Unlock a healthier pipeline with your anti-ICP

Not knowing who to target is one of the worst problem to have, especially when you don’t have a sales background (like me).

I was a seasonal sales hire at Future Shop in 2014, a Best Buy-style electronic store in Canada.

I was just going to help every visitors that came to my department, without gauging if they actually need my help. 3 months later, I was laid off.

There’s one thing my successful colleagues did better than me:

And by asking a few questions and recognizing the behaviour, they knew who actually needed their help, and spend their time on these instead.

Your anti-ICP is a similar idea:

“How can I identify prospects that are not a good fit in the first place, and taking my time away from qualified ones?”

Maybe you’re just started out and have limited customer or user data or your customer base is way too mixed and you can really draw patterns.

But the anti-ICP is a great way to bring the full picture together.

You might go after accounts that look good on paper because you’re selling a lot to them, from a single dimension, but are in fact slowing down your retention and profit.

Here’s why this concept matter, what it look like, and how to incorporate it in your go-to-market motion.

Why your Anti-ICP matters

If you’re checked my last newsletter, you know that the cost of an unclear ICP are high.

Well, the anti-ICP is basically the way you’re narrowing these costs.

But it’s not just bad for your GTM, it can also impact your planned exit.

The anti-ICP is a cheat sheet of who IS NOT a good fit for your business.

Think about all of the leads you’ve pursued, that were not a fit for a handful of reasons.

By focusing on who is not a fit, you can narrow down your research, and identify the opposite elements.

So, for your sales team (AKA you if you’re starting out), this helps you clearly exclude prospects or accounts that drain resources unnecessarily.

By identifying what disqualifies a prospect, you can:

Narrows your scope: Knowing who doesn’t fit forces you to articulate exactly who does, with a laser focus on those who gain the most value.

Aligns GTM between teams: Sales, marketing, and product teams have a unified understanding of ideal customers, avoiding wasted effort on bad-fit leads.

Shapes strategy: Anti-ICP criteria reveal gaps in your offering, helping prioritize what to improve in your messaging, service model, or product.

Clarify ICP: By focusing on who you don’t want, your ICP definition just become clearer at the same time.

That’s a pretty sweet deal if you ask me.

How to use the Anti-ICP?

Your Anti-ICP can just be a document that lives next to your ICP documentation.

I created this sheet with steps on how you can document your anti ICP

Let’s go through them together

1. Identify your deal breakers

Deal Breakers

Your deal breakers are clear signs that a potential customer isn’t a fit for your business, saving you from frustration and wasted effort.

Here’s examples of deal breakers that might influence negatively deals:

Resources—do they have the budget or the infrastructure to make it work?

Example Anti-ICP: Companies with annual revenues under $1M that cannot allocate at least $5K/month for your solution.

Program—do they have programs and strategies aligned with your offering?

Example Anti-ICP: Companies prioritizing short-term growth hacks over long-term sustainability, which is your core value proposition.

Access—can you access key decision-makers or stakeholders?

Example Anti-ICP: Teams where middle managers control decisions without buy-in from senior leadership.

Team—do they have the team to use, and do the work necessary to get results?

Example Anti-ICP: Startups with no dedicated operations lead or marketing head to own your solution’s success internally.

Stage—can we deliver the best results possible at their growth stage?

Example Anti-ICP: Pre-revenue startups looking for a CRM, when your product is designed for scaling businesses with 50+ employees.

2. Check sales for resource drain indicators

These are the prospects that eat up your time, energy, and resources—without delivering enough value to justify it.

I won’t go into too much detail, but you usually know what those are. Here are a few examples:

Example 1 - Endless Support Needs
Clients who constantly ask for help, revisions, or troubleshooting beyond what’s reasonable.
e.g. “They send daily ‘urgent’ support tickets but refuse to follow the onboarding process.”

Example 2 - Slow Decision-Making
Prospects that drag out the buying process, eating up time without commitment.
e.g. “After 8 calls and 6 months, they’re still ‘evaluating options.”

Example 3 - Misaligned Expectations
Clients who expect outcomes your product or service doesn’t deliver.
e.g. “They signed up for marketing automation but expected a full sales strategy.”

3. Separate your accounts in tiers

Once you identify your deal breakers and resource drain indicators, the next step is tiering your accounts in your CRM. This helps you prioritize high-fit customers while quickly spotting bad-fit leads.

You should look for the highest average contract value, and cross the data with how much of a fit these deals are.

How to separate your accounts:

• Tier A (Perfect ICP): Companies that align perfectly with your solution, have strong buy-in, and move efficiently through the sales cycle.

• Tier B (Neutral Fit): Companies that need more nurturing but have potential. They may lack urgency or require more education.

• Tier C (Anti-ICP): Prospects that show multiple red flags, require excessive effort, or are unlikely to convert into long-term customers.

💡 Example Tier C Account: A bootstrapped startup that lacks a dedicated champion, pushes for deep discounts, and requires extensive customizations.

4. Filter your pipeline to get your disqualified ratio

Once you’ve defined your Anti-ICP, it’s time to quantify how much of your pipeline is filled with bad-fit leads. This helps fine-tune your qualification process.

How to calculate your disqualified ratio:

1. Review Last Quarter’s Deals – Identify deals that were disqualified or resulted in churn.

2. Tag Anti-ICP Characteristics – Track how many disqualified deals showed key red flags.

3. Find Your Ratio – Divide the number of disqualified deals by total deals.

💡 Example Disqualified Ratio: "Last quarter, 35% of inbound leads fit our Anti-ICP. We adjusted our qualification process to filter them out earlier."

5. Create deals “red flags”

Think of red flags as early warning signs that a prospect isn’t worth pursuing.

These red flags don’t come from thin air, they are signals that emerge from two key sources:

1. Deal Breakers – The fundamental mismatches between your business and the prospect.

2. Resource Drain Indicators – Behavioral patterns that show a prospect is going to consume too much effort for too little value.

How to incorporate into your GTM

But Gab, how the hell do I incorporate that into my GTM motion?

Start with:

1️⃣ Map to your buyer’s journey: Identify the earliest point in your funnel where you can apply a “red-flag” check. This saves your SDRs or AEs from time-consuming calls.

2️⃣ Adjust your qualification criterias: Tweak your qualification questions (in forms, lead intake, or email outreach) to filter out known Anti-ICP traits.

3️⃣ Enable your team: Ensure sales and marketing teams can articulate not just who you serve, but who you explicitly don’t. Having a shared anti-ICP cheat sheet helps.

4️⃣ Implement an ‘Off-Ramp’ process: Offer a quick and respectful exit path for those who don’t fit. It keeps relationships cordial if they later pivot into your ICP.

It’s also a great way to strengthen your positioning.

Not knowing who to go after is as important as who you’re targeting. And it will help you differentiate more easily as well.

So what’s next?

Well, now that you understand who you don’t want, you have the foundations to refining your ICP attributes.

And next week, I’ll show you how to do it with AI research.

That’s all, salut 👋

P.S. I’m just starting out with my newsletter “game”. If something isn’t clear or if you would like me to expand on a specific elements or topics on upcoming newsletter, please reply to this.