Deal-Breakers: Who will never buy, no matter how much they like you
Refine each weakness into deal-breakers — the disqualifiers that define your anti-market — then use them to hone every keystone segment into a sharper target. Adapted from Chapter 3 of Hidden Multipliers: Speaking Carol Into Existence.
- Input
- Your STRENGTHS-WEAKNESSES.md (the W-side) and your KEYSTONES.md from the previous steps.
- Output
- A DEALBREAKERS.md (D1, D2, … with anti-market segments) — plus your KEYSTONES.md honed: each segment description sharpened with the qualifiers the deal-breakers force.
What this is about
A purchasing committee can love everything about you and still be forbidden to buy: no SOC 2, no deal — it doesn't matter how many keystones they have. Things that block the deal outright are deal-breakers, and they trump keystones. This skill runs the mirror of the keystones exercise on your weaknesses: for each one, what circumstances make it disqualifying rather than merely annoying, and which real market segments live in those circumstances? Those segments are your anti-market — beyond the edge of your possible market, and worth knowing precisely, because the right response is deliberate exclusion: don't market to them, don't sell to them, and don't build the features they request, however loudly they ask.
Then the move that makes this step more than bookkeeping: deal-breakers hone your keystones. "E-commerce stores that need speed" plus the deal-breaker "can't afford premium pricing" becomes "e-commerce stores processing at least $5,000/mo" — and every qualifier appended makes the keystone easier to advertise to, easier to qualify against, and clearer to build for. You'll be tempted to say "we could just fix that weakness" — and maybe you should, someday, as a strategy decision. But today the job is describing the market you can win with what's already on the truck.
Example invocation
You can invoke the skill like this:
/asb-carol-dealbreakers Here's our STRENGTHS-WEAKNESSES.md and
KEYSTONES.md. Who's never buying from us — and what does that do to
our target segments?
The skill walks your weaknesses one at a time into deal-breakers with named anti-market segments, then walks your keystones and proposes the qualifier each deal-breaker forces — editing KEYSTONES.md with you, one honed segment at a time.
One practical note: say where you're working. Name a directory (or point at your existing files) when you invoke, and the skill keeps the method's files together there — if you don't, it asks before creating anything.
From the source
Two sources form the foundation of this skill:
- As in Chapter 3 of Hidden Multipliers: Speaking Carol Into Existence (sections "Weaknesses → Deal-Breakers → Anti-Market" and "Hone Keystones Using Deal-Breakers") — hiddenmultipliers.com — deal-breakers trump keystones, the anti-market and its deliberate exclusion, the honing move, and the sell-what's-on-the-truck rule this skill enforces.
- Selling to Carol: Why targeting an ICP brings 10x more customers than you expected — why excluding the anti-market strengthens rather than shrinks the business: the tail of the customer base is where the profit-destroying accounts live.
Supporting sources each supply a piece of the mechanism:
- As in Chapter 2 of Hidden Multipliers: Carol Loves You for You — hiddenmultipliers.com — the classified weaknesses this skill consumes, including the both-attributes whose weakness half lands here.
- Specificity: A weapon of mass effectiveness — the qualifier bar: "processing at least $5,000/mo" targets; "bigger companies" doesn't.