Turn your market definition into a list you can actually assign.
Give Doe the bounds of your market and it enumerates every company that fits, de-duplicates, tags the firmographics, and carves it into territories. Not a top-down number on a slide, the bottom-up account list your reps can work on Monday.
Doe turns a market definition into the bottom-up account list behind it: an exhaustive, de-duplicated, firmographic-tagged set of every company that fits, carved into territories if you want, and refreshed as new entrants and acquisitions change the market. A TAM number on a slide is something sales cannot work; this is the assignable list underneath it.
What changes
| Dimension | Before | With Doe |
|---|---|---|
| What you get | A top-down number you cannot assign | A named, bottom-up account list reps can work |
| Completeness | Whatever one source returns on page one | Enumerated to completion across sources |
| Territory planning | Manual splitting, overlaps and gaps | Balanced carve on your rules |
| Staying current | Stale before the analyst finishes | Refreshed as entrants and acquisitions change the market |
From a market definition to an assignable list
Doe worked through the full set of companies matching your industry, size, geography, and other bounds, paginating to completion rather than stopping at the first page
Doe cross-checked against a second source to catch companies one provider misses, especially in niche or fast-moving segments
The Judge merged duplicates and tagged each account with the attributes you plan to carve territories on, with off-definition companies excluded and a reason recorded
Doe split the accounts into territories on your rules, by geography, segment, or named-account tier, balanced so reps are not overlapping
Google SheetsDoe exported the full tagged, segmented list and can write the accounts into Salesforce so the plan becomes the working pipeline
Your TAM is a number on a slide. Sales cannot work a number.
The board deck says the TAM is forty thousand companies. Where did that come from? A top-down estimate, an analyst report, a multiplication nobody can audit. It is fine for a fundraising slide and useless to a sales team, because you cannot assign a number. You can only assign companies, by name, with an owner and a contact, and that list does not exist.
Building the real, bottom-up list means enumerating an entire market by hand: every company that fits, de-duplicated, tagged by size and segment, then split fairly across reps so two of them are not working the same account. It takes an analyst weeks, and the market has already shifted by the time they finish, new companies founded, others acquired, some grown out of segment. So it rarely gets done, and territory planning runs on a guess.
Get started with the right source material
Add your library and tools
Add or select the source files Doe should use, then connect the tools this task needs. No API keys, no engineering.
Describe what you need
“Build our TAM list: every B2B software company in North America with 50 to 500 employees in fintech or insurtech. De-duplicate, tag by sub-vertical and size, carve into four balanced territories by account count, and write it to a sheet and Salesforce. Refresh quarterly.”
It runs on schedule
Runs quarterly. An exhaustive, de-duplicated, territory-ready account list, kept tied to the live market.
TAM List Building FAQ
A sizing estimate gives you a number, usually top-down, for a deck. This gives you the bottom-up list underneath the number: every company that fits, named, de-duplicated, and tagged, so sales can assign and work it. One answers "how big is the market," the other answers "which accounts, and who owns them." If you want the analysis-and-number version, that is the Market Sizing Research task; this is the assignable list.
Stop doing the work your tools should do for you.
Set it up once. Doe runs it every time.
