Erin Figer: From Partner Center to Pipeline

Chip Rodgers  0:01  
Hey everyone, Chip Rodgers, we are here at day two. Day two. I can't believe it. Time is flying so fast. It's Friday, and we're here in Seattle. Actually, we're not in Seattle. We're in red Redmond

Erin Figer  0:14  
campus and building 33 building 33 in the

Chip Rodgers  0:18  
conference center, and that's a beautiful facility. It's just been a great day and a half. Honestly,

Erin Figer  0:23  
it's my first time in the conference center. Trip. Is it your first time in the conference it is. It is, I've been on campus and been in many buildings, but yet, this is my first time in building 33 Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  0:35  
that's crazy. So, and just the beautiful campus, just driving around, you know, it's just, it's just a wonderful, like,

Erin Figer  0:43  
we are getting the mountains been out the last two days, which is, like, beautiful,

Chip Rodgers  0:49  
Yeah, crazy. So, so I'm so excited to be joined by Aaron feiger. Aaron is CEO of core consulting, and, oh my gosh, Aaron is just an encyclopedia of Microsoft knowledge. If you want to work with Microsoft, if you want to co sell with Microsoft, work with lit, you know, getting listed on the marketplace, getting, you know, transactions on the marketplace and and building your business with Microsoft, you got to talk to Aaron So, Aaron as So, currently, as I said, currently, CEO of core consulting. You were also, for maybe two or three years, were with tackle and VP of CO sell, which was just a great experience as well. Prior to that, Aaron was had actually had core consulting for about 10 years, helping partners be successful with Microsoft and so. So welcome. Thanks

Erin Figer  1:56  
for having me. I'm excited. This is my first time being on one of your podcasts. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  2:00  
yeah. So, So Aaron, tell us a little bit, maybe bring us up to speed on where what you know what you're doing these days with core consulting. Everyone's

Erin Figer  2:10  
like, what are you doing? Aaron, so it's kind of like core consulting version two. Dot. I started core back in 2013 to help Microsoft partners really operationalize and scale all the great partner programs and tools. And along the way, Microsoft launched co sell, a more programmatic at scale way to engage with their sellers. And so we came out with one of the first co sell managed service offerings started helping prove could co sell be effective in your Microsoft partnership strategy, and we proved it could, and grew this whole thing. And it's crazy now to think that, like, people say, I was a pioneer in CO sell, and I was like, I guess I was, but I didn't. You were mean to do it. It just kind of happened. So it's kind of cool to be a pioneer of CO sell. I've seen all the clouds launch their CO style programs, and have helped some of the largest ISVs build out their CO Sal operations and strategy as a component of their overall go to market strategy with their cloud partners, we ended up building a software platform because back in 2018 like that wasn't A thing yet, and so we needed to operationalize our own business so that we could continue to drive really high quality engagements with our partners. So we built the one of the very first APIs in the partner center. And we actually built it low code, no code, using dynamics app and power, bi and power automate. So it was 100% Microsoft built solution, and we managed, at any given year, 20 to 25% of all of Microsoft's approved co sell wins in the US were running through our API with the only a dozen ISVs could do, 20 to 25% of all of Microsoft co sell.

Chip Rodgers  4:02  
Talk about 8020 or 9010 right? Yeah, 100% it was that

Erin Figer  4:05  
8020 rule big time. And then we saw our customers saying, Hey, can you help us operationalize marketplace? Now that marketplace is maturing, and now we're ready to really co sell and marketplace, and have both of these components in our partnership strategy. And I was like, Oh, I don't know if I really want to do that. And so I kind of watched marketplace growing up, and I kind of was watching tackle and what they were doing, and just waiting for the right opportunity where our customers were asking for these things to come together. We were maturing as a company and becoming from like a services company to a managed services company to a software company. It was like Microsoft playbook. And, you know, I was at a pivotal point where I had to decide, do I turn the company into a software company and start to compete with big companies like work, span and tackle and the others? Yeah, or do I join forces? And also, at the time being, had another single parent raising two girls. I every time someone would say, you should go get money. You're a female like software, people will throw money at you. I was like, oh, man, that sounds like a lot of work. It sounds like time away from my girls. It sounds like time away from my customers, and I just didn't want to sacrifice that time. So had great conversations, a lot of synergy with tackle, and we decided to join forces in November of 2022, and bring the two companies together. I spent the last two years helping kind of integrate co sell, integrate our team and our customers, and really help build out tackles go to market platform and that CO sell component in there. So been a lot of fun, but I think the entrepreneur in me was like, I want to keep helping all partner types, not just ISVs that have a SaaS solution. So it was time to kind of step away from tackle full time and go back to my roots of listening to partners, trying to understand, how are they trying to go to market, and how can I help them, maybe just optimize or tweak or, you know, improve their go to market strategy so that they can get the most out of that partnership.

Chip Rodgers  6:25  
Well, you've done that with so many customers, right? With so many of your customers, so many Microsoft partners, Aaron, tell tell us, like, maybe just a few tips. And I know, like I said, You're like an encyclopedia. So we could go on for a couple of hours here, but maybe a few tips for for partners that want to really be successful with Microsoft, and get you know, sort of get get going, get get really started and and what are some things that they should

Erin Figer  6:58  
Well, we had a great session yesterday, navigating Microsoft. It was not recorded, so you kind of had to be here to see it. But I invited some other powerhouses to help me, so Leanne Campbell and Jen Weiss and Ashley Vanguard and myself, we all took this topic of navigating Microsoft and really broke it down. And I think a couple of the key components to this is one partner center isn't a checklist of things you have to go do. It is actually how you activate your go to market strategy, how you begin to brand your company, who you are, what you do, and how you start to sell with Microsoft as a whole, through their marketplace, through their people, using their programs, using their investments, reinvesting the incentive money back into your strategy, and like really thinking about, how am I activating my partnership and brand inside of partner center is number one, Number two, really understanding how Microsoft engages with the partner community through that MSM methodology. And we did a really fun exercise of, like, Who's Who in the zoo, and we took all these acronyms and we showed you, know, Jay McBain talks about the seven partners that are involved in your every in every deal, we talked about, like, the seven different Microsoft Teams that you're going to come across to help support you in your co sell journey, whether it's for a specific customer or customer segmentation, and how to identify those seven Microsoft Teams that can support you both from what you're selling and who the customer is, kind of comes together to build that picture, and then we showed them how to do account planning and territory planning to kind of full circle everything together.

Chip Rodgers  8:48  
That's so that's a lot. It

Erin Figer  8:52  
was a lot. It was so funny. We had somebody a shout out to mark Monday, because he was like, that was an amazing session. And Vince was like, yeah, it was like a $10,000 session. And Mark was like, No, that was like a $50,000 session in 45 minutes.

Chip Rodgers  9:05  
Yeah, that's incredible. And so, I mean, so you've got the so understanding partner center, first of all, and what the power is with partner center, understanding, who are the organizations, who you're going to connect with, how they sell, who you're going to engage with, yeah. And then the and then the process, yeah, yeah, yeah,

Erin Figer  9:30  
the all three of those pieces. And then it all depends on the type of partner you are, what you're trying to sell, and the market space you're trying to sell into, yeah.

Chip Rodgers  9:42  
Like I said, we could go on for a long time. So what, you know, we're here at ultimate partner, great event. Vince always runs, you know, terrific events. What were your objectives for coming here? What's, what are you getting out of? You know. Being here

Erin Figer  10:00  
today, one of my objectives is always to help, like, give back and continue to help educate and elevate everyone so that we all can just do better together. So really just coming to knowledge, share experience, share I also want to learn from my peers. I always learn something new, and then I really wanted to hear from the Microsoft executives on what are the big things to be thinking about in FY 26 and then, personally, it's always a good like reminder that I need to be customer zero myself and figure out how to take time to really learn these new technologies, the AI agents, the agentic AI, all of these things, is like, Okay, how do I start to be customer zero and bring that into my personal and my work life, so that I have my own stories to talk about and really see where things are going and the potential of where it could go. That's fantastic in this experimental phase of like, what am I going to do next? What does core 2.0 look like? So, you know, taking that time to keep experimenting and hearing and listening and learning. Yeah,

Chip Rodgers  11:11  
that's fantastic. That's great. Well, Aaron, thank you so much for spending some having me, yeah, and just always, love. You know, hearing what you I told you this story last time in Dallas, I think you get, you gave a session on CO sell, right? And I thought it was maybe like a half hour, 45 minute session. And so you were, you were going, and then I had a, I had a meeting set up, sort of in the middle. And so I was, I was watching for like half hour, and I stepped out, and like, a half hour later, I come back and you were still going strong. I was like, Oh my gosh, you know, Aaron can just like, literally, you got so much knowledge on CO sell that it's always great talking with

Erin Figer  11:56  
you. Fun session. We had 75 minutes to try and teach you how to take eight ways to activate your go to market strategy inside a partner center. And I was like, Okay, go.

Chip Rodgers  12:09  
That's fantastic. So Thanks, Aaron. I really appreciate you taking the time, and thank you all for joining again, and we'll see you next time. Thanks everybody. You.

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