Kaseya Wraps Acquisition of Simplified Sales Tool, audIT

KASEYA CONNECT GLOBAL — Kaseya has completed its acquisition and integration of audIT, a SaaS-based sales presentation system developed by an MSP. The software aims to make it easier and quicker for others to create non-technical sales and business review presentations to SMB and midmarket enterprise clients.

The announcement came Tuesday at Kaseya Connect Global in Las Vegas. Channel Futures is there.

audIT’s Frank DeBenedetto

“As an MSP, I found it challenging to be able to sell technical solutions to non-technical prospects and clients,” said Frank DeBenedetto, who developed audIT while running Two River Technology Group. He is now Kaseya’s general manager, MSP sales automation.

“I realized most MSPs are not good at selling; it’s just not their forte,” he said.

Boring Sales Presentations Put Customers to Sleep

As an MSP, DeBenedetto would create what he thought were exciting sales proposals, loaded with parts and numbers and technical jargon. Most clients thought otherwise.

“When you’d go to present, you’d put them to sleep,” he said. “They didn’t understand or care about that stuff. They’d just look at the number (price) on the last page.”

DeBenedetto figured there had to be a better way than selling on price, but he couldn’t find a tool to make it easier to create sales presentations, engage the customer, close the deal, and eventually upsell and cross-sell them new solutions. So he made one.

In 2017, he began using audIT Report, a presentation platform based on emotional selling. After performing a tech assessment on the client, audIT would generate a sales presentation with a red, yellow or green circle next to the solutions the client had or needed. The report also generated simple descriptions of different technologies and solutions.

“Instead of putting them to sleep, they’re now leaning forward asking me questions, like “What does this mean?” We give them a qualitative and quantitative score. We’d say, “Our goal is to get to a 100; you’re at a 45. Most clients never had anybody present this,” he said. “We could show them where they are today so we can make that buying decision.”

audIT Boosts Two River’s Business

Two River’s revenue has more than doubled since using audIT, DeBenedetto said, attributing much of the increase to audIT. The tool also took the process of creating sales presentations from an average of five hours down to about 30 minutes.

He started off by sharing the tool with MSPs and eventually sold it to thousands of them. Kaseya will give MSPs five free licenses of audIT to its MSPs to get them started.

“MSPs have to be good at selling; otherwise, the customer doesn’t get the product or service they need,” DeBenedetto said. “We’ve empowered the MSPs and elevated the quality of IT available to the end customer. The vendors love it because they’re moving more product and services. The MSPs love it because they’re moving more product and services. And the SMBs love it because they feel good about what they’ve purchased; they feel educated and feel like they made a good buying decision.”

Now that audIT is under the Kaseya umbrella, the development team, which has given the platform the look and feel of other Kaseya products, will eventually add new automation and AI features to help MSPs gather more client data and interpret it better, DeBenedetto said.

Stay tuned for more coverage of Kaseya Connect Global all week long on Channel Futures, including a wrap-up of CEO Fred Voccola’s keynote.