Building clout: Q&A with Cisco's Faith Wheller

We caught up with the Cisco Marketing Director on her experiences building influence in the tech industry as both a woman and a marketer

Q&A with
Faith Wheller

Faith Wheller is Segment and Partner Marketing Director EMEAR at Cisco.

Tell us about you.
How did you get to where you are today?

I did a degree in business and marketing at Brighton University. Afterwards I knew I wanted to work for a large top-20 shareholder company in Sussex, so I wrote to every single one I found in the local newspaper. I told them I’d just finished my degree and that I was very passionate about marketing. This landed me a job at Ericsson, writing content for the company newsletter, organizing events, and managing the company database. It was all very traditional marketing.

I then went on to work for a string of technology companies: Demovo, Cable & Wireless, British Telecom, EMEAR, and Tandberg, who got acquired by Cisco. I’ve worked at Cisco for nine years and have been in a variety of roles, including running the segment marketing, leading partner marketing, communications, product marketing, and campaigns.

You need to find your advocates. People buy from people, they don't buy from companies.

Faith Wheller, Marketing Director, Cisco

Cisco has been vocal about wanting to become a marketing company. How have you established the influence of the marketing department during your time there?

Marketing departments are still often seen as just being responsible for traditional marketing, like giveaways or events. What I’ve been championing at Cisco over the years is how marketing can show value, offer much more than just basic services, and be an equal partner to sales. For instance, by giving account-based insights about how to grow and penetrate and showing the value of digital marketing through demonstrating the metrics, data, and ROI behind all activity.

I strive to achieve these relationships and ensure marketing has a seat at the table with the sales team - planning and working together on a strategy, rather than marketing being an afterthought. Sales can’t do their job without marketing, and vice versa.

Things are starting to change with marketing and sales (leaning toward a low-touch or no-touch approach), but the importance of planning together and owning shared goals and objectives is critical to success. When we identify what these business priorities are, we can work out the sales strategy and marketing tactics that are required.

What challenges have you faced establishing influence as a woman in tech? What advice would you give other women?

As we know, IT and tech is very male-dominated. However, marketing tends to be more female-dominated, which is the case at Cisco. The main challenges have always been the way women are perceived in marketing, in a sales-dominated organization.

I think personal branding is very important for women in business, and in tech in general. It’s all about building relationships with others - be informative and share your opinion with confidence. It comes down to showing your credibility and authority by feeling proud of who you are.

You also need to amplify your presence - have a voice across social media and become a thought-leader in certain areas. Grow your own network via LinkedIn and by blogging, and also be able to speak eloquently in both internal and external events. Being seen as a real thought-leader in your expertise of choice is the most important thing.

Marketing is all about influencing people’s behavior - how do you shape strategies to do that?

You need to find your advocates. People buy from people, they don't buy from companies. Finding those customers or other relationships (influencers, consultants, analysts) and being able to connect with them is crucial. Creating this joint relationship that's beneficial to both parties is really important.

Cisco has an advocacy program with over 4000 advocates around the world. This program was built to connect people, allowing customers and prospects to share their stories with each other. This is really important in reaching new customers because they don’t want to listen to Cisco telling the story, they’d rather hear it from their peers.