Ideal Profiles Toolkit

If you haven’t already, review the Ideal Profiles Philosophy page before starting. It explains the mindset behind this workshop and how to think through the MiM™ lens when guiding your client.

Timing & Participation

Workshop: 5 of 6
Duration: 60 minutes
Led by: MiM™ Architect
Participants: CEO/President/Owner + full leadership team

Ideal Profiles cannot be designated by a single function or perspective. They emerge from shared pattern recognition across leadership—drawing on firsthand experience with customers who have compounded value over time.

The CEO, President, and leadership team each hold different pieces of the relationship history. When they participate together, those perspectives converge into a clear, authoritative view of which relationships the business is truly built to serve.

Step 2. Review the Teach Deck

• Open the Quick Start™ - Ideal Profiles Teach deck in Canva
• Use Presenter View to review your speaking notes
• Practice transitions
• Focus on flow, not memorization

Your goal is to be fluent in what this session is designed to surface. By the end of the conversation, you should have enough clarity to complete an Ideal Profiles Playbook page with confidence.

Step 3. Review & Prep Answers

Your preparation for this step centers on grounding yourself in the customer examples the client shared ahead of the workshop.

Add the name and logo of each customer to your Working Whiteboard. Then, use ZoomInfo to gather baseline firmographic context for each relationship. At a minimum, aim to capture:

• Company name and logo
• Headquarters location
• Revenue range
• Employee count
• Core products or services
• Primary industry or vertical

This information does not define why a relationship worked, but it can inform your questioning during the session. In some cases, firmographic factors may surface meaningful patterns; in others, they may not. Document them anyway so insights can emerge through discussion rather than assumption.

The goal is to enter the workshop with enough context to guide the conversation confidently—keeping the focus on relationship dynamics while allowing supporting details to sharpen clarity where relevant.

Teach

Time: ~10-15 minutes
Lead: MiM™ Architect

The Teach deck exists to align the client on what you’re listening for during the discussion. It sets the frame so leaders understand how to think about their best relationships and what kind of insight will move the conversation forward.

Once you complete the teaching portion, exit Presenter Mode and switch to the client's Working Whiteboard to start the Gather portion.

Gather

Time: ~45–50 minutes
Lead: MiM™ Architect

This portion of the workshop is about guiding the leadership team through shared narration and reflection. Your role is to help the group tell the story of their strongest customer relationships, and listen for what consistently made those relationships work.

You can open the session with framing like:

“Before our session, you shared the names of some of your strongest or longest-standing customers. Let's walk through those relationships - how they started, how they grew, what made them work, and where they are today.”

From there, move through each customer one at a time. Keep the conversation grounded in lived experience. Ask leaders to speak to what actually happened, not what they assume or wish were true.

Core Prompts to Guide the Conversation

Use these questions to help leaders narrate each relationship:

• How did this relationship begin?
• What problem were they trying to solve at the time?
• What made momentum build quickly—or slowly?
• What has kept this relationship intact over time?
• Where has friction shown up, if at all?
• How does this customer interact with your team today?

Your goal is not to rush to conclusions, but to surface detail that reveals patterns.

When Leaders Don’t Have the Full History

If someone says, “I don’t actually know how this started—it was before my time,” respond with curiosity, not correction.

You might say:

• “Have you personally interacted with this account?”
• “From what you’ve seen, what makes this relationship advantageous?”
• “What feels different about how this customer engages compared to others?”

Firsthand experience matters more than perfect recall.

Drawing in Multiple Perspectives

Actively invite input across functions to test assumptions and enrich the picture.

For example:

• “Sales is describing this as a great relationship. From an operations standpoint, how does this account behave?”
• “Finance perspective—do they pay on time? Are there any recurring issues?”
• “From delivery’s point of view, does this customer make the work easier or harder?”

Differences in perspective are valuable. Let them surface before trying to reconcile them.

Your Facilitation Focus

• Keep the discussion narrative, not evaluative
• Ask follow-up questions that deepen understanding
• Let leaders respond to each other, not just to you
• Capture language and themes as they emerge

By the end of this section, the team should feel like they’ve built a holistic account of their strongest customer relationships—from how they began, to how they’ve grown, to how they function today across sales, delivery, operations, and finance. This shared narrative becomes the raw material for synthesis, where you’ll listen for patterns and translate what you heard into clear, repeatable Ideal Profile attributes.

Immediate Follow-Up (End of Session)

Following the workshop, send a short follow-up email to the client team, ideally within a few hours.

Synthesize

The goal of synthesis is to move from stories to patterns. You are not documenting what was said—you are identifying what repeats.

After the workshop, review the session with the explicit intent of finding consistent attributes across the strongest relationships. This is where Ideal Profiles begin to take shape.

Using the Transcript to Surface Patterns

Running the session transcript through ChatGPT can be a helpful starting point. Ask it to identify recurring themes, behaviors, and dynamics across the customer stories shared.

Treat this as a first pass, not a conclusion. AI can surface repetition, but you are responsible for judgment.

Use the output to ask:

• What showed up across multiple stories?
• What conditions consistently supported trust, longevity, or momentum?
• What reduced friction for both sides?

Separate Context from Repeatability

Not everything that mattered is repeatable—and that distinction is critical.

For example:

• "They were all buddies of mine” is context, not a pattern.
• “They valued long-term partnership over price” is a pattern.
• “They were local and could collaborate closely” may be a pattern.
• “They happened to need us at the right time” is an outcome, not an attribute.

Your job is to translate stories into attributes the business can intentionally pursue again.

What You’re Looking to Extract

As you synthesize, listen for patterns related to:

• How the relationship was initiated
• The type of problem or need being solved
• How decisions were made on the customer side
• What built trust early
• How collaboration functioned over time
• What made delivery smoother or more complex
• Why the relationship endured

These attributes should describe conditions and behaviors, not personalities or luck.

The Standard for a “Good” Pattern

A useful Ideal Profile attribute should pass a simple test:

Could the business design for this intentionally in the future?

If the answer is no, it may be helpful context—but it doesn’t belong in the Ideal Profile.

By the end of synthesis, you should have a short list of clear, repeatable attributes that explain why these relationships worked—not just that they did. This is the raw material you’ll use to document Ideal Profiles in the Playbook.

Share

The Share phase is about building the Ideal Profiles page in the Digital Playbook so the company has a clear, shared understanding of the relationships it is best built to serve.

Your role is to translate the outcomes of the workshop and synthesis into a page that clearly communicates the repeatable attributes of the company’s strongest customer relationships. This is not a list of specific accounts or personas. It’s a description of the conditions, behaviors, and dynamics that consistently support long-term value on both sides of the relationship.

As you build the page, focus on explaining why these attributes matter. Capture the patterns leadership recognized across their best relationships—how trust is built, how decisions are made, what makes collaboration work, and what reduces friction over time. This context helps teams understand what “ideal” actually means in practice.

The Ideal Profiles page should be usable. Teams should be able to read it and quickly assess whether a relationship aligns with these attributes and how they should adjust their approach accordingly.

When done well, this page becomes a lens the organization can use to prioritize effort, shape messaging, and pursue growth with greater intention and consistency.

When the Playbook page is complete, send this follow-up email to the client team:

What's Next

Next is Playbook & Plan, where you’ll synthesize the work completed throughout Quick Start and prepare the recommendations for what growth should look like next through the First 180™.

To learn how to prepare your recommendations, build the deck, and facilitate this session, explore the Playbook & Plan Toolkit.