Faces of Skedulo: Jason Stokes
People are the heart of Skedulo, and success—for us, our team and our customers—is a collaborative effort. We are proud of our team’s achievements and celebrate them every month with our Skedgend Awards. A Skedgend is a teammate who has been nominated by their peers for consistently demonstrating excellence in our values:
Jason Stokes, Regional Sales Director, based in London | Skedgend Award Winner, June 2021
The UK is a fairly small team so we have to think outside the box to get our job done. We need to be a little bit of everything. But that’s the bit I think is most interesting. You’re doing lots of different stuff but everyone is heading towards a common goal.
What motivates you to work hard?
I guess the fear of failure, of not doing a good job.
The cliché answer is earning money and keeping my kids alive, which is kind of the primary factor, but I think it’s about doing a good job and having good outcomes. Good outcomes in sales are customers paying for our expertise and being happy with the service we provide, the product we deliver, and the ongoing relationship we have with them. That is very rewarding.
What is your proudest accomplishment at Skedulo?
If I think about how the business started – just myself and Scott Gassmann nearly 4 years ago literally walking around carrying a bag – and then I look at the couple of team get-togethers we’ve had recently where we’re now at 21 people…it’s amazing.
The business has grown so much in the UK, we now feel like a fully formed business unit within Skedulo with all the different disciplines represented, some great people, and a good dynamic and working relationship with everyone.
What’s been the biggest surprise about working at Skedulo?
What’s been great to see is how the company and our vision has evolved in terms of what the product looked like and how it worked originally, to what it looks like today and where it’s going.
That’s been a super pleasant surprise, and very exciting in sales and a customer-facing role to be really proud of what it is that you’re offering and to have that strategic customer conversation about where we’re headed in the future.
What’s the most unusual prospect you’ve ever dealt with?
In the past week we’ve had a cleaning company in South Africa, a vaccination opportunity in Zambia, and we’ve been talking to companies in Russia. So there’s much in the way of variety, and it’s all been very interesting.
What’s your favourite food? What fuels you?
I used to live in Australia for a long time, and the best thing is that there’s excellent choice of food and global cuisine. I really miss good quality Thai food. The UK has come a long way, but still has some way to go to get some really good quality stuff.
Can you share a fact about you that no one else knows?
Years ago, I got head hunted by British Intelligence to be a business analyst. I went through the process and got offered a job to work for British intelligence, but I chose to go backpacking in Australia instead. Make of that what you will.
What are you most excited about in 2021?
Continuing to fulfill our promise. I think we have a lot of work to do in this region, but I’m really confident about what’s in our kit bag, the capability of our team, the vision at hand, and the strategy that’s in place. It’s really exciting, but it’s going to require a lot of hard work to get there.
