The conic sector theorem is a powerful input-output stability analysis tool, providing a fine balance between generality and simplicity of system characterisations that is conducive to practical stability analysis and robust controller synthesis. Without means to systematically identify and impose exterior conic properties, existing analysis and synthesis methods are limited to employing a special case of the conic sector theorem which may prove overly conservative when considering very strictly passive plants. This paper removes the current limitation by establishing the exterior conic sector lemma, which provides matrix inequalities equivalent to exterior conic bounds for linear time-invariant systems.