The blueprint for B2B Tech Growth Velocity
Every investor and board member wants to hear that their portfolio company is aiming for a multi-billion dollar Total Addressable Market (TAM). It’s the “fantasy” number that fuels the valuation narrative. But in the ruthless reality of B2B tech, chasing a massive TAM often leads to diluted effort, skyrocketing Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and stalled pipeline growth.
At the2Guys, we know that TAM is fantasy, but Total Relevant Market (TRM) is focus.
You don’t win by selling to everyone you could sell to; you win by dominating the segment of the market most likely to buy, stay, and grow. This is your TRM.
Most companies claim they know their TRM, but their definition is flimsy: “Mid-market software companies in North America.” That’s a sketch. With today’s deep data analytics and the Growth Velocity methodology, that surface-level thinking is a recipe for inefficiency. We believe there’s an absolute necessity to focus on the TRM to unlock the predictable +50% MQLs and SQLs growth year-on-year we promise.
The more precisely you define and validate your TRM, the more efficiently you can grow, maximize investor value, and accelerate your path to a profitable exit.
The TRM Fallacy: Why Your Current Market Definition is Hurting Your ROI
If your current market definition focuses only on size, revenue, and geography, you are making one of the biggest mistakes in high-performance growth: prioritizing volume over intent.
❌ The TAM Trap (High Risk, Low ROI)
Targeting: Broad industry verticals, large geographies.
Result: High volume of unqualified leads; expensive, low-relevance SEO/SEA campaigns; low lead-to-opportunity conversion rates; long, inconsistent sales cycles.
Pipeline: Wide and shallow.
✅ The TRM Truth (Low Risk, High ROI)
Targeting: Specific technical stacks, organizational structures, growth stages, and pain-point profiles.
Result: Smaller pool of highly qualified leads; “Blue Ocean” search dominance; high-relevance messaging; short, predictable sales cycles.
Pipeline: Narrow and deep.
The Total Relevant Market (TRM) is the strategic foundation upon which our entire Growth Velocity model is built. It is the critical first step in de-risking your investment and creating a predictable growth engine.
The 5-Step Growth Velocity Blueprint for Building and Validating Your TRM
Building a validated TRM is a rigorous process that requires deep data mining, numbers crunching, and a ruthless commitment to focus. It is the core function of the Growth Potential Analysis (GPA) within our methodology. Here are the critical steps the2Guys use to build a high-performance TRM:
Step 1: Deconstruct Current Success—The “Why” Behind Your Best Customers The first step in defining your future is understanding your past. We use the Growth Potential Analysis (GPA) to perform forensic data mining on your current customer base to identify the common, often hidden, traits that predict high LTV.
| TRM Component | Growth Velocity Input (GPA) | B2B Tech Example | Business Growth Output |
| Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Dissection | Metric 1: Pipeline Analytics. Identify the top 10% of customers based on LTV and lowest CAC. Filter by the highest renewal rate and highest expansion revenue. | Example: A SaaS company finds their best customers are not just “Mid-Market” but are specifically $50M-$200M B2B SaaS companies that use HubSpot (CRM) and Snowflake (Data Warehouse), and have raised a Series B or C round in the last 18 months. | Estimated Improved Sales Conversion: +15% (Sales reps waste less time on low-LTV prospects). |
| Pain Point Correlation | Metric 2: The Growth Potential Questionnaire & Usage Data. Correlate product feature usage data and customer support tickets with financial metrics. | Example: The highest LTV customers didn’t buy the product for “better reporting.” They bought it to “reduce database latency costs by 35%”—a specific financial pain point linked to their tech stack. | Estimated Deal Closing Time Reduction: -20% (Messaging is hyper-relevant, hitting core financial pain points immediately). |
Step 2: Define and Quantify the Critical Segmentation Attributes. Most companies stop at industry and size. We go deeper, focusing on firmographic, technographic, and psychographic data points that signal an inherent need for your product. This step defines the measurable boundaries of your TRM.
| TRM Component | Growth Velocity Input (GPA) | B2B Tech Example | Business Growth Output |
| Technographics (The ‘Fit’) | Data Mining: Use proprietary tools to identify the exact technology stack. Look for complementary or competitive technology use that signals a specific workflow or existing problem. | Example: A DevSecOps platform targets companies that use AWS, Kubernetes, and GitLab. The only relevant market segment is those using this specific (and expensive) stack, as they have the infrastructure and budget to need the solution. | Estimated MQL-to-SQL Conversion: +25% (MQLs have the proven technological capacity to implement the solution). |
| Psychographics (The ‘Need’) | Metric 3: Maturity Comparison & Market Data. Assess how companies in different segments currently solve the problem (manual vs. basic tools vs. competitor’s product). Identify the trigger for change. | Example: A security compliance software finds their TRM is not just any finance firm, but those with ‘recent negative audit findings’ or ‘an announced pivot to multi-cloud architecture.’ This signals executive priority and budget availability. | Estimated Reduction in CAC: -30% (Campaigns target high-intent “trigger” events, not generic awareness). |
Step 3: Validate the TRM with “Blue Ocean” Market Data. Once the theoretical TRM is built, it must be validated against the market’s reality—specifically, where the competition isn’t. This is how we move from a constrained, Red Ocean strategy to a dominant Blue Ocean one.
| TRM Component | Growth Velocity Input (GAP) | B2B Tech Example | Business Growth Output |
| Uncontested Pain Points (Blue Ocean Search) | Growth Activation Plan (GAP) – Market Potential. Use long-tail keyword research combined with competitor analysis to find niche search queries that directly align with the defined TRM’s pain points. | Example: Instead of competing for “cybersecurity platform,” the TRM’s specific need reveals the Blue Ocean query: “How to automate vulnerability patching for Kubernetes clusters using CI/CD.” This is a high-intent, low-competition query. | Estimated Growth in High-Quality Leads (MQLs): +50% (Leads are found where competitors aren’t looking, at a lower cost). |
| Pipeline Volume Calculation | Pipeline Analytics (Bottom-Up Sizing). Calculate the actual number of leads needed (bottom-up) to hit the revenue target, then quantify how many accounts in the defined TRM can supply that need. | Example: The required revenue target demands 500 SQLs. The analysis confirms the validated TRM contains 5,000 accounts with the exact technographic fit, meaning a 10% conversion rate is needed—a realistic goal for a well-defined TRM. | Estimated Predictability in Forecasting: +40% (The sales forecast is now based on a finite, known universe of qualified accounts, de-risking investor expectations). |
Step 4: Map the Growth Trajectory and Team Readiness (GPQ & GAP). The TRM must be aligned with the organization’s capacity to deliver. A perfect TRM is useless if the sales team isn’t built to sell to it, or if the strategy is too complex for a company’s current maturity level.
| TRM Component | Growth Velocity Input (GPQ & GAP) | B2B Tech Example | Business Growth Output |
| TRM-to-Team Alignment | Team Readiness Analysis (GAP). Assess the existing sales and marketing team’s expertise against the defined TRM’s needs. Do the AEs understand the specific pain points and language of the new TRM? | Example: The new TRM requires AEs to speak fluently about cloud cost optimization and FinOps. The GAP mandates specific training and a new collateral package focused on TCO reduction, ensuring the team is ready to sell to the TRM’s specific motivation. | Estimated Team Productivity Boost: +25% (Reduced friction and increased alignment between marketing, sales, and the defined TRM). |
| Strategy Calibration (GPQ) | Growth Potential Quadrant (GPQ). Use the TRM’s profitability and growth potential to plot the company’s trajectory. If the TRM is highly profitable but the company is in the “Efficiency Leader” quadrant, the strategy must be weighted toward Scale (Acceleration). | Example: The TRM is validated as being ripe for disruption. The GPQ confirms the company has high ROI but low growth. The resulting GAP focuses 80% of budget on aggressive, targeted SEA/GEO campaigns specifically aimed at the TRM’s key decision-makers. | Estimated Improvement in LTV:CAC Ratio: +20% (Focusing high-ROI tactics on a high-LTV market segment). |
Step 5: Launch a Precision Growth Activation Plan (GAP). With the TRM defined and the team aligned, the final step is disciplined execution. The GAP ensures that every marketing campaign, every piece of content, and every sales pitch is perfectly synchronized with the TRM’s unique needs and communication channels.
– Content Hyper-Targeting: Content creation shifts entirely from generic industry blogs to hyper-specific solutions for the TRM’s deep pain points. For the FinOps TRM, content focuses on “7 Ways to slash unexpected Egress costs on AWS S3.”
– Pipeline Management: The sales pipeline is restructured around the TRM. Any lead that falls outside the validated TRM attributes is flagged as a low-priority, de-risking the sales team’s effort and focusing their energy where revenue is most likely to be captured.
– Predictive Monitoring: The Growth Velocity monitoring system tracks success not by website traffic, but by how quickly leads from the TRM move through the pipeline and contribute to ARR.
Conclusion: TRM as the Engine of Investor Value
Chasing the TAM is exciting but expensive. Mastering the TRM is efficient and predictable.
For investors, VCs, and board members, the precise definition of the Total Relevant Market (TRM) is the single greatest tool for de-risking a B2B tech investment and maximizing intrinsic value. By implementing the the2Guys’ Growth Velocity methodology—using the GPA to define the TRM, the GPQ to chart the course, and the GAP for execution—you move from hoping for growth to engineering predictable, sustainable growth.
Stop wasting money fighting over scraps. Start dominating your Blue Ocean.
Are you ready to stop chasing fantasy and start building focus?
Reach out to the2Guys today for a Growth Velocity consultation and let’s define the TRM that will drive your next +50% growth year-on-year.