Many MSPs that do strategic planning show up with a list of projects. Replace these switches, migrate that server, roll out this tool.
What turns a list into a plan is goals. A handful of overarching objectives that give the projects a reason to exist and show the client where you’re taking them over the next few years. That’s the difference between handing a client a shopping list and painting them a picture of the future.
Why goals matter
When you present goals, you’re telling the client something important: we have a direction for you. We’re not just reacting to what breaks. We’re bringing you somewhere.
That’s exactly what a client wants from a trusted advisor. Projects answer “what are we doing.” Goals answer “why, and where is this heading.” The second question is the one that earns the relationship.
Goals also give every project a home. Instead of a client looking at a line item and wondering why they’re spending the money, they see it sitting under a goal they understand and care about. The spend stops looking like a cost and starts looking like progress toward something.
Keep it to three to five
My recommendation: three to five goals, maximum.
Fewer than three and it doesn’t feel like a real direction. More than five and you’ve lost the plot. The whole point of a goal is that it’s overarching. It’s an arc that ties things together. If you have ten of them, they’re not goals anymore, they’re just a longer list.
Three to five objectives, each with the projects and initiatives that ladder up to it. That’s a plan a client can actually hold in their head and get behind.
Where goals come from
Good goals come from three places.
From the client. This is the most important source. In your strategic meeting, the client tells you where they’re going. They want to minimize the risk of downtime. They need stronger data privacy and confidentiality. They want to better utilize 365. These become goals, and your job is to build the roadmap that gets them there.
From you, the MSP. Some goals come from you, applied across your whole base. Maybe you’ve decided every client should be properly prepared for a cyber incident, so you’re building an incident response plan for each of them. That’s a goal you bring to the client, not one they asked for, and it’s a great way to raise the bar for everyone you serve.
Specific to one client. Some goals are unique to a single client’s situation. A client with a production environment where downtime is expensive might get a goal around redundancy and uptime, with projects like redundant switches in the plant and UPS units to back them up. Nobody else in your base has that goal, and that’s exactly the point. It shows the client you understand their business.
The shift for vCIOs
If you’re a vCIO building these plans, this is the mindset change.
Don’t just assemble initiatives. Start with the overarching goals, the ones that form an arc over the next few years, and let the projects flow from there. Some goals span multiple years. Some are one-year goals. Either way, they’re the structure the whole plan hangs on.
When you present it that way, the client isn’t looking at a pile of disconnected work. They’re looking at a direction, with the proof of how you’ll get them there.
The takeaway
Projects tell a client what you’re doing. Goals tell them where you’re taking them.
Lead with three to five goals, pull them from the client, from your own standards, and from what each client uniquely needs, and let every project ladder up to one of them.
This is a plan worth getting excited about.
Simon is the President of S3 Technologies, a leading Canadian MSP he co-founded in 2003. He built and scaled the vCIO team which eventually lead to him co-founding Propel Your MSP in 2018 to help MSPs with their vCIO services.
