By Heather Carine  

MI-5 is not just the UK security service.  It’s also a great acronym for the 5 key steps in market intelligence. 

The MI-5 approach is a lean and practical way to find, manage and act on market intelligence at all stages of business growth.

People in business instinctively get that in their line of business, they probably have a good general understanding of their business, and business environment.

However, there are pivotal times in business they need to dive deeper into what is happening in their market, such as:

• finding ways to diversify their products and services
• identifying and accessing niche markets
• developing and applying new innovations .

The MI-5 steps are:

1. Have a broad & narrow focus

• Ongoing broad focus on what is happening in your market.
• Narrow focus depending on company’s stage of growth.
• Narrow your focus with Drucker’s 5 questions especially, who is my customer / ideal customer and what does my customer value?

2. Develop foresight

• Look at a range of trends to develop foresight.
• Mega, global trends & technology, regulatory, society & socioeconomic trends.
• Industry trends, and trends within your own.organisations.

3. Know your market

• Focus on the business environment surrounding the business model.
• Market forces | Market analysis.
• Industry forces | Competitive analysis.
• Macro-economic forces.

4. Customer insights

• Challenge your assumptions about your customers.
• Reveal valuable insights on target customers, their characteristics.
• Why they buy your product or service, challenges in their job that your product helps with, their pain points and gains from your product or service.

5. Business model tracking

• Ongoing market intelligence tracking to support and challenge your business model including:
  • Customer segments | Value proposition Channels
  • Customer relationships
  • Revenue streams | Cost structure
  • Key resources | Key activities | Key partners