Image Gallery: ASCII IT SMB Success Summit

The ASCII IT SMB Success Summit in Boston, April 26-27, drew about 160 attendees — including more than 50 non-members checking out the event and organization to see if it’s a fit for their business.

ASCII is looking to grow its membership of MSPs who are looking to expand their businesses.

Channel Partners was there. Click through our image gallery for highlights and a recap.

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Gold Sponsors Autotask, Vertical Axion and CNET ChannelOnline discuss their product offerings at the pre-day event.

Autotask develops cloud-based IT business management solutions to streamline business delivery; Vertical Axion is all about web marketing for partners; and CNET ChannelOnline has a SaaS application with an e-commerce storefront that automates the sales cycle from quote to purchase order.

Also displaying their wares at the pre-day event were gold sponsors Webroot, Star2Star Communications and SolarWinds MSP.

SolarWinds MSP delivers a SaaS, cloud-based IT service management platform (ITSM); Star2Star Communications offers a hybrid cloud communications solution; and Webroot provides cloud-based cybersecurity for endpoint, mobile and web.

What are your business goals? That’s the question that ASCII Group President Jerry Koutavas posed to attendees who then wrote down their top business goals in categories such as marketing, opportunity, sales, time management, etc.

As seen on the board full of colorful sticky notes, sales is the top concern of attendees. Some specific comments: Grow MSP business; add $800,000 revenue in two years; add salesperson; more customers; determine best pricing for MSP offering; and obtain two to three new 25,000+ seat clients in the next six months.

MSP Frank DeBenedetto gives a presentation on “Closing MSP Deals Though Emotional-Based Selling.”

He shared his story about how he struggled to translate technical data from audit reports – which were touted to be such a great way to get clients – into presentations that customers could understand. The result was increased sales for his company. DeBenedetto now has a product, audIT, and teaches partners how to sell audits, upscale services and get referrals.

ASCII Group member benefits are plentiful.

The 33-year old organization offers partners tools to run their business more efficiently and has more than 70 programs. The four ASCII pillars: knowledge, savings, networking and advocacy. Here at the Boston ASCII IT SMB Success Summit, attendees were offered the opportunity to beef up their image with a professional photo.

On the general-session day of the ASCII event, partners had a couple of hours to meet with dozens of vendors in the Solution Pavilion and lunch with peers.

Pax8, the born in the cloud value-added distributor, plays up its Wingman partner theme on the Solution Pavilion floor.

The Colorado-based company also picked up the Best Distributor Award at the Boston event.

Security-focused vendors were plentiful at the ASCII event. Here, Itronis MSP Solutions by Barracuda, offers a single-source delivery of data protection and security solutions tailored to MSPs.

Frank W. Abagnale is the real-life lead character in Steven Spielberg’s 2002 movie, Catch Me If You Can – a semi-autobiographical film about a con man who committed check fraud and identity fraud and had an exceptional run from authorities from age 16 to 21.

The keynote-featured speaker, associated with the FBI for over 40 years, told his own story after years of others telling it.

Rob Rae, Datto‘s vice president of business development, hit it out of the park for the company at ASCII’s IT SMB Success Summit.

The backup, recovery and business-continuity provider picked up three awards: Best Keynote Presentation, Best Revenue Generator, and Best in Show.