Priority Markets Toolkit

If you haven’t already, review the Priority Markets 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: 4 of 6
Duration: 60 minutes
Led by: MiM™ Architect
Participants: CEO/President/Owner + full leadership team

This workshop requires leadership presence because Priority Markets determine where the business will focus its time, money, and effort.

The Architect’s role is to facilitate clarity and direction at the leadership level — guiding the conversation toward markets that fit the company’s strengths, priorities, and long-term growth potential.

Step 2. Review the Teach Deck

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

This session is a teaching performance — you need to be fluent, confident, and conversational.

Step 3. Review & Prep Answers

We want to both understand where the client has historically been successful, as well as gauge future opportunities based on similar market characteristics.

Ideally, the client responds to your prep email and gives you 4-5 markets that they currently serve successfully.

You can use these to then model a list of 20-30 adjacent markets with the MiM™ Priority Market Advisor GPT.

This GPT helps you:

• Generate a structured list of 20–30 potential markets with one-line rationales tied to client strengths
• Receive a copyable, facilitation-ready list for your Working Whiteboard
• Get light facilitation coaching for running the session smoothly

Prepare your Working Whiteboard by adding each industry in its own box.

Teach

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

The purpose of this section is to create shared context before the discussion begins. It explains how MiM™ defines Priority Markets, why we examine both successful and unsuccessful markets, and what we’re trying to understand through the questions that follow.

This framing helps the team engage the workshop with a common understanding of how Priority Markets are identified, evaluated, and pressure tested so the conversation that follows is grounded, focused, and productive.

Gather

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

The Gather portion grounds the Priority Markets conversation in the client’s lived experience and leads to clear directional decisions.

Your role is to guide the team through a focused discussion of the markets they already serve successfully—one market at a time—and surface why those markets work. Rather than debating market size or theoretical opportunity, the goal is to understand fit: how customers behave, what they value, where the company’s strengths show up clearly, and how the relationship tends to evolve over time.

To do this, anchor the conversation on each market using questions like:

• What about this market has made it successful for you?

• What tends to go right here that doesn’t elsewhere?

• Where does this market make your strengths most obvious?

• What kind of customers do you usually get in this market?

• What friction shows up here, if any—and how tolerable is it?

• If you had more of this market tomorrow, how would that feel?

• What other markets feel similar to this one—and why?

As patterns emerge, listen closely. These signals help distinguish between markets that generate revenue and those that actually improve margins, momentum, and long-term growth. This is often where teams realize that not all “successful” markets are worth deeper investment.

This phase should lead to directional decisions: which markets are worth growing further, which are better maintained or gradually deprioritized, and which new or adjacent markets may be worth exploring because they share the same characteristics as the company’s strongest segments. Questions about market share, headroom for growth, and relationship friction are especially useful in helping the team make these calls.

The outcome of Gather is shared clarity—not a finished plan. What’s surfaced here becomes the foundation for synthesis, where Priority Markets are documented with confidence and context in the Digital Playbook.

Immediate Follow-Up (End of Session)

At the close of the Gather portion, send a short follow-up email to the client team, ideally within a few hours.

Synthesize

Next, you analyze what emerged during the workshop to understand why these markets rose to the top.

Review the inputs to identify the underlying patterns that drove the group’s decisions—what conditions consistently support strong outcomes, where value proposition fit is clearest, and which market dynamics create momentum versus friction. Pay close attention to points of alignment, hesitation, or debate, as these often reveal the real decision criteria at play.

Your goal is to clarify the logic behind the choices, not just the choices themselves. This synthesis becomes the foundation for how Priority Markets are explained, communicated, and operationalized in the Playbook and downstream work.

Share

The Share phase is about building the Priority Markets page in the Digital Playbook so the company understands where leadership is choosing to focus, and how to put that focus into action.

Your role is to translate the outcomes of the workshop and synthesis into a page that clearly communicates which markets are the highest priority today and which markets represent future growth opportunities the company is intentionally targeting. This is not about limiting where the business can operate; it’s about signaling where effort, attention, and investment should be concentrated.

As you build the page, focus on explaining why these markets were chosen. Capture the characteristics leadership believes make these markets durable and successful—such as customer behavior, margin profile, partnership dynamics, or alignment with the company’s strengths. This context helps teams understand the logic behind the decision, not just the decision itself.

From there, add enough market information to make the direction actionable. For each Priority Market, provide a brief overview and a clear articulation of how the company creates value in that market. The goal is to help teams answer, “How should I prioritize this market in my work?”—whether that’s through messaging, sales focus, resource allocation, or delivery decisions.

When done well, the Priority Markets page reads as a clear company-level decision: this is where we are focusing now, this is where we’re aiming next, and this is why it makes sense. It gives the organization permission to act with confidence and consistency, using the Playbook as a guide rather than a constraint.

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

What's Next

Next, we’ll move into Ideal Profiles, where we’ll examine the company’s Generational Customers™ to understand the types of customers and relationships that have driven its strongest results. By identifying the shared attributes behind that success, we can clarify who to prioritize within these Priority Markets—and how to replicate what’s already working with greater intention.

Click below to learn how to facilitate the Ideal Profiles workshop.