TAM (Total Addressable Market)

TAM answers one question: how far can this market go? You calculate it by multiplying the total number of possible customers by what each one could spend per year on an offer like yours. It is a theoretical ceiling, not a forecast.

Investors ask for it to know whether a company can become large. For an agency or a freelancer it mostly serves another purpose: checking that the chosen target is wide enough to fill a calendar for years, and will not be exhausted after three months of prospecting.

In B2B prospecting, TAM is also used in the list sense: the total number of accounts or people who match your ideal customer profile. That is the version a salesperson cares about most.

TAM is the total market. SAM (serviceable available market) is the share your offer can actually serve: your region, your language, your customer size. SOM (serviceable obtainable market) is the share you can win within a reasonable time frame, given competition and your resources.

An example in words: practice management software for law firms has all law firms in the world as its TAM, French-speaking firms of 5 to 50 lawyers as its SAM if it only exists in French, and the share of those firms it can win within three years as its SOM.

Of the three, SAM usually guides prospecting best. TAM impresses, SOM sets goals, SAM tells you who to write to.

Two methods coexist. Top-down starts from a published overall figure, such as the size of an industry, and slices it. It is quick but often imprecise. Bottom-up starts from the number of possible customers, counted or estimated from registries, and multiplies it by the average annual spend. It takes longer and is more reliable.

For bottom-up in B2B, official business registries give the number of companies by industry and headcount band. LinkedIn offers another view: the number of people holding a given role, in a given industry and region.

Always write your assumptions next to the number. A TAM without visible assumptions can be neither checked nor corrected.

Using an overall market figure that covers far more than your offer. The global software market is not your market, even if you sell software.

Confusing TAM with a goal. Nobody takes a whole market, or even a large share of it in most cases. A plan that assumes a huge share of TAM is not a plan.

Forgetting customers who will not switch. Part of the market is locked in by long contracts, habits or in-house tools. It counts in TAM, not in what you can win.

In prospecting, TAM in the list sense sets the pace. If your target has 3,000 people and you contact 400 a month, you have covered it in eight months. You then need to widen the target, add a region, or return to people already contacted with a new angle.

A small TAM demands more care per contact. When every prospect counts, a generic message burns an opportunity that will not come back. A large TAM allows more testing, because you can afford to miss part of your sends.

TAM by segment also helps you choose. Two targets can have similar reply rates and very different sizes. The one with ten times more accounts gives you ten times more room.

On LinkedIn, TAM is measured in people: how many profiles match your target role, in your industry and region? Search filters give you an order of magnitude. Keep in mind that not all of those profiles are active, and not all of them truly fit your target once read in detail.

MimikFlow reads every profile it finds and checks it against your target before inviting it. The campaign overview shows, for each search, how many profiles were analyzed and how many were kept: that ratio gives you a sense of how deep your market really is. If the search struggles to find new prospects that fit, the target is often too narrow, or described with criteria a profile does not show.