Thread by @ant_murphy

Helping a B2B PM with their Prod Strategy earlier in the wk where I intro’d the concept of Serviceable Addressable Market.

A thread on why SAM is important for B2B PMs..but first the diff between:

1) Total Addressable Market
2) Serviceable Addressable Market
3) Market Share

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TAM = total possible market
(e.g. total number of people who need to travel globally)

SAM = the portion of TAM you can actually reach with your product/sales channel
(e.g. ppl needing to travel in the US by car who own a smart phone)

MS = portion you have actually acquired

TAM & MS are high focuses in B2C but B2B often requires more attention to SAM.

B2C is a heavy offensive field. High focus on expanding MS though direct growth.

However in B2B grow is often via sales, marketing, etc. expanding SAM is a way to support their efforts.

Strategically expanding SAM may not immediately move product metrics ($) but it opens the doors for sales and marketing - they are your offence team

At times it may not even result in direct sales in that new area but it can help sell elsewhere eg. labelling “world first to __”

But B2B is often a defensive game too (more than B2C) retaining customers and fending off competitors is a constant balance against growth and strategic direction.

Adding functionality not bc it’s going to add value but to defend against competitor services is bau for B2B PMs...

Defence also means defending your SAM if changes to an industry are made or new biz critical products become widely adopted you may need to pivot or be expected to integrate with certain products to keep playing in that part of the TAM.

The result with their product strategy was that we added a third line item under growth - the first two were direct growth, focused on renewals and a new pricing tier.

The new one was on strategically increasing SAM for sales and marketing.

Finally I’ll add that SAM is important for B2C too, this was B2B focused as that’s where the convo came from.

Happy market segmenting! 🤘