Martin Valenta: Key Account Manager on Prospector and BizMachine

He’s only been at BizMachine a few months, but he’s clear on one thing: he offers his clients a quality product and service that delivers real added value. In his previous roles, he led sales teams himself. Now, as our new Key Account Manager, he meets with sales directors as his customers.

In this interview, he also described why he chose BizMachine. “I love the overall depth of our data. You can see it clearly in how detailed the information we can provide about a company’s vehicle fleet is. Including what car the CEO of a given company drives. We know the model, when the lease expires, whether it was bought new or nearly new, and when it’s probably time for a replacement. That impresses not only those who need this data for better B2B service offers, but really any curious head of sales,” says Martin.

Martin, you’ve been at BizMachine since December 2023, so your early days are still fresh in your memory. What were they like?

After a long time, I found myself outside my comfort zone because I had never worked in a startup environment or a tech company before. Things work a bit differently here than what I was used to. Fortunately, thanks to my colleagues, I was able to adapt fairly quickly. I also appreciate the emerging onboarding system, which really helped me acclimate and fully integrate into the sales processes at BizMachine.

Why did you choose BizMachine?

The product definitely caught my attention. I think Prospector is something that truly makes sense. As a tool, its value lies in being able to help companies grow their business. I genuinely believe in what I’m selling. And besides the product, it’s also the people. I really hit it off personally with Petr Šorna and Martin Ondáš from the very first meeting. This combination of a great product and great people is an absolute foundation for me at work.

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“I think Prospector is something that truly makes sense. As a tool, its value lies in being able to help companies grow their business. I genuinely believe in what I’m selling.”

Is there anything that surprised you here?

Actually, it was the product itself and our deep ability to leverage available company data. For sales directors who already have some market experience and want to map their market or advance their sales process and team, Prospector practically sells itself.

As our new Key Account Manager, how do you actually present Prospector to clients? What are the main benefits you want them to know?

Thanks to my previous experience leading sales, I dare say I understand how people on the other side of the table think. That’s why I show sales directors the benefits of Prospector. For those using a CRM system, I can immediately demonstrate a concrete example of how Prospector saves time and makes finding new business opportunities more efficient. That’s usually the key moment. Then they also appreciate the better overview and control over what their salespeople are doing.

Can you be a bit more specific?

When you say “company data,” everyone imagines something different. What we offer is data depth and comprehensiveness. And that’s what matters. Most people can’t even imagine the breadth we have and offer. That’s why I like to show an example using automotive segment data, even to those who don’t need it for their business. When you show anyone the level of detail we can instantly provide—for example, about the car driven by a company’s CEO—it grabs everyone’s attention. When you add whether the car was bought new or nearly new, its brand and model, you can already see curious eyebrows rising. And when you add how soon they’ll likely replace it (and mention which indicators from the data you’re basing that on), the depth of our data really clicks for everyone. We’re not just data resellers. We put data into context and connections. And I show the main benefits of Prospector to my clients in several steps that we go through together before shaking hands.

Can you share those steps?

We start with analysis. Its goal is to get the most comprehensive market overview tailored to the specific client’s needs. Then we focus on prioritizing potential business contacts by their potential—from companies that should receive personal attention from a salesperson, down to those that aren’t really worth pursuing. We build this scoring based on ideal customer parameters and our client’s experience with who they’ve been able to convince about their service or product, or based on parameters that directly indicate demand for the given service or product. And once we have this segmentation ready, it’s much easier to distribute work across the team. Prospector then gives individual salespeople additional important information alongside their contacts, helping them refine offers, determine exactly when to call, and what to pitch. And last but not least, thanks to daily updated data and insights, they’re much better prepared for sales meetings—not just for the opening small talk.

I see. And how does Prospector actually help you?

It’s quite similar. I mainly use it for client segmentation and finding new opportunities. When I take our current customer data and review it against many different criteria—including our indicators for activity, growth, and accessibility—I immediately get a better picture of what our ideal client looks like. So I search for those we don’t yet have in our CRM using the same parameters. Besides finding new opportunities, I also always review the data we have about a company before my sales meetings, looking at what datasets are already in Prospector and what information might be most directly useful to that company. When I already have specific datasets in hand that can really help my client, it’s a huge game changer. Showing a concrete example of how our product can directly help a company’s business is simply the decisive factor in sales negotiations.

I know you’ve been here a relatively short time. Still, I’m curious—have you already encountered any interesting use cases?

For me, the most interesting work is naturally with data beyond Prospector itself. I enjoy working with those who actively use data. I like that we can also connect a company’s internal data with ours. The most fascinating cases for me are when we’re looking for business acquisition potential outside the Czech market. For example, I was building a scoring model to identify companies with potential for a certain type of transport within Europe and from Europe to the Czech Republic. It included about 20 different parameters. Each had a different weight, and fine-tuning those weights so the score made sense and delivered the needed results was the best education for me about the complexity of our data and the deep expertise that we at BizMachine can offer clients as a team. That was really interesting and instructive for me.