Cisco's Chambers Makes His Presence Known

I just can't get to every vendor's annual worldwide channel event anymore or I'd be on the road 24x7, which I guess wouldn't mean that much more travel than my current schedule requires. I still attend most of the events—just not every one, every year.

ROBERT FALETRA Can be reached via e-mail at rfaletra@cmp.com.

I did make it to Cisco's worldwide partner conference last week in Las Vegas.

While in some ways these events often seem very similar, there are always some real differences if you look hard enough. In Cisco's case, that difference is particularly large and apparent, namely the level of participation by the company's top executive. Cisco Chairman and CEO John Chambers is somewhat unique in that he does more than fly in, step out from behind a curtain, give an inspiring speech and fly back out on a private jet.

Now don't get me wrong. If that was the extent of his participation, it already would be substantially more than some other chief executives of some very large corporations that I've named on more than one occasion in this column. What Chambers does better than almost every other high-tech CEO is work his partner event hard from start to finish. It sounds ridiculous that there would be any question about this, but I'm always amazed at how little time some other CEOs spend at the gathering of what often amounts to the biggest collection of its sales force all year.

In the case of Cisco, solution providers account for 80 percent of the company's sales revenue, so there is little question as to their influence. Ironically, that's also true of some of those other companies, but apparently the CEOs don't see the efficiency and importance of spending a few days in one place and meeting with hundreds if not thousands of the most important partners they have. Partners who clearly want to engage with the company or they wouldn't be there.

Chambers, in contrast, was in the front row of the audience at the opening keynote delivered by Cisco's worldwide channel chief, Keith Goodwin. He followed that up with dozens of meetings with a host of different partners over the next two days before closing the conference with his own keynote, the highlights of which you can read about on ChannelWeb.com (and click here to see a video Q&A with Chambers).

So why does Chambers believe it's important to attend and work the entire event? Is it because he truly believes what he says about the value of his channel partners? Is it because of the incredible efficiency he gets by having access to many of his top partners in one place over a few days? Is it because he doesn't have anything better to do?

I can only speculate, but regardless, the more important question is why some other CEOs don't do the same. By the way, I'll let you know what some of the others do after I roll through their events in the coming weeks.

Which high-tech CEOs get it in your book?
Make something happen by e-mailing CMP Channel Group President Robert Faletra at rfaletra@cmp.com.