Craig Skevington, Steadfast IT "How to Hook a Whale"

Today we start our Interview Series with our first guest Craig Skevington, the founder of Steadfast IT.  Steadfast started as a traditional break-fix house, moved to managed services and then took the bold step in focusing on multi-location companies with remote workforce. Craig shares with us the steps his company took to drive success.  This included building a portfolio and driving customer acquisition.  Craig discusses how their focus is over delivering to their client base. By focusing on service analytics and searching to the repeatable issues that affect their clients to streamline support.  This yields an 8 minute ticket response goal, and leverages skill based routing for support. This approach increases client happiness and drives referral business. We then move into Craig's story about the process he took in order to "hook a whale", an extremely large deal his organization has in their portfolio.  He discusses the sales process, how critical it is to listen and find the pain, and then use that to drive the solution. He shares what the sales process looked like, the time investment required to land the opportunity, and what your should expect from the prospect.  Additionally, he expands on the concept of prospect obligation and how to get the client to "put skin in the game" which may not need to be monetary.  We close with how to manage the "whale".