"Finding business opportunists for the future is not a matter of feelings, but of well-set business triggers that I can identify, monitor and filter with data. The future is in better and data-driven prioritization."
Do you know the fastest talking salesman in the Czech Republic? And have you ever heard Martin Hosek speak? What a machine gun!
Martin Hošek works at Imper. Does that mean anything to you? If you work in B2B, let me give you a hint: Leady, Merk and Monitor. Are you home yet? Tools that are proven to accelerate the B2B business process. That's what Imper is.
Nowadays it is important to know! When you have data, you know. You can be prepared. For a customer, a business partner. Before you even start doing business. You know who your customer is, what they need, where the shoe is dropping. Or you know he's starting to grow fast and your solution will help him accelerate even more. So you reach out! Business processes are changing. They're different than they were 5, 10 years ago.
Data helps to develop business, marketing, or the functioning of the company as a whole. And that's what I enjoy, so I interviewed Martin in Zážeh on the topic of acquisition, but also ...
🔸 Why is the relationship business no longer a question of coffee?
🔸 Why do we have a great potential to improve acquisition in the Czech Republic?
🔸 Should acquisition and retention be handled by one dealer?
🔸 What does a reactive and proactive acquisition process look like?
🔸 Does the path to better business lead through "data prospecting"?
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How to use LEADY (+ free demo) (Bonus code: JAKNALEADY)
TRANSCRIPT OF THE INTERVIEW
Martin Hurych
Hello. I'm Martin Hurych and this is Zahžeh. Today's Ignition will be about B2B trading, acquisition enhancement opportunities, consultative selling, data, and with none less than Martin Hošek. Martin is one of the most visible faces of Imper and a B2B trading enthusiast for 10 years. Hi.
Martin Hošek
Hey, Marty. It's coming.
Performance of Martin and Imperu
Martin Hurych
By the way, he's one of the fastest talking salesmen I know in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. Not many people know Imper as a company, so let's have a little introduction to Imper and your journey through your decade of business to Imper.
Martin Hošek
Thanks so much for inviting me. It's a pleasure to talk to you about this topic. When you say Imper, most people probably don't really think of us, but where most salespeople or marketers do think of us is our three tools that we sell in the Czech Republic. If I simplify it a lot, they're all actually products that help accelerate the B2B process. The two most visible tools in B2B are Merk and Leads. Merk is the most comprehensive database of all business entities in the Czech Republic. If I simplify it a lot, we know relatively a lot about each and every company so that we are able to push that data to the trader so that they are able to prepare very well for their meeting. Leady is a tool that can identify what specific company is on my website, what they do on it and what they are specifically interested in. It creates what we call qualified interest, which is really extremely easy to work with in B2B business. The third product is a bit of a departure from B2B, but it actually interferes a lot. It's a product that monitors media in the Czech Republic. So it's a complete media monitoring product, which is mostly used in B2B for companies to keep track of what's happening in the market, with competitors or key customers. From our point of view, all these tools together help to speed up and optimize the business process so that everything makes a little more sense.
Martin Hurych
How did you get into this?
Martin Hošek
I'd venture to say that the ten years of experience as a trader I remember very well my acquisition beginnings when I didn't have anything like this in my hand. As traders progress through the market, they have come across these tools in recent years, and that was my case as well. I did use one of those tools, Merk, very actively as a customer and from a certain stage I couldn't imagine doing it any other way. Now, I don't want to say that there is nothing different and similar in the Czech Republic. The moment the idea came up to have a coffee with our grand vizier, Tomas Berger, and talk about some business connection, it made a lot of sense. I like to stick to an idea from Grant Cardone's book, Sell or They'll Sell You, which says that the most important sale at the beginning is selling the product to yourself. For me, that happened long before I started working with Impero and became a salesperson for the solution. So there was nothing there, it was just about the how.
Why is the relationship business not a matter of coffee?
Martin Hurych
I will take the liberty of quoting here a slightly longer sentence that I found in the preparation, and it interested me terribly. Relationship business is not a question of coffee and participation in a trade fair, but a question of tools that can alert the salesperson to key situations that are happening in the market of a given client, to important situations in relation to competitors and so on. Can you elaborate on that?
Martin Hošek
I'm a big believer in this. The way business evolves, it evolves primarily on a relationship level. It also comes historically from the mentality of the owners and CEOs who started those companies 10, 15 years ago and it's completely natural. Those people start out working with their immediate environment and then through referral business is getting further and further away. That way everyone will say they do a lot of relationship and referral business. So my question is, what does that mean specifically. It will probably mean that the company in question is pampering its customers, taking them to events, showing them production and so on. That's all certainly correct, but at that point I'm dependent on the fact that these are activities that can only be controlled by my physical presence with the customer. I'm addicted to spending time with that customer in order to build that. B2B is moving into a phase where digitalisation and tools can manage the relationship with the customer because they can identify situations where the customer is, even when I am not with them. It can be crucial if I know that a company, even my existing client, is currently hiring a new IT manager. I'm not likely to know that unless I have the tools to keep an automated eye on that situation. It can be very crucial to know that a company is going through some sort of major selection process. It can be very critical to know that the price of a commodity to which the firm is significantly tied is dropping extremely low in the market. We often show our clients how crucial strengthening that relationship can be when you call your client and congratulate them on something they've done well in the marketplace. All because you have media monitoring set up on the key segments that the customer is targeting. Those are the things that, from my perspective, will increasingly indicate whether I'm really consciously thinking about the relationship, wanting to manage and move it forward, or if it's just a feeling state. The latter isn't bad, but it's terribly sporadic and impactful. In this way you can set up a relationship management system with the customer.
Why do we have a great potential to improve acquisition in the Czech Republic?
Martin Hurych
I like it a lot because I tell all my clients that they should manage their relationships and nobody understands it, nobody gets it and most of them are in the position that the customer should manage it. The second sentence is they complain about how buying cycles are getting longer, their decision making, etc. Do I understand correctly your other sentence that you said in the preparation that the Czech Republic has a great potential to improve the acquisition process?
Martin Hošek
I don't want it to sound from my position that I am now dogmatically saying exactly how it will be. However, I've been through thousands of B2B sales meetings, so I have some experience. One thing I see a lot is that, to my surprise, relatively few companies do conscious acquisition. I'm talking about defining your market, which is somehow big, there are so many entities in it that we don't have yet, so our market share is 20% and the potential is another 80%. As logical as this is, I think it happens very minimally and mostly the other optics are more likely to happen. We feel we need new customers, let's look at what has worked best for us historically and let's do it again. But it's hard to get to any higher level in business if I think about it the same way I did a few years ago. It's better to first look at where the market has currently evolved, where the greatest strength is, and do the math. I like to say if we were 100% successful, which we never are, but if we were 100% of our potential market they have approached, so my favourite question is exactly how many companies. I often hear the answer that we sell to everyone and our customer is any company that makes CNC machines. It's not. I would venture to say that it is every company that makes CNC machines and is a reliable VAT payer. At that point, I will come up with a specific number of companies to tie a specific strategy to. That's where it then gets to the point where most companies don't pay enough attention to that strategy. Rather, they do what they feel leads to the outcome. That's where I think there is a lot of potential for growth.
Why does a salesperson need to add value to his or her own company and to the client?
Martin Hurych
Could it also be that there is an extreme shortage of good traders at the moment? Non-traders are starting to trade, either owners or people who happen to have the title trader on their business card but it's not in their genes. My target audience typically knows they have to do it, but they don't feel in the shoes of a trader. Isn't that part of it?
Martin Hošek
It can be. When you say the word businessman, everyone thinks of something else. I think it's getting a lot better and moving on even with respect to the level of consultative way of doing business, etc. These are topics that move a lot of people in the Czech Republic very well. So I think what it shows is that a salesperson is someone who fundamentally has to add value to the company at a level that really solves real problems for the company. In B2B, it's often the case that a salesperson is able to solve problems for a company that they didn't even think they had. He was able to identify them, see them, and thus they surfaced. The salesperson, if he learns to look for opportunities on the company's side where he can move that company forward, I dare say he's perceived very differently and that's his main role. A salesperson, in my opinion, is not a sales person. A salesperson is a person who really goes as deep as possible into the nitty gritty of a topic in which they can help the company. That's already a mentality that the owner or CEO may be lacking. A salesperson should be the one who goes to explore an area in which they can help the company significantly and by asking questions get to what their biggest weakness is. In fact, the owner and CEO often look at it from the perspective that they already see the goal that they need to get to, they already see the KPIs and the amount of money that needs to end up in the company in a given year.
Why is "getting to the meeting" considered business?
Martin Hurych
My bubble is very technical and technological, so it uses an exclusively consultative sales style. What I also see in the personality level of the people I meet is analysis and digging into the client's problems. That's what they actually enjoy as well, and a lot of people don't think of it as sales. Where does it come from that selling is getting past the first barrier, the acquisition part, getting into the meeting at all?
Martin Hošek
I think it comes from the mentality of a salesman. The moment he has it in his head that his goal is to create something from scratch, it means that he doesn't expect to come into a company where everything is ready. I think the acquisition and the ability to produce a deal ideally from scratch has to be in that salesperson. He has to have the joy of being able to do this activity, which very few people are able to do. If the acquisition trader is in a mode where he tells the acquisition trader to get everything ready and then he does it, he is not an acquisition trader. What he should understand is that even if he historically has no tools that can help extremely in this today, he will think about how to get to the customer. I think that's the mentality that those marketers need to have. It has to be someone who can take responsibility.
Martin Hurych
However, there are very few such traders here.
Martin Hošek
I agree with the retention-acquisition salesperson model I encounter in B2B. That is, I have a tribe under me and I actually already know what's going to happen this year. I can move it 10 to 15% somewhere, but not 100%. Of course, it depends on what I'm selling. I dare say there,
where the business process is relatively fast, this is less so. Where the business process is long and the products are really in the order of hundreds of thousands of crowns or millions of crowns, then of course it can be structured a little differently. The fact is that a salesperson is a person who will always think about how to make their job a little bit easier. That's perfectly normal. He'll want to do it in a way that gets to the bottom line, but at the same time he doesn't bleed at it. I think the fundamental point of what you're saying comes from the fact that there aren't many places in companies that describe and consciously break down acquisitions and retentions. We have that set up and I think it works very well. But there's a big difference in how a B2B firm looks at it from the top. Some people say that an existing customer is gold to them. It undoubtedly is and needs to be well looked after. On the other hand, an existing customer is only there today because they were once that first customer. Every company needs to grow and strengthening acquisition is a big topic in B2B business, in my opinion, and one that some companies are starting to focus on more and more. It's for one reason, they see the market growing and they themselves are growing, so they are no longer able to fully service their existing clientele as they would need to. Thus, it makes sense that they want to constantly feel that it's not just going to grow by upselling and cross- selling, but that it's going to grow by having new clients coming into their business all the time. I think there's really a huge room for growth in naming what acquisitions are and what they should look like in a standardized way in companies.
Should acquisition and retention be handled by one trader?
Martin Hurych
One thing that intrigued me there is that in Imperium you have a split of acquisition versus retention, or hunter versus farmer. A lot of companies have it set up so that whoever grabs the person in question then keeps them. It may be because of the reward models, but mostly because they believe the company should have one contact face. For example, how do your customers deal with the fact that you allow a contact and then pass them on to someone who cares?
Martin Hošek
That is a very good question. I don't want to say that we have it solved and there will never be a customer surprised. It's good to uncheck the establishment of that relationship. We often, in a way, by the business that we bring into B2B, we teach companies to do something new. There needs to be someone there in the introduction to really cheerlead the company into the fact that this is now a business process that really makes sense to implement into that acquisition. That's going to be done by a person who can, as I described in the introduction, take responsibility for getting it into that company. That's a slightly different skill set than making it work in that company over the long term across the entire sales team. That said, in our business, the acquisition salesperson is the person who has to do a little bit of evangelism in that market. He's got to get it to the stage that this is already possible and these opportunities are already there today. The retention can then build on that very nicely because of the fact that a well-developed CRM has to enter into it all. That's the information that we can keep at the level of what the business was built on, and we try to make sure that the customer doesn't have different expectations of the collaboration than what was sold. I'm not saying that this situation can't occur naturally in the volume and number of clients, but on the other hand, I dare say that even those retentions are very much aware of what we, as Imper, do in the Czech Republic. It's nice to keep it in the long term because there is some kind of a uniform culture and mentality. When you say Imper, you shouldn't think of a company that makes software, but rather a company that helps companies grow their business with data.
What does a reactive and proactive acquisition process look like and how can data empower me?
Martin Hurych
Let's go back to what we've already chewed on. So what does standardized acquisition look like according to Impero and how can the data you can provide help me do that?
Martin Hošek
Of course, it will be a little bit different in every company from the point of view that it is crucial to take into account both the industry and the way the acquisition has been done in that company so far. We're not saying we're going to go and change what has worked for you for 10 years. Of course, that's nonsense, nor do we want to put ourselves in that role. Rather, we are discovering hidden opportunities that the company has not been able to identify because of the data. One of the things I like to use is two ways of acquisition. There's the reactive acquisition method and the proactive acquisition method. The reactive method of acquisition means that I react to things that I'm seeing in the market. The reactive acquisition is one of those that you can start immediately because it's business right out the door, so to speak. Based on what we've talked about, some companies may be interested in what you can add value in in terms of the consulting that you do to big businesses. They'll come to your website and now the information is such that at this point the vast majority of companies won't find out that information unless they generate some sort of conversion, inquiry, in short, they'll leave something behind. The moment we see that such a company is on our client's website, we see what they are specifically interested in, what they are doing on it and at that moment we are able to work with that information. So I say acquisition should start there every day because that's the business that's closest to me, that's where something has already happened. I will supplement this information with information about the company itself. I'll look to see if it's even typologically our client, is it in the turnover band that I'm interested in, is it a customer that's in growth, is it a customer that's currently already using services of that format. There's a lot of things that you can find out through data. All of a sudden, I'm looking at whether or not I fall into that segment typologically. If it does, it's only at that point that the question of how do I, as a marketer, create that interaction when I can use these things starts to develop. The beautiful idea is that if I see a business moving around on my site, and I can communicate back based on their response, then suddenly I can put the whole communication on a whole different plane. All of us get a call from someone wanting to sell us something at some point, and all salespeople love it when they talk to someone and they tell them to call them back in 3 days. Because then that call in 3 days can be a follow up to today's call. They can then tell you that they have registered interest from your side in their topics on their site and that naturally makes us wonder if by any chance the timeliness is really urgent. So the acquisition process is based on a reaction to something, that's phase 1. Then I can move to the level of proactivity, when I define the whole market, I know it and I see how far I can grow in the Czech Republic, how many companies there are, what they look like, what they are. That's the first thing. The moment I have an analysis of the market and I can react well to what's already happening today, I can start moving very purposefully in business towards results.
How to use the information about the visit on the website?
Martin Hurych
So we have some information recorded, typically from the web. What do we do with it? I guess I can't pick up the phone and call to say someone's been going through the site. So how do you do it, what do you advise your clients?
Martin Hošek
That is a very good question. Of course, the goal is not to force anyone to admit to visiting our site. At the outset, it should be said that we never handle personal data, only corporate data. We never know who specifically in the company was generating the interest, and we try to let our clients know that we don't even want to know. I, as a salesperson, know exactly who I need to talk to in that company. So all I have to do is call the firm and get transferred. There may even come a time in Czech B2B when it won't work any other way than through a general receptionist contact. You need to know how to work with in that it makes a lot of sense for someone to very seamlessly connect me to my target person. So that's one way. Then, of course, there is some kind of cascading sale where I can address in the form of asynchronous communication, Loom, cascading email, etc. These are things that can build on that. But I'm still of the opinion that the marketer is a creature that has to have their hand connected to the phone, they want to build a relationship and make a call.
How to deal with the Electronic Communications Act?
Martin Hurych
What you said may give some lawyers the creeps. So how do you deal with the new Electronic Communications Act? Cookies are popping up everywhere and you're practically not allowed to make calls. I've heard cases where a 5 minute phone call took 20 minutes because they spend 15 minutes telling you your rights and responsibilities. So how do you get past that?
Martin Hošek
All of our applications meet the legitimate interest of the GDPR. We never take that communication so explicitly as to say that we are making a right to call or send an informational business email based on something. We do identify companies today that acknowledge cookies. We can technically see the ones that don't, of course, but at the moment the customer doesn't have the opportunity to work with them. We can show what's happening on the site, and that's probably the biggest utility value of the app. There's no need at all for there to be any interaction in that form. It's key for them to know that this is a segment that creates some focus on their solution. This further personalizes the way they set up their campaigns and continue their marketing activities. Our role is not to claim to create something on the basis of what takes place. It's more like putting a camera on your house that takes pictures of your driveway. It's your driveway, and you need to know who's on it. If someone rings your doorbell, probably the first thing you do is look to see who it is. The optics are actually exactly the same. We never track and identify the movements of companies on other sites. On the contrary, we only track what happens on their site. Access to this information is similar to Google Analytics, only here it's very specific and the company has to agree to it on a cookie basis. From that point of view, it works very well and there is nothing to worry about.
What does data-driven acquisition look like?
Martin Hurych
Let's get back to what we've been talking about. I'm looking through the peephole, I see somebody standing at my door, walking away, and I want to catch up to him, I want to turn him around, and I want to sell him something. In the few points that we then put in the bonus, how do you think an acquisition should work to lead from peephole to converted business?
Martin Hošek
The first word I will say is qualification. I want to qualify the opportunist with the information I get. I'm going to qualify it before I even talk to it. I want to qualify the potential of the Lead at the level of the macroeconomic data that I can pull out of our Merc. By doing this, I'm able to very effectively get information on whether this company is worth Step 2. If so, I choose the most effective way to interact at that moment from the peephole, which can be a phone call, LinkedIn, asynchronous communication in the form of Loom, etc. In other words, which way I'll let it be known that I'm close and I sense that there's some machine-identified need that we can help with. The third and most important point is to get to the stage where I create an expressive message on the customer side that I know exactly what stage the company is in and why I'm calling them now. The company may be in a situation where they are growing significantly in staffing, I can see that they have hired 3 new positions in the last month in this segment and that is why I am calling them right now. Urgency is the biggest point in B2B business in my opinion. The moment this is created, standardized business meetings naturally come out of it. Those companies already have that set up. But business-wise, I dare say it's very important to keep the urgency level on the customer side at all times given the stage they are in. All of these things can be typed into my CRM the moment I open the business. The information that someone has been on my website can show up in my CRM right away. Then I can retrieve all the market information and add it to that. So that urgency can be defined not only by what stage the customer is at, but also what stage their market is at. I'll give you an example. Companies that sell logistics services may find it very crucial that the construction of the largest logistics complex is being prepared outside Prague in the next two years. I will take this information and say that this is also the reason why I am calling them now, because I know that this situation is coming and it could be a business opportunity for them. So I use all that context to keep a constant urgency to create a reason why that person should want to meet us. The moment I put all these things together, I dare say we have a meeting. Every company may already have that negotiation set up differently, but for us, the most important point is to constantly take the temperature of the customer, which many people take from that meeting onwards. But we really want to measure it very significantly before the meeting.
Who to approach in the first phase and why?
Martin Hurych
That means I'm looking for a customer who is marketing at the go stage because they're already actually doing something. When you approach someone, do you go straight to where you think the interest really is? Do you do a search on LinkedIn, for example, to see who the sales or finance director is there and you just fire straight at them?
Martin Hošek
Very often, I really try to be as direct as possible on the topic that I know we can resolve in that company. If I see that in identifying companies on our website, the company was in the company database section, I make a logical guess as to who it could theoretically be and keep looking. Today, we are able to aggregate this data from LinkedIn into our Merk tool, so I can see it all in one click. I click on a company, I can see the financial stability, but I can also see who sits in that company in each position thanks to the LinkedIn aggregation, and so I'm able to view that data right away. Then I either want to reach that person via phone or I go through a classic InMail message within LinkedIn to create that it's not a coincidence why I'm writing this message now.
What's in the pipeline at Imper?
Martin Hurych
From your intensive educational efforts, starting with the webinars, B2B and live streams you do as part of your online marketing activities, it's probably overwhelmingly clear how Leads and Merk are used. After today, it should be much clearer that they can strip anyone who appears on the web relatively decently down to their socks. Rather, let us know what's in your kitchen and what we can look forward to moving forward?
Martin Hošek
We're planning a lot in terms of what we perceive to be the B2B business in the Czech Republic one day. We have this internal motto that we want to standardize certain things in B2B. Data is obviously a theme for us across all products. We are addressing how much interesting and comprehensive data we can deliver. That's the elemental level. What I see as our biggest vision is how B2B business can change if it stands on the principles we are talking about today. How much more can a company that today is doing in the order of 50 million CZK turnover produce with the same effort just by introducing efficiencies into their business at the level of data handling and business process. These are the ideas that drive us. How much a company can change with relatively few changes. In the context of the Pareto rule of 80 to 20, let's imagine that if 20% of the activities a company does have an 80% outcome, then let's focus on making those 20% of activities the most critical. In fact, in most companies this is not the case. Rather, it's usually the case that the business works exactly the other way around. I do 80% of the activities and I calculate that some 20% of that will work out. We try to focus on that 20%, and out of that 20% we create things that we know through data analytics are worth focusing on. All of a sudden that business can double in size just because they're streamlining their work. We are very much looking forward to being able to link all 3 of these themes. There is a lot of talk in media monitoring today that it is good to capture something that is heard somewhere. But what we are trying to focus on is what to do with that data going forward. In business, everybody knows CRM, customer relationship management. What we pull a lot is MRM, media relationship management. That is, how do we aggregate data from the media market to deliver real-time information to each opportunity in a machine-like way and then adapt to that. So we're going to do a lot of things on the level of upgrading applications, but a lot of things are just about what that B2B business can be. We're also going to be doing business platforms at the level of different networking for salespeople and so on, which should reinforce a lot that the salesperson, from our perspective, shouldn't be doing certain things anymore. He shouldn't be spending time on extreme administration, prospecting for contacts, etc. Tools can already do all of that at some level today. We are very much looking forward to this because we believe that there is a lot of potential in Czech B2B.
Does the path to better business lead through "data prospecting"?
Martin Hurych
If I simplify it somehow, did I understand correctly that the way to go is more detailed and effective data-driven prospecting?
Martin Hošek
Basically, yes. I dare say that finding business opportunities for the future is not a matter of feelings, but of well-set situations that I can identify in the market. There is so much data out there that the biggest issue is picking the right ones and knowing what my business triggers are. I'll give an example. If we have a company that sells furniture, its business trigger is every time a company moves somewhere. That's a conscious business trigger, and if I pick 5 of those business triggers in the company, that's when I know that that's the idea that drives me, my opportunality. I can already set up a system to watch for these things. Phase 2 is that above all of that, it straight up picks for me from these drivers only those companies that are regional, have more than 20 employees, and have been in a growth phase for the last two years. With these indicators, I can then choose the companies where I prioritize my activity.
Contact
Martin Hurych
So hopefully you will all succeed. Martin, where can we find you if we want to consult you, find you, ask you questions?
Martin Hošek
The easiest is probably LinkedIn, very simply, Martin Hošek. There are more of us on there, so I mean the one who has sales Imper written on it. Whenever there's a desire to talk about this topic, that's the easiest way to contact me. We're in the relationship business, and we like to have coffee, too. It's just nice to think about whether it has to be just coffee, or if it can be something more.
Martin Hurych
Thank you very much.
Martin Hošek
Thank you, too.
Martin Hurych
That was Martin Hošek from Imper. If you have a love for data, Martin and I did our job well. Be sure to like, share, subscribe, either in your podcast apps or on YouTube if you've been watching us. Don't forget to check out my website, www.martinhurych.com, where in the Ignition section, there's going to be the aforementioned bonus that Martin and I discussed here about what a modern acquisition should look like. I can't help but keep my fingers crossed and wish you success, thanks.