You've delivered your first TSM. Now let's make the next one better.
This collection is about what makes TSMs actually work: the conversations you have, the data you bring, and the tools that support both.
Start with the business, not the technology
The most effective TSMs start with a business conversation. Before you open a single report or look at a single data point, you should understand what your client is trying to accomplish as a business. What are their goals for the year? Where are they trying to grow? What's keeping them up at night?
When you tie technology recommendations back to real business goals, clients pay attention and take action. "We recommend upgrading your firewall" gets a shrug. "Your goal is to open a second location by Q3 — here's the infrastructure that needs to be in place to support that" gets attention and a budget. When technology recommendations exist in a vacuum, they get ignored.
At the same time, your MSP has its own standards, best practices, and stack preferences — and those matter too. A standardized technology stack is easier for your engineers to support, more efficient to procure, simpler to monitor, and gives your clients a more stable IT experience. One of Strategy Overview's superpowers is helping you drive that standardization across your client base.
The good news is that these two things aren't in conflict. When you recommend that a client move to your standard firewall platform, that's good for the client (better security, faster support response, proven reliability) and good for your MSP (easier to manage, more consistent service delivery, better margins). A great TSM finds these win-win outcomes naturally. The project revenue and recurring revenue that fall out of this process are a byproduct of doing excellent vCIO work — not the goal itself, but an important part of what fuels your business.
Strategy Overview includes a Goals template in the marketplace to help structure the business side of this conversation. We'll cover how to set that up later in this collection. For now, make it a habit: understand what the client is trying to accomplish, align your recommendations with those objectives, and let the technology conversation flow from there.
Know who you're talking to
Every client relationship is different. A small 10-person company might have one point of contact who handles everything — strategic decisions, day-to-day IT, and budget approvals. A larger client might have a leadership team, an IT director, and a facilities manager who all care about different things. There's no single right way to structure your TSM audience. What matters is that you're thoughtful about who's in the room and what you're showing them.
As clients get larger, you're more likely to have different points of contact in the relationship. A good approach is to have a core technology strategy group that you meet with regularly, and then invite or adjust attendance depending on what's on the agenda. Some topics need the CEO in the room. Some don't.
The key principle is this: if you have executives in the meeting, keep the conversation strategic. Goals, business direction, high-level IT health, budget priorities, major initiatives — that's where executives belong and where the real value of a TSM lives. If you're walking through workstation replacement lists with a CEO, they're not coming back next quarter.
When the conversation needs to shift into tactical details — which workstations to replace, specific configurations to address, implementation timelines — that can be a separate meeting with a more tactical contact, or you can handle it after the strategic portion. It's perfectly fine to say "we've covered the big-picture items — I know you're busy, so feel free to drop off and I'll work through the details with your IT lead." That's not a failure. That's respecting your audience.
There's a lot more to explore around meeting structure and executive engagement as your process matures. For now, the principle is simple: know who's in the room and make sure what you're showing them is worth their time.
What this collection covers
The rest of this collection walks through the platform features that power your TSMs:
Technology data: where it comes from, how to organize it, and how it shows up in your Reports
Assessments: grading your client's IT environment, using tags to focus, and working with Health Scores
Goals: capturing your client's business objectives and using them to frame your TSM
IT Plans: building strategic initiatives and tracking projects over time
Roadmap and Budget: turning your recommendations into a financial conversation
Report structure: configuring parts, customizing layout, and generating output
Each of these supports the conversations described above. The technology data gives you facts. The Assessment gives you a framework. Goals keep the conversation grounded in business outcomes. The IT Plan gives you direction. The Roadmap and Budget give you a financial story. And the Report brings it all together into one deliverable you can walk through with your client.