By Rob Kall, Co-Founder & CEO, Cien.ai

“We simply could not increase our current SAM anymore.”

– PE CEO who was forced to acquire a company in an adjacent market to continue growing

Problem Definition:

While TAM (Total Addressable Market) gets all the attention, most revenue leaders underinvest in their SAM — the Serviceable Available Market — i.e., the actual accounts your team can reach and sell to. A third concept, SOM (Serviceable Obtainable Market) us the part of your SAM that you can realistically sell to, should also be considered. E.g., even if you have 500 accounts from Japan in your database, without Japanese speaking sales people you are unlikely to sell to many of them. 

This leads to common but costly issues:

• Too Small: Either because the company has saturated its available accounts or has no process of adding new ones.
• Poorly Populated: Missing firmographics, contact data, or segmentation details make targeting inefficient.
• Dirty Data: Duplicates, inactive companies, and outdated info pollute CRM efforts.

The impact? Reps waste time researching accounts instead of engaging with buyers, which has a direct impact on their ability to make quota.

The Solution:

Start by making your SAM more robust:

1. Buy Industry Lists – Use reputable data vendors to rapidly expand your CRM with relevant, enriched accounts.
2. Increase Inbound Marketing – Warm leads self-select into your SAM, boosting quality and conversion rates. Then augment with “lookalikes” from DB vendors.
3. Explore New Markets – If your SAM is fully tapped, it’s time to shift strategy — enter adjacent verticals or geos, which often requires rethinking your product and positioning.

What Does Success Look Like

A high-functioning SAM is more than a big database. It’s a curated, enriched, and strategically prioritized set of accounts — big enough to support growth and smart enough to guide rep actions.

Key benchmarks of success:

• SAM is at least 20x larger than your current active customer base
• Accounts are labeled with propensity scores and ACV potential 
• Account plans exist for top segments with specific buyer personas clearly mapped to the contact data
• Data is deduplicated and refreshed regularly from external sources

As an aside, with accurate propensity scores it is much easier to estimate your SOM. It’s the part of your SAM that have propensity scores above X. 

At Cien.ai, we help our clients get there — cleaning CRM data, modelling propensity and revenue potential, and helping GTM teams align on who to target, when, and why.

About the Cien.ai Growth Essentials Series

This article is part of our Growth Essentials Series, inspired by our work with B2B business leaders, growth consultants, and PE operating partners. These articles focus on the non-technical aspects of improving GTM performance. If you want to dig in on the technical details of how to measure the concepts we use here, please refer to our Practical RevOps Analytics Series.