Training for organizations
Business Profiling Workshop for Organizations
Most organizations make decisions about competitors, customers, suppliers, and partners based on incomplete pictures. This workshop teaches the intelligence methodology to build accurate, actionable profiles and use them.
In brief
Jonathan Dunnett's Business Profiling Workshop is a professional virtual training program for corporate teams, strategic leaders, and organizational decision-makers. It teaches teams to systematically understand the people and organizations that matter most to their decisions: competitors, customers, suppliers, partners, and non-market actors like government bodies and associations. Built on competitive intelligence methodology, delivered by a facilitator with 25+ years of training experience, and customized to your context.
Workshop Details
Program name
Business Profiling Workshop
Delivery
Virtual only
Half-day, full-day, multi-day, and custom
Formats available
Lunch & learn through multi-day
1 hour to comprehensive multi-day program
Audience
Corporate teams and leaders
CI practitioners, BD and strategy professionals
Customization
Fully scoped to your context
Depth and focus shaped by your goals
Facilitator
Jonathan Dunnett
CI Fellow, Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows
What business profiling actually is
A profile isn't a bio. It's a structured picture of how an organization or individual actually behaves: under normal conditions, under pressure, and in the specific situations that matter to you. The kind of picture that tells you not just what someone has done, but what they're likely to do next.
Most teams skip this work, or do it poorly, because they don't have a systematic method. They gather data without a framework. They confuse information with understanding. This workshop changes that: using the same intelligence methodology applied in high-stakes competitive environments, adapted for the decisions your organization is actually making.
What your team walks away able to do
Profiling methodology has direct commercial and strategic value. Here's what it enables:
Identify real threats and ignore the rest
Understand whether a competitor is a genuine strategic threat or background noise and allocate your attention accordingly.
Identify opportunity and move appropriately
Identify strategic opportunities by reading organizational signals early, before they become obvious to everyone else.
De-risk investments and partnerships
Understand the organizations you're about to commit to: their culture, leadership patterns, and the signals that indicate risk before it becomes a problem.
Optimize your time on the right people
Build accurate pictures of buyers and decision-makers so your team invests time where fit is highest and stops chasing the wrong opportunities.
Protect and grow existing relationships
Understand relational dynamics with current customers well enough to spot early churn signals and act before the relationship deteriorates.
Navigate non-market complexity
Understand government bodies, regulators, and associations as strategic actors, not just background context, and engage them more effectively.
Profiling applications
The methodology is consistent. The application changes based on what you need to understand and why.
How the methodology works
Every profiling engagement works at two levels. The organizational layer establishes context: strategy, culture, patterns of behavior, and signals of change. The individual layer explains the humans behind the decisions: their motivations, priorities, constraints, and how they behave under pressure.
Most engagements involve both layers. A high-level scan of new market entrants might stay primarily at the organizational level. A complex competitive situation or high-stakes negotiation will go deep on both. The business question determines the depth. The methodology is consistent either way. Some example applications include:
Application 01
Competitor profiling
Understand rival organizations beyond their marketing: their strategic priorities, decision-making patterns, likely next moves, and vulnerabilities.
Typically involves organizational profiling of the companies that matter, combined with individual profiling of key executives or department leads depending on the specific business question.
Application 02
Customer and prospect profiling
Build accurate pictures of buyers and decision-makers before sales conversations, negotiations, or product development decisions.
Almost always involves both layers. Understanding the organization tells you the context. Understanding the individuals tells you how the decision will actually get made and by whom.
Application 03
Supplier and partner profiling
Vet the organizations you depend on. Understand their culture, stability, leadership, and the signals that indicate risk or opportunity before you commit.
A high-level capability scan may stay at the organizational level. Where commitment is significant, individual profiling of key decision-makers and relationship holders is essential.
Application 04
Negotiations
Know who you're sitting across from before you enter the room. Understand their priorities, constraints, and likely positions so you negotiate with insight, not assumptions.
Individual profiling is the core of negotiation preparation. Organizational context matters, but the humans across the table determine how the conversation actually goes.
Application 05
Non-market and organizational profiling
Understand the actors that shape your operating environment but don't show up in a competitive analysis: government bodies, regulators, associations, universities, foundations, and other non-market forces. These actors influence policy, funding, sector direction, and the rules of the game, often before most organizations realize it.
Both layers apply here. Understanding the organization tells you its mandate, incentives, and constraints. Understanding the individuals within it tells you where real influence sits and how decisions actually get made behind the formal structure.
The behavioral layer: what most profiling training skips
Most profiling training stops at the organizational level. Strategy, structure, competitive position, market signals. That work matters, but it leaves out the humans actually making the decisions.
In some realms this is called criminal profiling. In others, behavioral profiling or behavioral forecasting: given everything we know about this person, what are they likely to do next? The methodology is rigorous, and historically it's required trained analysts to apply it well.
The individual profiling component of this workshop changes that. Built on the Pyramid of Understanding, a five-level framework I developed over 17+ years of application, it makes behavioral analysis approachable for professionals who aren't intelligence analysts, but who need to be intelligent about human behavior.
What it gives you is a structured way to build a picture of a person: not just who they are, but how they're likely to respond to your approach, your offer, your ask, across any context. Negotiation. Partnership conversations. Difficult confrontations. High-stakes sales. And it doesn't stop at one person. Most high-stakes situations involve multiple stakeholders on the other side, each with their own profile, their own priorities, and their own read of the room. The framework accounts for that complexity.
Understanding what could happen in the room before you enter it
Communication style, decision-making patterns, pressure responses, bias, belief, and past behavior all shape how a conversation unfolds. The profile surfaces these factors in advance so you're positioned for the best odds of success, not reacting to surprises.
Accounting for cultural context
The framework incorporates cultural dimensions that affect how people communicate, make decisions, and respond, so your approach is calibrated, not generic.
Optimizing the engagement
Knowing who on your team is best positioned for a given conversation, when to shift approach, and how to adapt in the moment are strategic decisions. The profile gives you the information to make them deliberately.
The goal isn't manipulation, but it's about having the right preparation. The difference between walking into a high-stakes conversation with a structured understanding of who you're dealing with, and walking in hoping for the best.
Format and delivery
All sessions are delivered virtually. Programs are structured to manage digital fatigue: multi-day engagements run as half-day sessions across multiple days rather than full-day blocks.
| Format | Duration | Best for |
|---|---|---|
| Lunch and learn | ~1 hour | High-level introduction to profiling methodology. Awareness-building, not skill-building. |
| Introductory workshop | Half-day | Single application focus. Teams who need working knowledge quickly. |
| Standard program | Full-day or 2-day (half-day blocks) | Covering multiple applications with practice. Most common engagement format. |
| Comprehensive program | Multi-day (half-day blocks) | Deep skill development across all applications. Flipped classroom elements available by negotiation. |
| Custom program | Scoped to your needs | Unique audience, specific application focus, or delivery requirements outside standard formats. |
Every engagement is customized to your needs. Duration, depth, and application focus are shaped by your team's goals and context. A discovery call is the right starting point: it takes 30 minutes and gives both of us clarity on what the right approach actually looks like.
Who This Workshop Is For
This workshop is available for in-house corporate delivery, conference sessions, and cohort-based programs.
- → Companies and corporate teams
- → Economic development agencies
- → Professional associations
- → Export development programs
- → Universities and career centers
- → Nonprofits and foundations
- → Government-adjacent organizations
- → Startup cohorts and accelerators
The methodology behind it
25+
Years of training and facilitation experience
17+
Years applying CI methodology to business decisions
75+
Events organized, including first TEDx Moncton
CI Fellow
Council of Competitive Intelligence Fellows · 2023
The frameworks used in this workshop were developed for environments where understanding people and organizations accurately, before you act, is the difference between winning and losing. The individual profiling component is built on my method, the Pyramid of Understanding: a five-level framework for building genuine understanding of any person or organization, from facts up to behavioral narrative.
This isn't theoretical. It's the same methodology applied to Fortune 500 competitive decisions, export strategy, and startup development, now taught directly to the teams that need it.
What participants say
"Jonathan's competitive intelligence workshop was excellent. The content was highly relevant to our Launch Export program, and he provided clear, actionable insights that companies can immediately apply to strengthen their export strategies. We already have him booked for our next cohort!"
Erinn Smith
Executive Director, Nova Scotia Association of CBDCs
"Jonathan Dunnett is a talented and engaging presenter. I brought him in to do a series of webinars for a diverse group of startup founders. The content was original, well researched, and captivated the audience. I especially appreciated his breadth of knowledge, open-mindedness and that he was easy to work with."
Kyle Murray-Zelmer, PhD
Program Manager – Market Intelligence, Venn Innovation
Ready to build profiling capability in your team?
Most engagements start with a 30-minute discovery call to understand your audience, goals, and the decisions you're trying to make better. From there, I'll suggest an approach that fits.