What to Bring to the Virtual CEO Conversation: Three Pages From the Client's Map

A virtual CEO conversation is a regular meeting in which an MSP talks to a client's owner about the business itself, rather than the technology, covering where the time goes, what has changed and what to do next. It works when there is evidence on the table. Without it, it is an adviser's opinion, and an owner has plenty of those.

Three pages are enough. Each answers one question the owner is already asking.

Page one: where the hours go

The question is simple. Where does the time in this business actually go, and which of it should not?

Bring the processes ranked by the hours they consume, biggest first, with the handovers marked where work waits. A client's map in abi. ranks processes this way, and the point is not the list. The point is the top three, because the owner will recognise at least one of them and be surprised by another.

Say what the number is built from. The hours come from what the client's own people said in interviews, and every node on the map says where it came from. That matters in the room, because the first thing a sceptical owner asks is whose number it is. The answer "your team's, from the interviews in the spring" is hard to argue with.

Don't read the page out. Put it down and ask which of the top three they expected.

Page two: what moved since last time

The owner does not remember what you fixed in the last quarter. They remember what annoyed them, and those are different things.

Bring the before and after for anything that changed: the process as it was drawn, the process as it is now, the hours reclaimed and the handovers removed. The map keeps its own history, so this page is a comparison and not a reconstruction.

It also keeps you honest. An automation that was designed but never switched on shows as a ghost, and the process underneath still counts as manual. If the page shows a ghost, say so. A saving that is not live is not a saving, and an owner who finds that out for themselves will trust the other two pages less.

If nothing moved, say that too. A quarter in which the map did not change is information, and often it explains something the owner has been feeling.

Page three: what is next, with a price on it

The last page is the conversation the first two lead to. Bring the next opportunities, ranked, each with an estimate of what it is worth in hours a month and what it would take.

Keep it to the top three. A list of fifteen is a menu, and the owner will pick the cheapest. Three is a recommendation, and the discussion becomes which one first.

Put the value in the client's terms. Hours a month at the rates they pay, not hours at yours. The figure should be modest and checkable, and it is better to be conservative and right than impressive and wrong.

What changes in the room

With three pages, the meeting stops being about the technology. The owner is not asking how the backup went. They are asking why the quote-to-cash process has seven handovers, and whether it needs to. That is the question an owner pays a virtual CEO for.

The pages also set the agenda for the next meeting before this one ends. Whatever was top of page three becomes page one next time, with a number against it.

When the map is not ready

There is a real limit here. A map built from two interviews is a sketch, and ranking hours from a sketch gives you a confident-looking page that you cannot defend. If the map is thin, say so at the start of the meeting. Tell the owner what it covers, what it does not, and which interviews would fill the gap.

That is a better opening than a polished page with a hole in it, and it makes the case for the next piece of work on its own terms.

It also helps to be clear about what you are not. A virtual CEO conversation is not a replacement for the owner's judgement. It is the evidence they would want if they had the time to collect it. You bring the pages, they decide.

Start with one client

Don't roll this out across the book. Pick the client with the best relationship and the most to gain, build the three pages for them, and run the meeting once. The first one will teach you what to change, and it will be the easiest sale of the next one.

Afterwards, write down what the owner said, in their words, next to each page. Those notes are the opening of the next quarter's conversation, and they show the client that you listened. They also tell you which page does the most work, which is usually not the one you expected when you built them.