Who is Martin Pálenik
I'm a fractional Chief Strategy Officer (F-CSO) for owners of B2B companies in Slovakia and Czechia. Two days a month on site, on call in between, one fixed monthly retainer. I have one job: to help your company make money differently from its competitors and win deals on value, not on discounts.
30 years in B2B, 20 of them with P&L responsibility
For thirty years I worked in companies I didn't own, answering to their owners for results, twenty of those years with P&L responsibility.
- Thirteen years as hired managing director and CEO of Skuba Slovakia, where the company went from a spare-parts seller stuck in a price war to a strong number two in the Slovak market.
- Before that, at Probugas, I led sales and marketing with P&L responsibility. The company stopped selling litres of gas, started selling energy solutions, and became number one in the Slovak market, with a fifth of revenue from services in a pure commodity business.
- Aged 25, at Cylinder Gas, I spent five years moving the business from dealers onto direct contracts, until nine out of ten cylinders were sold direct.
Since 2015 I've also run my own consulting firm, advising owners of B2B companies. Since July 2026 it's been my only work.
The way out of a price war was never a better discount. It was always a change in what the customer pays for.
I connect four things companies treat as separate conversations into one system, from strategy all the way to the customer
The owner and their people decide together where the company will play, how it will win, and what it will stop doing. Each level leaves with its own decisions and clear decision rights: how far it can go on its own. I say out loud what I see. It's done when you can see it in the company on a Monday. A company works as one living organism: strategy is the brain, culture the heart, sales and delivery the muscles. 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. So I don't fix one part of the company. I build a system in which all of them pull together.
How I'm different
I connect the whole chain: from what's really happening with your customers to translating the strategy and the customer's view into the work of every one of your departments.
- Reality: what you, the leadership team, middle management and the frontline say about the company, set alongside what customers say in their own words.
- Choice: you make it together at one table, and you have the final say.
- Departments: for each one, you know what to stop, what to keep and what to start doing differently.
- KPIs: the numbers that show whether your strategy is progressing over time.
You'll find what owners come to me with in the eleven cards on the home page →
Full authority then, two days now
For thirty years I worked in companies I didn't own, answering to their owners for results, twenty of those years with P&L responsibility and thirteen of them as a hired managing director. I know the desk where every signature ends up, and the chair of the person you'll one day entrust your company to. Since 2015 I've also advised owners of B2B companies; since July 2026 it's been my only work. The third and oldest piece of the same experience is Cylinder Gas, further up this page.
Frankly: back then I had full authority and was there every day. Today I give you two days a month and no authority, and that difference is the whole point of the role.
In your company, decision rights sit with the owner, the leadership team and middle management. When the frontline sits at the table with them and they make the choice together, the change also holds on the other twenty days of the month, when I'm not there.
If I were the one making the decisions, the change would last only as long as you kept paying me. The day our engagement ended, your company would be back where it started.
So I don't bring a ready-made solution, and I don't take the running of the company away from you. I bring a process that turns your own decisions into a system that runs without you and without me.
You won't find out whether it's taken hold from my report. You'll see it in what the company has stopped doing, and which decisions went through without your signature.
Let's talk.
Thirty minutes on the phone, free. You tell me what's hurting most in your company, and at the end I tell you what I see. Even if it's that you don't need me.
I'm a fractional Chief Strategy Officer for owners of B2B companies, not a sales trainer or an interim manager. You can check what I say about myself here:
- Based in Bratislava, working across Slovakia and Czechia.
- Skuba Slovakia s. r. o., company ID 46263594, thirteen years as hired managing director and CEO. You can verify it in the Slovak business register.
- My own profile: linkedin.com/in/martin-palenik-fcso