contact center, collaboration, and customer experience markets
Influences partner and C1 strategy by bringing market, customer, competitive, and field insights back into both organizations
Identifies obstacles to growth and leads cross-functional efforts to remove them
Creates a collaborative partner community across national, regional, sales, technical, services, and marketing teams
Performs other strategic alliance and business development responsibilities as required
Qualifications
Measure of Success

Success in this role will generally include:

Achievement of agreed partner revenue, gross profit, bookings, and growth objectives.
Growth in partner-sourced and partner-influenced pipeline.
Development and execution of successful joint business and go-to-market plans.
Increased field engagement and opportunity creation across C1 Sales and Sales Engineering.
Strong executive relationships and governance across C1, Zoom, and Genesys.
Increased utilization of partner investments, incentives, MDF/MVF, and joint marketing resources.
Growth in C1 services and managed services associated with the partner ecosystem.
Improved competitive positioning and win rates in strategic customer opportunities.
Successful introduction and adoption of new partner-related C1 offers and capabilities.

Required Qualifications

Bachelor’s degree in business, technology, marketing, or related field, or equivalent relevant professional experience
8+ years of experience in strategic alliances, channel leadership, sales, business development, technology partnerships, or related roles within the technology industry
Significant experience within the enterprise communications, contact center, customer experience, collaboration, or related technology markets.
Deep knowledge of and established relationships within market leading Unified and Customer Experience partners
Demonstrated success building and executing strategic partner business plans and go-to-market strategies
Proven ability to influence revenue, pipeline, profitability, and business growth through strategic partnerships
Strong understanding of enterprise technology sales and how customers evaluate and purchase technology, professional services, and managed services
Demonstrated ability to develop relationships across sales, engineering, services, marketing, product, operations, and executive organizations
Strong business and financial acumen with the ability to analyze pipeline, revenue, profitability, market opportunity, and performance data
Excellent communication, presentation, negotiation, and executive relationship skills
Ability to operate effectively in a cross-functional, highly matrixed organization
Self-directed, relationship-oriented, highly collaborative, and comfortable leading through influence
Ability to manage multiple complex priorities in a fast-paced environment

Desired/ Preferred Qualifications

Experience working directly for leading customer experience and/or unified communications partners, a major technology integrator, solution provider, or strategic channel partner
Experience with partner ecosystems
Experience developing executive-level joint business plans with major technology manufacturers
Experience working across Enterprise, Healthcare, Financial Services, and Public Sector customers
Experience building partner-driven professional services and managed services opportunities
Strong understanding of cloud contact center, unified communications, AI-enabled customer experience, and related technologies
Demonstrated ability to create and scale repeatable go-to-market motions across a national sales organization
Existing executive relationships within at least one of the two partner organizations