Most "ICP docs" are a slide of job titles and a company size range. That is a start. It is not a campaign entry system.
Agencies burn domains and credits when weak fits enter sequences because nobody wrote the nos. Titles say who might buy. Disqualifiers say who must never get the first touch. Entry rules that lead with disqualifiers keep find → qualify honest before anyone writes a line of copy.
Titles are necessary and incomplete
Title filters fail in predictable ways:
- "VP Marketing" at a 12-person shop is not the same buyer as "VP Marketing" at a 2,000-person org.
- Founder-led companies ignore your title taxonomy entirely.
- Ambiguous titles (Growth, Revenue, Partnerships) look qualified until you read the company.
- Competitors and existing customers sometimes share the same title patterns as dream buyers.
If your only gate is title + country, you will send polished notes to people who cannot buy, should not be contacted, or will hurt the client's brand if they talk about the outreach.
Start the ICP from who must be excluded
Write disqualifiers before you celebrate the positive persona. Force the client to answer:
- Competitors. Named firms and close lookalikes you will not prospect.
- Existing customers / open opps. How fresh is the CRM truth, and who owns the suppression feed?
- Banned verticals. Industries the client will not serve or that create PR risk.
- Geo and legal boundaries. Regions you will not touch; US-only motions stay US-only.
- Bad-fit company shapes. Too small, too enterprise, agencies-as-buyers when the offer is not built for them, etc.
- Do-not-contact people. Board members, journalists, known complainers, prior opt-outs.
Put these in the workspace as enforceable rules, not as a footnote on a Notion page nobody opens on send day.
Turn disqualifiers into campaign entry rules
An operable entry rule is a yes/no the system can evaluate before a prospect joins a sequence.
Example shape (illustrative, not a universal template):
- Company not in competitor list
- Company not in customer / open-opp suppression
- Industry not in banned set
- Country in allowed set
- Employee band inside range
- Persona seniority in allowed set
- Title keywords match allowed set OR role family match
- No prior hard no / unsubscribe in this workspace
- Required signal present (optional for strict campaigns)
Notice titles appear late. The early checks are mostly "keep this person out."
In GTM, campaign entry sits in the qualify layer: signals plus rules decide who is allowed into a campaign. Prospects that fail stay out of sequences. That protects domain reputation and client trust at the same time.
Positive criteria still matter. Just second
After the nos, define the yeses with the same sharpness:
- Firmographics you will actually filter on. Industry, size, geo, stack signals you can source
- Buyer seats that can take the meeting. And who should never get first touch (e.g. interns, pure ICs when you need budget owners)
- Proof the offer fits. The problem statement in the client's language, not agency slang
- Timing signals when you have them. Hiring, funding, tech changes, whatever you can evidence without inventing urgency
"Series B SaaS in the US" is a vibe. An entry rule is a checklist the qualify step can fail closed on.
Agency anti-patterns that recreate bad lists
Watch for these in multi-client shops:
- Shared enrichment dumps pasted into every workspace "to move faster"
- Title-only exports from a lookalike tool with no disqualifier pass
- \"We'll clean in the sequence\". You will not; send volume pressure always wins
- Client slides that contradict CRM. Entry rules must prefer living suppressions over last quarter's deck
- Exception culture. One-off adds that bypass rules until the rules mean nothing
If a teammate can drag a row into a campaign without hitting entry checks, you do not have entry rules. You have documentation.
How disqualifiers show up in weekly ops
Monday should not start with "how many can we send?" It should start with:
- Which suppressions changed (customers closed, competitors added, opt-outs)?
- Which entry rules misfired last week (false rejects vs. leaks)?
- Which persona needs a tighter disqualifier after bad reply quality?
Reply quality is a qualify signal. If you keep hearing "wrong person" or "we already use you," fix entry rules before you rewrite the opener.
Credits make bad entry expensive early
Find burns data credits. Weak fits that pass into write/send burn action credits and domain reputation. Agencies that skip disqualifiers to "just get volume" pay twice: once in usage, again in cleanup and client trust.
GTM prices data credits at $0.01 and action credits at $0.0025, with prepaid monthly funding (minimum $250) converting fully to credits. Packaging detail lives elsewhere. The operating point here is simple: entry rules are one of the cheapest controls you have, cheaper than apologizing for a bad list after the fact.
A working session agenda with the client
Block ninety minutes. Do not open a sequence builder until this is done.
- List competitors and near-competitors (15 min)
- Confirm customer / opp suppression source of truth (15 min)
- Banned verticals and geo (10 min)
- Company size and shapes that are hard nos (15 min)
- Buyer seats vs. never-contact seats (15 min)
- Translate into entry rules the workspace will enforce (20 min)
Leave with written rules in the workspace, not with "we aligned verbally."
Supervised send while rules settle
New entry logic deserves supervised drafts for a stretch. Reviewers should reject on truth and fit, not only on commas. If reviewers keep removing people who passed entry, the rules are wrong. Fix the rules. Do not forever hand-edit around them.
Autopilot on a leaky entry system just automates waste.
What GTM is optimizing the loop toward
GTM is AI outbound for agencies: find → qualify → write → send/reply/book in isolated client workspaces. Qualify exists so write and send never become the first filter. The compliance gate still refuses incomplete sends; entry rules refuse incomplete fits.
Access opens in batches via the waitlist. Submitting the form does not activate an account by itself.
CTA
If you want campaign entry that starts from disqualifiers and keeps each client's outbound in its own workspace, join the GTM waitlist.