6 conversations to have with clients before budget season 

Budget season doesn’t have to be another pricing negotiation with clients. Instead of sitting down ready to justify the price of your services, be proactive about budget client conversations.

MSP client conversations should happen throughout the year. They cover everything from the real cost of downtime to core infrastructure upgrades to future business goals. This way, by the time budget season arrives, clients understand the cost, leaving nothing to negotiate.

We asked MSP owners which client conversations they consider non-negotiable before heading into a new budget cycle. Here’s what they said.

1. What downtime costs

Most clients have never done the math on what an hour of downtime costs their business, so the number sits at zero in their head by default.

“I never lead with fear and I never lead with a hypothetical. I lead with math they already understand — their own. The conversation starts with one question: If your systems went down right now, for a full day, what actually happens? Not what I think, but what they think. Once they’re narrating their own outage, the cost stops being abstract.”

— Dean Lause, CEO of Argentum IT

2. How business goals shape the technology plan

Technology plans built without input from the business they’re supposed to support are plans built to be wrong. It’s vital to understand how a client’s tech needs will change. Whether you ask once a year or every few months, this MSP client conversation should be a priority.

“The first question is never about the technology, it’s where the business is going in the next 12 to 18 months. You’d be surprised how often the client hasn’t articulated all of their strategy to their MSP. They assume it’s not our lane. However, there’s almost always a tech component that’s been overlooked. Tech should follow the business plan, not the other way around.”

— Natalia Scheidegger, CEO of 3rdmill Pty

“These clients can’t connect a business change to a technology need. So if we don’t ask, nobody asks. I ask, then I take that information back and build it into the roadmap – not as a sales document but as a plan. It says ‘here’s what your environment needs to look like six months before you need it.’”

—Lause

3. The risks of aging infrastructure

End-of-life systems are easy conversations to avoid. They are even easier to mess up. If brought up wrong, it reads as a sales pitch. Brought up correctly, in a way that flags it as a real risk makes it easier.

“Microsoft, VMware and hardware manufacturers publish these dates publicly. I’m not the one deciding a server or an OS is old, the vendor is. Where it avoids feeling like a pitch is in the framing: I’m not saying buy this now. I’m saying here’s the date this stops receiving security patches, here’s what breaks or becomes a compliance exposure after that date, and here’s the lead time we’d need if you decide to replace it.”

—Lause

“I don’t say this is end of life, I say here’s the risk you’re carrying, here’s how long the runway is, and here’s what it means for the goals you told me about. The client doesn’t care about the server is old, they care what about the exposure. I’ll also be honest when something has life left in it and doesn’t need replacing yet. The moment a client believes you’ll tell them not to spend, they trust you when you say they should.”

—Scheidegger

4. Hesitation about cybersecurity

Hesitation around security spending comes from a few places: clients who don’t think they’re a target, are unsure about quotes or don’t understand what the risk costs them. Documentation of earlier conversations and quotes is an effective tool to close the knowledge gap, especially when clients can revisit them at will.

“Every migration, every solution, comes with an equivalent risk and it’s not up to the IT partner to decide if that’s an acceptable risk or not – that’s the customer’s choice. It is important to clearly articulate the risk and have a good process for documenting and acknowledging the risk. We put previously quoted and rejected solutions in a different column in our account management meetings, so it’s visible to the customer. Sometimes they’ve even come back and asked us about it, and they’ve subsequently adopted it once they were ready.”

—Scheidegger

“On ‘we’re too small to be a target’ — I point to what’s publicly documented: Threat actors increasingly target smaller businesses precisely because they tend to be under-defended. I document the recommendation, the risk and their decision in writing, and revisit it in the next review. Sometimes the client needs to hear from their insurance broker or their biggest customer before it lands. My job is to make sure they hear it clearly from us first.”

—Lause

5. When disaster recovery planning starts

Disaster recovery and business continuity planning conversations are easiest to have before anything goes wrong. What is harder is getting the clients to actively participate in creating the disaster recovery plan.

“In every new client relationship, DR/BC [disaster recover/business continuity] planning is part of onboarding, not an upsell we introduce later because the worst time to design a recovery plan is during a recovery. That means we ask business-first questions before we ever talk backup software. Those answers drive the technical plan rather than us handing them a generic backup schedule and calling it a DR plan. Getting them to actually do a tabletop exercise is a tougher sell because it takes their time, not their money “

—Lause

“We have templates we send to customers, but we never write it for them. Not only because customers need to “own” these policies, but [also] in preparing them, they start to ask questions about what systems are actually in place. They often find the gaps themselves, and we respond with a way to close them.”

—Scheidegger

6. The budget conversation

Budget conversations get uncomfortable when a client’s number doesn’t match what the MSP believes the business needs. But it’s not up to the MSP to decide what risks the client is willing to take. Once again, documentation is an powerful tool for these MSP client conversations.

“I separate what we recommend from what they decide, and I make sure that separation is documented, not just implied in conversation. I put that in writing. Not as a legal cover, but because in six months, if something goes wrong that we flagged, that conversation needs to be something both of us can point back to as an informed decision. I’ve found clients actually respect that more than a salesperson who just says ‘yes’ to whatever budget they hand over. It’s the difference between being a vendor and an advisor.”

—Lause

“If the money doesn’t stretch to everything, we prioritize ruthlessly and I’m clear about what we’re choosing not to do and what risk that leaves on the table. Then it’s their informed decision, not my omission. I’d rather lose a deal being honest than win one I’ll be apologizing for in 18 months.”

—Scheidegger

Proactive MSP client conversations

Being proactive when it comes to MSP client conversations keeps budget conversations from becoming another negotiation. Closing the client knowledge gap means discussing everything from potential risks to goals throughout the year so you don’t spend budget season justifying the price of your services. Instead, you become a trusted partner with your clients.

“Proactive isn’t a campaign you run in budget season. It’s a posture you hold all year. If your clients only hear strategy from you in Q4, you’re a vendor they budget around and not a partner they plan with. The conversations that matter around growth, risk and where the business is headed should happen in the quiet months, too. Do that, and budget season stops being negotiation and starts being a formality.”

—Scheidegger

Now that you are ready for budget season, learn more about the best ways to handle slow season and busy season. Read Seasonality isn’t the problem. Panic is.