Martin Pálenik30 years in B2B, 20 of them with P&L responsibility
Get your B2B company out of the price war.
Owners of B2B companies bring me in as their fractional CSO: two days a month on site, on call in between, one fixed monthly retainer.
I ask the questions. At the end you get my honest read, even if it's that you don't need me. No pitch deck, no proposal on the call. Not a fan of forms? Message me on WhatsApp.
Is this your company?
Do you know how your company really works and sells? Or only how you think it should?
If three or more of these sound familiar, read on. Each one comes with a test or a breakdown you can work through yourself.
On the surface these problems look unrelated. The pain shows up in one place, but the cause often lies somewhere else.
That's why I don't treat them one by one. The diagnosis shows whether the problem starts with the company's strategic choice, its capacity (yours included), its management systems, or what the customer ends up experiencing.
IPrice and margin
Many B2B companies are stuck in a price war they never chose. The commodity trap isn't your fault. It's built into the rules of your industry.
Escape the commodity trap: compete on value, not price
The price war is eroding your margin.
A discount is the only argument that always lands.
Asked “why you?”, you give the same answer as every competitor: quality, people, years in business.
Table stakes: everyone you're compared with says the same on their website.
What makes you different in a way competitors can't copy, and what you stop doing as a result.
A clear answer to “why you?” Competitors can't copy it, and your salespeople deliver it without you.
No mention of quality, people or years in business.
Deals defended without a discount. You won't see this change in the office. You'll see it in your price list.
IIThe company as a whole
A company that runs without you
Everything runs through you.
Nothing important gets decided without you.
You're on 24/7, and every signature, exception and dispute lands on your desk.
Which decisions can be made without you, and under what rules.
How many decisions happen without you. Price exceptions follow a rule, not your signature.
Every decision you take back from your people moves the experience from them to you: they stop learning, and your desk fills up.
The company runs even when you're away for a month, phone and email off.
Succession: a company you can hand over
You built the company, and no one has said out loud who will run it one day.
If you wanted to hand it over or sell it tomorrow, a buyer would be paying for you, not for the company.
Which part of the company's value lives in your head, and how to get it into a system.
And what makes this company what it is, spelled out so your successor inherits clarity, not fog.
It's been said out loud who will run the company, and by when.
Your successor takes over a system, not your head.
Departments pulling in one direction
Your company is split into silos.
Sales makes promises delivery can't keep, production falls behind, and service cleans up after them.
Every department pulls its own way, and it's always someone else's fault.
Resources and direction don't match.
You have ten priorities and a team for five: everything runs at half speed, and you pay full salaries.
What holds the departments together, and who in the company owns that.
And what you deliberately stop, so the rest gets full capacity.
How departments agree. Sales only promises what delivery has confirmed.
You fix the process, not the person.
What the company said no to. A segment, product or customer you've dropped. Each one has an owner and a deadline.
Where people, money and time go. It's clear up front what funds day-to-day operations and what funds development. Development doesn't lose out every time there's a fire to fight.
Culture: your people tell you the truth
Your people don't tell you the truth.
Silence in the meeting, the truth in the corridor.
Staying quiet and not deciding on their own is easier.
What happens in your company to the person who brings bad news, so people feel safe to speak up with an uncomfortable truth.
Bad news reaches the leadership team before it starts costing money.
IIISales
Sales aligned with how your customer buys and decides
Your sales process and your customer's buying process don't line up.
Every salesperson sells their own way, and you close the biggest deals yourself.
Most deals aren't lost to a competitor. They're lost to no decision.
How the company actually sells, not how it thinks it sells. Then we build the system around how the customer decides.
Your salespeople know what has to be true on the customer's side before anyone sends an offer, a price or a discount.
The biggest deals don't wait for you.
A sales system where your team keeps learning
Sales training wears off in 30 to 60 days without a system behind it.
You paid for training, and the results didn't move.
What every win and loss adds to your shared sales playbook, and who in the company owns it.
What the team learns from wins and losses belongs to the company, not to one salesperson.
How the company sells. A system built on the customer's buying process. New salespeople get up to speed in weeks.
IVGrowth and new revenue
Business is good, and you don't know exactly why
Orders keep coming in.
Is that your doing, or a good market?
First we find out whether growth comes from the company or from the market.
Then we decide which part of today's growth to double down on, and which part is just a tailwind you can't count on.
You know why the company wins, and you can repeat it in a worse year.
You want to scale and don't know how
Growth runs on exceptions and on you, not on a system.
Revenue is flat, or growing slower than it could.
What in today's way of working can be repeated without you, what's an exception, and what needs a rule before you add people or enter a new market.
Your desk no longer fills up with decisions as fast as the company grows.
Growth runs on a system, not on exceptions and on you.
Business model change: how the company creates and delivers value
What customers paid you for five years ago, they now take for granted.
What the company keeps earning from today, and what it tests so it can still earn tomorrow.
For example: service instead of product, operating instead of supplying, outcomes instead of line items.
The company has a proven new way of getting paid, without wrecking what pays the bills today while it searches.
Your position in the value chain, on the customer and the supplier side
You have a good product, and someone else still captures your margin.
Where the company sits in the value chain, who in it holds the bottleneck and can say no, and what it takes for you to hold it.
You're harder to displace in the chain, so you have more say on price and terms.
The company knows where it stands and has a plan to move closer to the customer's business.
Every card above leads to a decision on one of these four things. We make it with your people, and you have the final say.
Where the company plays and where it deliberately doesn't. Said out loud, not buried in a plan.
The company knows where it's going, and every department pulls the same way.
When customers ask “why you?”, your answer is different from your competitors'. Unique is better than better.
Rules and departments set up around the choice, so decisions get made even without you.
Every card follows the same path: the diagnosis in month one, everyone at one table to make the choices in month two. By month three, or month four at the latest, you'll know for every department what to stop, what to keep and what to start doing differently. After the diagnosis, we agree on what changes first. How it works →
And you don't need a pain point. Change is cheapest when everything is going well: that's when the company has the most money and time for it. The most expensive change is the one a crisis forces on you.
Which of these eleven would help you most right now? In 30 minutes I'll tell you what I see, and whether a diagnosis makes sense.
Book a 30-minute call → Message me on WhatsApp“You have a strategy when your salesperson can use it the moment a customer pushes back on price.”
A strategy that lives with your people and your customers.
Have you made clear choices on where to play, how to win, and what to stop doing?
Who was in the room? What's made without your people, your people won't own.
How much of it can your customer already see? Your salesperson is fighting for price at the very end of a deal the strategy should have won long before.
The owner, the leadership team, middle management and the frontline are all at the table while the strategy is being built, not just when it's announced. Each brings something the others don't know.
Four views of the company
The diagnosis puts four views of the same company side by side, one from each level at the table: what you say about it, how the leadership team thinks it wins, what middle management does with that, and what your people actually do with customers every day.
All four come from inside the company, and each is true in its own way. The fifth, the customer's view, comes from outside, in the customer's own words, and belongs to the only person who pays your invoices.
We win on expertise.
We win on service.
Just hit this month's numbers.
If I have to, I'll give 10% off.
Same as the others, just more expensive.
Nobody is lying. The four views show how the company sees itself, the customer's view shows what the market is willing to pay for it, and the gap between them is the most valuable line in the diagnosis. You can't line up the four views yourself, because one of them is yours.
The company engine
Strategy goes to a consultant, sales to a trainer, culture to a coach. Who in your company keeps the chain between them intact? After the decision there's one step that's easy to skip: checking that every department is pulling the same way. That's where the chain breaks.
From the outside, a company pulling in one direction looks like lucky hiring or a charismatic boss. From the inside, it's always a system someone built, and you can name who built it and when.
I call it the engine. You'll recognise it by four things:
- The company knows where it's going and what it says no to.
- Choices turn into actions with an owner and a deadline.
- People and money are safeguarded before there's a fire to fight.
- You track progress, not busyness.
It has three parts that have to work together. Sales and delivery count as one, because the customer doesn't separate what sales promised from what the company delivered.
Decides where to go and what to say no to: where to play, how to win, and what to stop doing.
Holds the departments together and pumps real information through the company, from the customer all the way to the decision.
The only thing the customer actually sees and pays for. Sales makes the promise; delivery keeps it or breaks it.
A brain without muscles is a strategy in a drawer. Muscles without a brain are hard work with no direction. And a heart without either is a great team with nowhere to go.
From the first call to the first results
The diagnosis has a fixed price, the engagement a fixed monthly retainer, and by month three, or month four at the latest, you'll know for every department what to stop, keep and start doing differently.
A 30-minute call, free
You tell me what's hurting most. You hear the fixed price of the diagnosis and the range of the monthly retainer up front, before you commit to anything.
Diagnosis: two days on site
I ask for the numbers in advance; the days belong to your people, from you to those who talk to customers every day. On the customer side I want their own words, first-hand: a call or a visit I join, or a call recording I listen to. After the diagnosis you know which problem comes first and where it starts: the company's strategic choice, its capacity (yours included), its management systems, or what the customer experiences. It fits on one page: the Four views of the company, the customer's view, and the decisions to make. You get a proposal only after that, because treatment before diagnosis is malpractice.
Everyone at one table
You, the leadership team, middle management, the frontline. On the table: strategic choices, direction, business model and differentiation. Choices are made at the table, and when there's no agreement, you have the final say, out loud, in front of everyone. Three things come out of it: what you deliberately stop, an owner and a deadline for every change, and a brief for each department for month three. A shared choice is not a vote, and not consensus. It comes from people who each know a different part of the company's reality, working on it together. It's not a compromise designed to offend no one.
What you stop, keep and start doing differently
We translate the strategy into every department's work. From then on you track a short set of numbers: margin, discounts, decisions made without you, incidents with customers and between departments, and employee satisfaction.
Between my days, the company doesn't wait for me: decision rights are clear, agreed actions get short check-ins, and when a decision comes up, I'm available by phone and online.
What it costs
The diagnosis has a fixed price, the engagement a fixed monthly retainer. No hourly billing, no open-ended project, no extras.
My two days a month plus remote work cost you less than one full-time manager. You're not paying for my presence. You're paying for a system that keeps working on the days I'm not there.
We review it together after 60 days, and you decide whether we continue. The price isn't on this page, because every company brings a different brief. You'll hear it in the first half hour, not after.
The owner, the leadership team, middle management and the frontline sit at the table together. So they can speak openly, we all sign a set of five ground rules before we start. Who sits at the table, and under what rules →
The first half hour is about your company, not me. You tell me what's hurting most, I tell you what I see at the end, and you won't get a pitch or a proposal on the spot.
Book a 30-minute call → Message me on WhatsAppTwo stories, both with my own skin in the game
Twice I've taken a company out of a price war, and both times I was accountable for the P&L.
Skuba Slovakia 13 years as hired managing director and CEO
- Before
- Spare-parts sellers in a price war with bigger players.
- Choice
- From parts sellers to strategic partners for customers, with services and real knowledge of their business.
- Result
- A strong number two in the Slovak market.
Probugas Led sales and marketing, with P&L responsibility
- Before
- The company sold litres of gas, and customers compared price lists.
- Choice
- Energy solutions instead of litres: a project, its operation and peace of mind, instead of a raw material.
- Result
- Number one in the Slovak market, and a fifth of revenue from services, in a pure commodity market. Competitors stayed cheaper. We didn't change the price; we changed the rules of the industry.
I made these decisions with my own P&L on the line. That's proof in a different league from a consultant's thirty years of advice.
For thirty years I worked in companies I didn't own, twenty of them accountable for the P&L and thirteen as a hired managing director. Since 2015 I've also advised owners of B2B companies, and since July 2026 it's been my only work.
Frankly: back then I had full authority and was there every day. Today I give you two days a month and no authority. That difference is the whole point of the role: what your people decide together holds even on the days I'm not there.
If you closed tomorrow, who would miss you?
Your answer sets your pricing power.
Without you, they lose profit, certainty and sleep. You're selling outcomes. No spreadsheet beats that.
They liked you. They'll replace you with regret, but they'll replace you. You're selling a relationship, nothing more.
The company keeps its people employed; the market doesn't need it. You're selling jobs.
One email and you're replaced. You're selling a line in a spreadsheet.
The top rung belongs to the supplier who helps customers make money from their own customers. That's a supplier the customer can't do without. We build the engine for level four.
Which level is your company at today? You can answer in thirty seconds, and it's worth saying out loud to someone who'll follow up with the question you haven't asked yourself yet.
Book a 30-minute call → Message me on WhatsAppTwo sides of the table
“The customer wants a lower price. The competition is 20% cheaper.”
The cheapest line in B2B sales, and the most expensive one for your margin. If you have to negotiate on price, the strategy failed earlier. Few companies have anyone who can check whether it's true or an excuse. Price is usually the last line of a conversation that went wrong much earlier.
This is where the customer's view is put to work. A sales system isn't built around your stages. It's built around how the customer decides.
Your sales process
- Prospecting and preparation
- First contact
- Discovery
- Value presentation
- Negotiation and closing
- After-sales and retention
Your customer's buying process
- Recognise the problem is worth solving
- Understand what's really going on, and why
- Get everyone who has to decide to the table
- Agree on the selection criteria
- Compare the options
- Defend it to their leadership and carry the risk
- Get everyone aligned and implement it safely
And the stages don't match one for one. Behind a single stage in your CRM, the customer has five steps to get through inside their own company, and nobody reports a single one of them to you.
You never sell to one person, and each of them says something other than what they really want. The maintenance manager says: we need a reliable supplier. What they want: no call from the boss on Saturday asking why the line is down.
How to earn differently than you do today
Selling the same thing better helps you last longer in the price war. Only changing what the customer pays you for gets you out.
What your customer pays you for
A business model change. At Probugas we stopped selling litres and sold a project, its operation and peace of mind. Competitors stayed cheaper, and it stopped mattering.
Your position in the value chain
Together we map where you sit between manufacturer and end customer, who sets the prices, who has access to the end customer, and how replaceable you are. If you don't know your position, someone else writes your price list.
New segments and direction hypotheses
Two or three hypotheses at once: a new segment, a new region, a new pricing model. They're run as small bets alongside the core business, and scaled only once the money confirms them.
A new way to create and deliver value
A fifth of Probugas's revenue came from services, in a pure commodity market.
These are strategic moves, not sales tactics. Sales training improves how you sell; this changes what you get paid for. And nothing gets torn down: today's model keeps running and paying the bills until the new one is commercially proven.
How your company wins deals moves out of individual heads and into the company's system
When we finish, the value doesn't sit in my head or in yours. It sits in a system the company keeps.
Where to play, how to win, what to stop doing, and resources allocated to match.
Who decides what, and up to what limit. Every choice has a named person with the right to say no.
Written down and binding: from the first enquiry to the signature, what has to be confirmed before price, and who decides on discounts. What's in it →
What customers tell your salespeople, drivers or service technicians comes back into the company on a fixed cadence and gets written into the system.
It belongs to your company. Not to me.
When your best salesperson leaves, a piece of the company no longer leaves with them.
The first half hour will tell you more precisely than anything on this page what you're missing today, and where to start.
Book a 30-minute call → Message me on WhatsAppTest your company today
Every card above has its own test, and the full library of tests and notes for owners and leadership teams is on one page.
Questions before the first call
Every month I sit at your table and connect four things companies treat as separate conversations: strategy, company culture, sales and the delivery of value. The company then pulls in one direction, and everyone knows what they can decide on their own and what no longer needs escalating.
| Who | What they do | What you're left with |
|---|---|---|
| Consultant | Analyses and hands over recommendations. Call one when you need one-off expertise, an audit or a review of the company. | A report. The change is up to you. |
| Sales trainer | Trains salespeople in techniques. | Skills. No system, no rules. |
| Coach | Develops one person. Call one when you want to develop one specific person, a successor for example. | A more capable individual in an unchanged system. |
| Crisis or interim manager | Takes over and decides for you. Call one when operations are in crisis, a manager is suddenly gone and someone has to take charge now. | Operations that work, while the manager is there. |
| Me | I make sure the same choice is carried through strategy, culture, sales and delivery, and I guide your people to build the system themselves. Call me when you already have training, a CRM and a methodology, and every salesperson still sells their own way. | A system that runs without you and without me. |
A good coach or consultant will help you with exactly what they do best. If your problem is the kind they solve, call them and save time and money. The full answer behind each row →
You pay for the diagnosis because without it I'd be selling you a solution before I knew the problem. I won't tell you what you want to hear. I'll tell you how I see it.
And if we already have a strategy?
Then try saying it in five sentences without the word strategy: who we sell to and who we deliberately don't, what customers get from us that they can't get elsewhere, why they pay more for it, what we stop doing because of it, and what our people will do differently next week. The sentence you can't say is a decision you haven't made. The full test →
Who this isn't for
It's for owners whose company has added departments and complexity as it grew. If you just want a quick revenue bump without changing how the company works, or you want someone to do it for you and without you, you're looking for someone else. If the company has stalled, you've made peace with it and don't want to change anything, don't call anyone. That's a legitimate choice. I don't start without the owner at the table. Otherwise I'd be charging for strategy theatre, and I don't do that.
If you didn't see yourself in the first four rows of the table but did see yourself in the problems above, then I'm the person to talk to. Practical questions, like time, cost, CRM and how long we work together, are on the How I work page.
Let's talk.
Which decision in your company has been waiting two days just for your signature?
Thirty minutes on the phone, free. You tell me what's hurting most, and at the end I tell you what I see. Even if it's that you don't need me.
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