Walk into ten different MSPs, and you’ll find ten different ideas of what a vCIO should be.
Some lean sales. Some lean account management. Some lean business consultant. And there’s a real debate in our industry about which profile is right.
I believe a vCIO needs to be deeply technical.
What the client actually wants
When a client sits down with your vCIO, think about what they’re there for.
They’re not there to have their own business explained back to them. They know their business better than you ever will and if there’s context you’re missing, they can fill you in on the spot.
What they can’t do is understand the technology. That’s the entire reason they hired an MSP.
So what they want from that seat across the table is a genuine expert. Someone who understands technology. Someone who can explain the risks, how they connect, and what actually matters. Someone who can look at where their business is going and tell them what’s smart, what’s dangerous, and what’s a waste of money.
The expert you call in every other field
Think about the other professionals you rely on.
When you call your lawyer, you don’t want someone with a surface understanding of the law who’s great at building rapport. You want someone deep in the details who knows the case law, sees the risks you can’t, and gives you an answer you can actually trust.
Same with your accountant. Same with any advisor worth paying for.
You want the expert.
Your clients feel exactly the same way about technology. When they’re making decisions about cybersecurity, infrastructure, AI, and where to invest, they want to talk to someone who genuinely understands these areas.
Technical, but a generalist
The best vCIO isn’t the specialist who goes three layers deep on one firewall vendor. It’s the strong generalist, someone who understands cybersecurity, infrastructure, cloud, AI, and how all of it fits together, and can translate it into what it means for the client’s business.
For us, our best vCIOs come from our strongest technical people. People who have real depth and credibility, and who can speak to the full technology picture with authority. That combination is what makes a client lean in and trust the advice.
Yes, this person is hard to find
I won’t pretend this profile is easy to hire.
Someone who is both deeply technical and a strong communicator is rare. That’s exactly why we don’t ask them to do everything.
We pair the technical vCIO with an account manager who handles the operational and relationship logistics. That partnership lets the vCIO stay in their lane: being the expert. It’s the same reason we push so hard on protecting their time for what only they can do.
Why it matters
At the end of the day, the technical vCIO is what earns the client’s confidence.
It’s what reassures them they made the right call. It’s what turns your MSP from a vendor into a trusted advisor, the people they call before making any decision that touches technology.
That trust comes from expertise. From the client knowing, without a doubt, that the person advising them actually understands what they’re talking about.
Get the technical profile right, and everything else in the relationship gets easier.
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.
