What is TAM, SAM, and SOM?
Market Sizing for Sales Teams
Not sure where to aim your outbound efforts? Understanding your Total Addressable Market (TAM), Serviceable Available Market (SAM), and Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) helps focus your sales firepower strategically.
Introduction
In the hyper-competitive B2B landscape, outbound sales teams can't afford to spend chasing prospects who will never convert. That's why it's more critical than ever to understand TAM, SAM, and SOM. These three market-sizing measures assist sales leaders in making the overall market opportunity clear, directing efforts in places that count, and allocating resources effectively.
This is particularly important for outbound sales strategies that rely on data-driven targeting and personalized interaction. When your outreach strategy is informed by a realistic sense of who you can and should sell to, your transition from blind outreach to precision prospecting.
Begin identifying your best-fit market personas with OneShot.ai’s Persona Agent – a great tool that enables sales teams to sharpen their focus and boost engagement rates.
Defining TAM, SAM, and SOM
TAM (Total Addressable Market)
TAM is the total demand for your product or service, assuming infinite reach and capacity. It's the big picture view – if every possible customer in the market were to buy from you, what is your revenue potential?
Example: The Total estimated value of the global CRM software market in 2024 is more than $80 billion. (Source: Statista)
SAM (Serviceable Available Market)
SAM is the part of the TAM that your business can address with its existing product features and capabilities. If TAM is "everyone who could use CRM, “your SAM could be "only B2B businesses that require CRM software for SaaS operations."
SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market)
SOM is the part of your SAM you're capable of going after. It's defined by your present sales capacity, marketing budget, brand recognition, and geographic or operational limitations.
Ex.- You have 50,000 B2B SaaS businesses across the world in your SAM, but your sales organization reaches only North America and has the capacity to support 500 new accounts this year. Your SOM consists of those 500 best-fit accounts.
Why Market Sizing Matters for Sales Teams
Understanding TAM, SAM, and SOM is not merely for investors or marketers – it’s a sales superpower with tangible, everyday effect. It prevents reps from pursuing poor-fit leads, refines segmentation for improved reply rates, informs wiser territory planning and quota setting, and aligns with RevOps and GTM strategy. With OneShot.ai’s Insight Agent, you can identify best-fit opportunities instantly that squarely fit within your actual SOM, so every step counts.
TAM/SAM/SOM vs Bottom-Up Sales Planning
Sales leaders tend to fall back on top-down market sizing, basing their estimate of the total market on broad industry reports. Though helpful for overall strategy, it never really carries through to actionable insights for the sales team. Bottom-up planning is much more realistic – it begins by estimating revenue per account, uses actual customer data, and constructs evidence-based forecasts from your stack of sales tools.
With OneShot.ai’s Scaling Agent, you can convert your SOM into AI-powered, prioritized automated sales workflows so that your team only concentrates on what drives revenue.
How to Calculate TAM, SAM, and SOM (Step-by-Step)
A. Top-Down Calculation
This method draws on third-party studies:
- Gartner, McKinsey, or IBISWorld industry reports
- Public market share and revenue data
Good for investors and executive-level strategy, but not very granular for sales.
B. Bottom-Up Calculation
Best for outbound sales teams:
- Define Your ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)
Example: North American B2B fintech startups with 10–500 employees
- Estimate Total Number of ICP Accounts
Utilize tools such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator, ZoomInfo, or OneShot.ai
- Estimate Annual Revenue per Customer
Multiply the size of the estimated customers by the anticipated annual deal size.
- Get TAM → SAM → SOM
TAM = total potential customers × ARPA
SAM = narrowed down by your product fit and feature relevance
SOM = narrowed down by geography, team bandwidth, and current GTM efforts
C. Helpful Tools
- CB Insights TAM Calculator
- LinkedIn Sales Navigator for discovering accounts
- OneShot.ai for ICP modeling, segmentation, and ranking
- CRM data to validate territory and pipeline
Get our free TAM/SAM/SOM Estimation Template + 7-point checklist — a sales leader must-have.
TAM/SAM/SOM in Action: Sales Team Scenarios
A. Outbound SDR Team Targeting Fintech Startups
- TAM: All fintech firms worldwide
- SAM: Legacy software-using fintechs with 10–500 employees
- SOM: U.S.-based fintechs with active hiring and growth path
- Insight Agent pinpoints high-growth fintechs
- Persona Agent develops message variants by segment
- Scaling Agent processes target cadences
B. AE Territory Planning in EMEA
- TAM: Whole CRM market in EMEA
- SAM: SaaS firms requiring CRM integrations
- SOM: German, UK, French mid-market tech firms
OneShot.ai optimizes territory coverage and personalizes the strategy according to SOM data.
C. ABM Campaign for Enterprise Construction Tech
- TAM: International construction tech firms
- SAM: 1000+ employee enterprises
- SOM: U.S.-based enterprises considering ERP solutions currently
OneShot.ai agents process messaging, segmentation, and personalization at scale.
Mistakes to Avoid with TAM/SAM/SOM
When engaging with TAM, SAM, and SOM, there are some missteps that can fatally derail your go-to-market strategy. Overpredicting your SOM early on usually results in unrealistic quotas and missed targets. Marketing and sales misaligning on what “the market” really is leads to confusion and inefficiencies. Skipping past critical firmographic or technographic filters means squandering outreach, and pursuing the allure of TAM’s big numbers often leads one to overlook the genuine, actionable chances in your SOM.
OneShot.ai refines your SOM by examining buyer fit, engagement indicators, and behaviour patterns – so your team can close, not guess.
Using OneShot.ai for SOM-Driven Prospecting
OneShot.ai turns SOM into a dynamic, ready-to-action strategy from a static market estimate. It begins with the Insight Agent, which identifies accounts that exactly fit your SOM requirements – no more guesswork, only high-fit opportunities.
Then the Persona Agent comes into play and creates customized messages specifically for every segment so that your approach resonates and generates responses. The Scaling Agent goes one step ahead and executes targeted, automated sequences that fill your pipeline with predictability and accuracy.
Meanwhile, the Integration Agent stays in sync with your current tools, such as Salesforce, HubSpot, and Outreach, updating personas dynamically based on real-time data.
With OneShot.ai, your sales team doesn't just have clarity of where to focus, they are ready to act immediately and intelligently. OneShot connects the dots between market insight and automated execution so that your strategy becomes momentum.
No static spreadsheets or competing messages—just a clear pathway from SOM to sales-ready outreach. Whether you are honing in on your ICP or scaling your team, OneShot gives you confidence that every move is based on data, AI, and real-world buyer signals.
Schedule a live demo to learn how OneShot.ai converts your SOM into a complete outbound automation engine with guaranteed results.
TAM/SAM/SOM and Sales Forecasting
Accurately estimating Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) is not solely about more intelligent targeting – it’s essential to constructing stronger, more solid sales forecasts. Forecasting is all too frequently viewed as an unconnected activity, a matter of gut feel or past performance instead of solid market analysis. But when you situate your forecasts in a realistic, data-driven picture of your SOM, the whole sales planning process becomes sharper and more strategic.
By anchoring your forecast to actual, attainable accounts, you dramatically improve pipeline accuracy. You know which segments are worth going after, how many deals you can close, and what your conversion rates will be – because you're only dealing with the accounts that fit. This information is also key to quota setting and territory carving. Rather than handing out arbitrary numbers of reps or splitting territories down the middle, you can parcel it out according to actual market opportunity, guaranteeing fairness, motivation, and improved performance all the way around.
Accurate SOM also supports sales headcount and capacity planning. Knowing your obtainable market size and depth allows you to plan precisely how many reps you will need, when to bring them on board, and how to grow your team to reach future demand. And it’s far simpler to create various growth profiles and determine the ramp time needed to achieve your objectives. And don’t forget the downstream effect – compensation models become much more realistic.
With OneShot.ai, you can integrate your SOM analysis with your RevOps data to build dynamic, AI-driven forecasting models. This means your sales strategy is not only aspirational but also operational, with clear, data-informed insights driving every outreach through revenue planning decisions.
Final Thoughts: Making TAM, SAM, and SOM Actionable
TAM, SAM, and SOM are more than just concepts — they are critical tools in today’s noisy and crowded marketplaces for modern sales teams. When you have the right data, tools, and automation in place, your team can STOP guessing and START focusing.
Leveraging insights from OneShot.ai to power your outbound strategy evolves your sales approach from “spray and pray” to “segment and scale.” Ready to sell smarter?
Meet with OneShot.ai and generate revenue from your SOM.
FAQs
What is TAM, SAM, and SOM in market sizing for sales teams?
Answer:
TAM (Total Addressable Market), SAM (Serviceable Available Market), and SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) are market sizing frameworks used by sales teams to understand growth potential.
- TAM is the total demand for a product or service.
- SAM is the segment of TAM targeted by your offerings.
- SOM is the portion of SAM you can realistically capture based on resources and market presence.
What is the difference between TAM and SAM in sales strategy?
Answer:
TAM refers to the full market demand regardless of your ability to serve it. SAM narrows that down to the market you can serve with your current offerings. In sales strategy, SAM helps teams focus on realistic targets instead of the entire market.
Is SAM always 10% of TAM in market sizing?
Answer:
No, SAM isn’t always 10% of TAM—it varies by industry, competition, business model, and geographic or demographic constraints. In some cases, SAM could be a much larger or smaller portion of TAM, depending on your service scope.
What are the three main levels of market size analysis?
Answer:
The three main sizes of markets are:
- TAM (Total Addressable Market): Full potential revenue.
- SAM (Serviceable Available Market): Market within reach.
- SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market): Market share you can realistically capture.
Sales teams use these levels to align outreach, forecasting, and go-to-market strategy.
Can you give a real-world example of TAM, SAM, and SOM?
Answer:
Sure. Let’s say you offer CRM software:
- TAM: All global businesses using CRM tools = $50B
- SAM: U.S.-based SMBs using cloud-based CRMs = $10B
- SOM: Businesses you can realistically onboard based on current sales capacity = $500M
Where can I find a free TAM, SAM, SOM calculator?
Answer:
Free TAM, SAM, SOM calculators are available on startup and VC websites like [Slidebean], [HubSpot], or [Visible.vc]. These tools help estimate market size based on customer segments, pricing, and penetration rates.
How does TAM, SAM, and SOM fit into a pitch deck or sales plan?
Answer:
In pitch decks or B2B sales plans, TAM, SAM, and SOM show investors or executives the size of the opportunity, your target market, and how much market share you aim to capture. This builds credibility around revenue projections and go-to-market feasibility.
