Motion one: existing customers, on a cadence

An account manager brings you into a strategic review with a customer who is already on a managed service agreement and already paying well for it. The shape is almost always the same, and it's worth memorising because it's the single most repeatable piece of work in the role:

1. Here's where the market is going — the direction of travel, independent of them
2. Here are the controls or capabilities you should have — the target state
3. Here's where you actually are today — the honest current state
4. Here's the plan to close the gap — three, six, twelve months, sequenced and costed

You are not selling a product in that meeting. You're selling a direction, and the right to define one is precisely what the customer's monthly fee has been buying. The project work follows from the roadmap rather than from a pitch — which is why this motion converts so much better than cold selling, and why the strategic review is the highest‑leverage hour in the MSP calendar.

The commercial frame underneath it is wallet share. These customers will not churn this quarter and are not evaluating you against anyone. The question is never "will they buy" but "what else is worth doing." An MSP that looks after one office of a five‑office business, or only the network and none of the endpoints, is standing next to an estate it isn't touching.

Motion two: new business

A BDM's cold call, an inbound enquiry, or a tender — though see Module 12 on why fewer providers chase tenders than used to. The thing to notice about cold motion is that the door‑opener is usually a topic rather than a problem — whatever the market is currently anxious about. Right now that topic is AI, and it works because it catches almost everybody: mention it and you get a meeting. The conversation that follows is then rarely about AI, which is fine. The topic bought you the room.