What goals have we set for this year? How will we achieve them? You can find out from part two of the interview with our CEO, Ákos Szabó.
You can read the first part of the interview here.
What do you consider the most significant changes that the market needs to be prepared for in 2023?
Ákos Szabó: I think we are past the biggest blows, but the pain itself is just ahead. It is a bit like when you fall off your bicycle, and as you hit the ground, your adrenaline levels are so high that you cannot feel the pain; but when you get home, you realize how many injuries you’ve suffered and start to feel each and every one of them. The economic pain is going to be apparent now; now is the time to find a cure for it, to figure out how to relieve it.
What I am expecting from 2023 is that the inflationary pressure on the western markets will be reduced; repricing has mostly been completed in that regard, and now it is time for everyone to rethink what they have been doing so far and assess how they can reshape it and make it even better, more effective, and safer. Many previous paradigms have been proven wrong.
From an economic point of view, everyone has to recalculate their strategies, shorten their business plans and reconsider the entire supply chain they live in. People have to rethink who they sold to and bought from in B2B. This means everyone needs to keep their eyes open, seek out new opportunities and look into alternatives. Most organizations will probably have to revise their own operations as well: examine what they no longer need to or should do, and what they need to adapt to better. This is a triple effect: we have to reevaluate who we sell to, who we buy from, and also what we do internally.
How does Fluenta Europe prepare for these changes?
Á.Sz.: We have practically already planned in the medium and long terms most of what we would like to achieve, and we are now in the implementation stage.
On the one hand, we would like to significantly improve our marketing activities. In the past few decades, sales paradigms on the B2B market have changed substantially: barriers of entry to the market have lowered considerably, while barriers of entry to businesses are very high. The old sales methods between those two points are no longer effective enough.
Practically, the current task is to somehow overcome the difference between the low market entry barrier and the high business entry barrier. This can usually be achieved through the appropriate combination and complex reconsideration of sales and marketing strategies. Most western businesses have already implemented this idea; we also want to reach that point. Somehow this concept has not managed to gain a foothold in our post-Soviet region.
What goals have you set for this year?
Á.Sz.: We would like to expand our sales activities and achieve success internationally as well. We created the internal operating conditions for this in 2022; while we are still working on our processes, we should already see some results this year. We want to achieve this through new sales methods, tools, and processes, with a particular focus on developing distance selling. This might be considered a significant challenge as well.
There are a few goals we are going to focus on; these also include very distant goals that we know are not going to be easy to achieve, but we hope we can gather a lot of useful experience in these difficult markets.
The company turns 20 this year. Do you have something prepared for this occasion?
Á.Sz.: We definitely want to celebrate this anniversary properly. We are also planning events that give our clients a chance to meet the Fluenta team. These events will be announced in due time; for those that are interested, I suggest keeping an eye on our communication channels so that they do not miss out on anything.
