29th Annual

Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals

International Conference & Exhibition
May 5-8, 2014 | Orlando, FL

Session:

War Rooms at Cisco Intelligence, Sales, and Market Share

Track 1B

Presenter:

Chuck Martini
Senior Manager, War Rooms
Cisco

Date:
Time:

May 7, 2014
2pm

Session Abstract:
Chuck Martini of Cisco gives an introduction to what a war room is, and how it can benefit sales,
analysis, and engineering/design.
Cisco has approximately 40,000 sales people throughout its various global offices and business
units. Through everyday deals and bids, these individuals obtain various pieces of intelligence
and other know-how on industry competitors, their product offerings, and/or the clients. The
war room positions itself as the hub for reporting and obtaining shared data on competitors and
deals from within the company.
For example, if you ask a sales team member why they won a deal, theyll usually point to having
an established relationship with the client. If you ask them why they lost the deal, theyll usually
say it was due to price. However, thats typically not true. Other factors play into why a deal is
won or lost. In efforts to capture that pertinent data, the war room acts as a tactical function in
the process of extracting and aggregating deal intelligence from sales team members, internal
company employees, and external business contacts.
Findings and insights can be drawn from the sales force with general questions such as:
How did you win the client? Who are your sales counterparts out in the field? What factor made
the difference in winning or losing a deal?
Moreover, the war room typically encounters about 3-5% of all the toughest opportunities lost
to a competitor. These deals are self-selected as the hardest fought campaigns. If a sales team
calls for help with one of these tough cases, its usually because the answer cant be found
anywhere else its something new thats not anywhere in their extensive sales training nor in
any intelligence documentation. In this instance, when a war room can learn how to turn the
difficult deals into a win, then they have a direction on how to move forward with similar future
deals.

29th Annual

Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals

International Conference & Exhibition
May 5-8, 2014 | Orlando, FL

Take Away: What is a War Room?

A war room is typically comprised of a small group of experts focusing on ones key competitors.
A war room is competitive intelligence in action. It is a highly leveraged model of experts with
two main jobs: deal support followed by deal analysis.
In a war room, 80% of the job is deal support primarily serving the sales team, and helping them
win the deal. Sales members and/or account managers contact the war room for assistance in
gaining an edge over the competition. The war room provides information that is based on the
tribal knowledge and experience of their managers and other professionals from within the
organization. Following deal support, 20% of the job is in deal analysis and creating a quarterly
analysis report available to all company employees.
Best Practice(s):
The primary output of the war room is 1) to help the account teams win their deals, and 2) to
create the quarterly reports on latest intelligence findings including deal analysis, Win/Loss
scenarios, and predicting market share. Most reports these days are created modularly, and each
section is based on the requirements of the related departments, i.e. a section for marketing,
engineering, executives, etc.
Action Item(s) to Implement:
While in the process of providing data and information to the sales team in the field, this
is a good opportunity to solicit new competitive intelligence from them.
A war room fosters a more proactive model in uncovering and sharing competitive
intelligence within the company and its business units. Some steps include an increase in
account reviews, and help with end-of-the-year account planning.
Notes:
At Cisco, a single war room manager handled approximately 30-40 new deals per quarter. They
were handling an active count of a 1,000 deals at any given time.

29th Annual

Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals

International Conference & Exhibition
May 5-8, 2014 | Orlando, FL

Take Away: Guide to starting and staffing a War Room

Best Practice(s):
A war room can start as a joint function of the marketing, engineering, and/or sales team(s). One
of the first steps in building a successful war room is obtaining a head count from each
department involved. In other words, have each department recruit 1-2 people to move into the
war room. These individuals need to be full-time war room staff. Part-time designations never
work in this position because the responsibilities of the full-time position typically get prioritized
above the part-time duties. Therefore, the war room team is set-up for failure.
A typical war room ideally consists of two (2) war room experts or managers, one (1) CI analyst,
and possibly an engineer to tear apart the competitors product or service offerings.
These professionals analyze and look for trends and patterns within the data provided. They also
pull apart the competitors solutions in efforts to see how they measure up; to compare
specifications; and to determine how best to attack their weaknesses. They also promote the war
room as an interdisciplinary touchstone for all other departments to confer and/or compare data
and research. They allow the data itself to tell the story, and then convey their findings through
deal support and/or deal analysis reports.
Action Item(s) to Implement:
Up to two (2) war room experts should be assigned per war room. These experts should
have access and/or authority to inquire and engage with various departments.
Have a war room assigned to each competitor or focused industry.
Live or captured data must be nominalized.
Develop Win/Loss scenario analysis reports for each quarter close.
Use quarter analysis reports to predict market share trends.

Notes:
Within two quarters, Cisco had its war room functioning and running efficiently.
By using its quarter analysis reports, Cisco consistently predicted accurate market share gains or
loses based on the Win/Loss analysis per quarter close dollar value.

29th Annual

Strategic and Competitive Intelligence Professionals

International Conference & Exhibition
May 5-8, 2014 | Orlando, FL

Take Away: Feedback from War Rooms

Best Practice(s): The war room fosters the best competitive analysis environment and
organizational culture model for the CI industry. War rooms bolster the use of documentation,
tracking tools, and content aggregation web portals, which lends to the capturing of critical inhouse knowledge.
When confronted with fierce competition, the data and insight provided by the war room experts
and CI analysts continues to be highly valuable to the sales teams in the field, and crucial to
winning the deal. The war room is one of the top five attributes that helps Cisco and its sales
teams continue to be highly successful.
Implementing a war room as a CI function has proven to be profitable for Cisco; and unlike other
CI measures, it can be linked to a dollar value. In the fiscal year of 2012, Ciscos war room
generated $1.7 billion, and produced a 6.6% increase in revenue. Sales attributed nearly 50% of
the deals win to the war rooms expertise; and on average, each manager brought in $46 million.
Action Item(s) to Implement:
Capture intelligence from sales team at the time that the deal closes.
Develop analysis reports every quarter to reflect the added value in using war room
Have the sales team and other company disciplines share about what the war room does
and how their experts can bring added value to their efforts.
Remind the staff that the war room provides a safe place for sales force members to
report losses without fear of disclosure or reprimand. This provides a more accurate
number on losses for executives.

Notes:
The war room has a key function that helps sale teams win deals and put money back in their
pockets. Leverage this perspective to solicit more intelligence from the sales team.

Final Thought:
For years, Cisco has successfully implemented a war room concept and model by creating an
internal CI hub for its organizations use and improvement. The war room works with all of the
modes of intelligence collection within a company, and creates a competitive nexus that brings
to the CI key the purest analysts functions. This move continues to bring benefits in the form
of dollar value in deal wins, and savings in collaborative research within the company.