Volunteering and philanthropy are major elements of ReadyTalk's culture. In this photo, a group of employees who recently volunteered at SAME Cafe.

One of the benefits that attracted me to ReadyTalk was the opportunity to volunteer in the community during work hours.  ReadyTalk gives each employee up to 20 hours of paid volunteer time per year.  It allows us to offer our time at places that are only open during business hours.  I recently volunteered at SAME Café, which is open for lunch Monday through Saturday.

I met the owners, Libby and Brad Birky, at a friend’s BBQ around the time when they had received funding to open a restaurant.  Their idea was that people could pay what they could, and if they had no money, they could help out in the restaurant.  I didn’t see Libby or Brad again until last year when Libby spoke at TEDxMileHigh.  Inspired by her talk, I thought it would be a great place to get a group of people from work to volunteer for the day.  Since then, we have had volunteers helping out at SAME Café on a few occasions, with five volunteers participating each day.

Most of our work is done in the kitchen: prepping the food, cooking, and washing dishes.   We wipe down tables and clean the floors at the end of the day.  They have a standard menu of salad, soup and pizza.  But this year, they were able to renovate their kitchen and hoping to expand their menu selection.

The people we are helping range from college students to the elderly, and from the unemployed to business people.  Usually, Brad or Libby greet people that come in and know many of them by name.  They want to build a community and part of this is getting to know the people who lunch there.  Some who visit need a good, healthy, home cooked meal that they may not be able to get because they don’t have the money.  Others come in and donate money to help out the cafe.

Kim and Cheri wash the spinach for the day's lunches.

Jess and Joel were busy grating cheese at SAME Cafe

Accidents happen. At ReadyTalk we’re committed to helping our customers prevent accidents and mistakes. Each month, ReadyTalk’s Account Managers share a recent accident and tips for how to avoid it in the future.

Because Marty was a novice ReadyTalk user, he was a bit nervous about hosting the large audience, which had pre-registered for his upcoming webinar.  He had decided to use ReadyTalk’s Event Services so he could have an experienced ReadyTalk Event Manager on his call to reassure him as well as address any technical issues or questions as they arose.

As part of his training webinar, Marty planned to use application sharing to walk his participants through his company’s online software.  Prior to his live event, in order to ensure he was prepared to switch over to the appropriate webpage after starting his live web conference, he navigated to his company’s homepage on the already open internet browsing window.  Earlier in the day, Marty had used Google to search for something rather personal – something most folks would likely rather not broadcast to a group of colleagues, customers and prospects.

When the live webinar started and Marty switched into application sharing mode, the Google toolbar at the top of his browsing window was displaying awkward search he typed in the search field earlier in the day.  The ReadyTalk Event Manager quickly noticed this, and was able to send a private Chat to the chairperson to advise him to delete what he’d typed in the search field.

Marty could have avoided this error and embarrassment either by opening a new browsing window for his ReadyTalk webinar, or simply clearing out any Google searches from the toolbar prior to starting his web conference.

Are there accidents or tips you would like our account managers to address? Share your questions below and we’ll provide some insight. You can also check out the best practices section of the website for more ideas.

This week we had the awesome opportunity to take an inside look at a day in the life of Jessica Liss, one of our Technical Product Managers.  Jessica is a CSU graduate and has been with ReadyTalk for almost a year.

Describe a typical day for you at ReadyTalk. 

I typically attend a class at the gym downtown (which ReadyTalk helps pay for) and arrive at work a little before 9 a.m. for the daily stand-ups with the teams I work with. It’s great that I have the flexibility to start the day with a workout, so I’m awake and ready to tackle anything that comes my way. Currently, I join the daily meetings of two teams as they review their status on our virtual Kanban board, and I communicate any priorities that have changed since the previous day. After standup, if I don’t have other meetings, I like to sit with the engineers to be available for questions and do some bonding  - though I have to watch my back since I’m often a target of nerf dart attacks! Before lunch I’ll head to a Product Planning meeting, which is composed of leadership from marketing, operations and engineering. Depending on the week, we may be further defining a product’s minimum viable feature set, reviewing wireframes and usability testing results, raising risks / concerns about project status, or discussing important projects that have come up that need to be defined and planned for. Depending on where a project is at in its lifecycle, my afternoon may include performing competitive analysis, meeting with the Product Marketing manager to discuss a launch plan, or writing user stories. One of the things I love about my job is that there really isn’t a “typical” day – my week is fully of a variety of activities with people from across the business… which keeps it interesting!

Why do you think that ReadyTalk is the #1 company to work for in Colorado?

ReadyTalk is the best company to work for in Colorado because of the people and the culture. Few companies are able to authentically define themselves as an employee-centric organization – ReadyTalk has been able to achieve it.  Employees are empowered to do what they love – whether it is coding, testing, selling, marketing, organizing, etc. There is a high level of trust from the leadership that employees are capable of getting the job done without micromanagement. One of my favorite benefits is the ability to volunteer during the day without taking extra time off. It’s been really fun to bond with co-workers while also serving the local community. Furthermore, ReadyTalk invests in their employees and provides unique training and professional development opportunities that many organizations have unfortunately cut out of their budgets.

Tell us about your favorite day at work…

One of my favorite days at work occurred a few months after I started… I was working with a team of new engineers on our product called the Quick Launcher. Our job was to take a partially developed product, figure out what still needed to be done, and release it to production. The team unified and took ownership and pride in the Quick Launcher. They brought creativity and talent to make it better than the company could have anticipated. The team really bonded during development and the launch was a big moment of celebration. Each of us brought in something to share for the release party – three types of homemade salsa (one that was mild enough for me to enjoy), tortilla chips, and Limoncello from my recent trip to Italy to make some tasty drinks. As I was grabbing glasses and a bowl upstairs, I ran into the CEO, Dan King, and his brother Scott, EVP, and casually invited them to join us for the party. Without hesitation and with only 5 minutes notice, they both came to cheer on the team. Just last Friday, we had another release party and had all the executive staff there to celebrate and congratulate the team on their hard work.  I appreciate the team-centric and collaborative atmosphere that is found throughout the organization regardless of title.

If someone were interested in working on your team at ReadyTalk what advice would you have for them?

My advice would be to be passionate about what you do, know your strengths and the value you bring to the organization, and be able to genuinely articulate what gets you excited about the opportunity to work at ReadyTalk.

Katie Green is part of the ReadTalk Recruiting Team (AKA the Beaphins)  She has been in the recruiting industry for 10 years and has developed a strong interest in technology and technical recruitment. When she isn’t searching for technical talent for ReadyTalk you might find her at the tennis court, playing volleyball or learning a new song on guitar!

 In our webinar this Thursday at 2:00ET, we’ll speak to the above questions and then some. I sat down w/ our speaker, Kelly Hall, Business Impact Director at 90Octane, and asked her to give us a sneak peek into what she’ll be presenting. Ultimately – when it comes to lead nurturing, where do we start, what are the best channels to use, and why does it even matter in the first place?

Nurturing = Prospect and Customer Relationship Management

What does it really mean to “nurture” a lead, and where does it fit in your marketing mix? The term “lead nurturing” has been front and center in the marketing world for some time now, but there are varying definitions as to what it means, when it makes sense to undertake and what, exactly, you need to create a successful lead nurturing program.

What is lead nurturing?

The easiest way to conceptualize lead nurturing is to think of personal relationships. We don’t leap immediately from dating to marriage, but rather through developing and nurturing the lifecycle of the relationship. Your personal and business relationships are a conglomerate of communication touch points, from face-to-face interaction to phone calls and more. This is also the case for lead nurturing. We would be remiss to define lead nurturing as exclusively an online activity. Conversations with sales or customer service representatives, attendance at tradeshows, and participation in events all factor into nurturing a prospect or customer relationship.

Where (and when) should you nurture?

Lead nurturing is the natural evolution from pure-play demand generation. Regardless of whether you are operating as B2B or B2C lead nurturing can, and should, be utilized. At its most fundamental, lead nurturing is the management of the relationship. Leads aren’t just leads, they are people who need communication before, during and after making purchase decisions.

How should you approach it?

Strategy is the single most important thing you need to undertake lead nurturing. That means you must answer these questions:

• Why am I asking them to engage with me?
• What do I have to offer?
• What is the best way to communicate with the prospects?
• How often should I communicate with these prospects?

Unfortunately, there’s a misconception that lead nurturing is equal to marketing automation, or that the only way to nurture is through a tool. And, while the help of a marketing automation tool may be great (and frankly, sometimes mandatory), often you can undertake lead nurturing strategies sans the tool. In fact, we recommend for those new to lead nurture strategy that you undertake the strategic side of things, and then use your findings to inform whether you need a marketing automation tool, and if so, what the best tool given your business requirements is.

Once you have established your strategic goals and defined when and where you need to nurture, you’ll be well on your way to determining how lead nurturing can work for you.

Be sure to register for the webinar and if you are seeking additional information, check out our sneak peek interview with Kelly on what you can expect to learn and who should be attending. Hope you can join us!

Tomorrow, ReadyTalk heads to San Francisco for the Salesforce Cloudforce Social Enterprise Tour along with hundreds of other social enterprise leaders and special guests from Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Accenture and more. It’s a free event so sign up. If you’ll be attending, be sure to stop by booth 18B and check out the ReadyTalk for Salesforce application.

ReadyTalk recently upgraded the app to allow salespeople to focus less time on the technology behind a demo and more time on the message of the demo. With ReadyTalk, prospects can join in seconds with no downloads and crystal-clear audio. Sales reps can schedule and start demos right from Salesforce. Demos are automatically captured as Salesforce activities, freeing sales reps to focus on selling and arming management with valuable insight into performance.

Since the show is all about social… check this out. As you know, sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn provide an easy and budget-friendly way to get the word out about your upcoming live event or your on-demand recording. ReadyTalk’s social media tools make it easy for you and your audience to share information about your upcoming webinar on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

We love face-to-face time (often a rarity in the world of web conferencing), and we’d love to give you a demo of our Salesforce app and social media tools. We’ll also be co-hosting a cocktail party with one of our marketing automation partners, Pardot, after the event. We hope to see you there!

In addition to our incessant search for the top Java Developers, this year we would like to take a moment to give you a more detailed look at the different opportunities we currently have available within our technical team. Our main priority, at the moment, is finding a few great Engineering Managers to join the

madness. We have awesome teams here at ReadyTalk and the big focus for our engineering managers is to continue to grow the success of each of those teams. With a number of new engineers coming on board coaching our teams on how to continue to learn from one another and rely on each other is a big part of management here at ReadyTalk. If this sounds like the right fit for you please check out a more detailed job description.

A new opportunity on the team is an Engineering Product Owner. In this position, you will be the #1 advocate for ReadyTalk Engineering. You will be taking the ideas from our engineers 20 percent time and helping integrate those ideas into product development. You will

be communicating with marketing, sales and project managers in explaining what we would like to develop and why we would like to use our engineering resources on these products. This is an internal facing position…essentially your client is our engineering team. Let us know if you would like to learn more!

Along with our search for an Engineering Manager and a new Engineering Product Owner, we are on the hunt for a couple of people who are part detective, part creative problem solver, and part tech nerd to join our group of Quality Assurance Engineers.  We have integrated our Software Developers and QAs, where you will be working very closely together throughout the entire development process. On average, there is a 4 to 2 ratio of Software Developers to QA. As part of QA, you will be writing and maintaining test documentation in addition to investigating the source of software defects. Check out all of the details.

Lastly, we are focused on building out our Application Infrastructure team this year. Your top priority here will be to make sure our server is up and running at all times. You will be building and configuring the environment for development and QA production along with working with our engineers to determine what the requirements for each environment is. Finally, the Application Infrastructure Engineers have to ensure that all designs can be integrated into the overall system.

This wraps up our plans for 2012. We hope that one of these opportunities has caught your attention and you will be the next addition to our ReadyTalk Family. We wanted to mention that if you are interested in exploring any of these positions further please contact ReadyTalk Recruiting directly at Catherine.harrison@readytalk.com OR katie.green@readytalk.com. We can help to expedite your application process. Happy New Year and we look forward to hearing from you soon!

And it keeps. On. Growing.

The three major players, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, continue to garner the most users in both the B2C and B2B arena. ReadyTalk customers often conduct large webinars on a regular basis for several purposes, such as online training, new product launches, and most often, lead generation and qualification.  This is where social media and webinars marry, since our customers are constantly looking for ways to easily engage with their audiences and increase registrations prior to their event, especially with tools they already use.

To continue our focus on the marketing user, ReadyTalk has added the following social media features to Conference Center to help our customers leverage their own social networks, as well as those of their audience) to expand their reach and drive more qualified leads:

• LinkedIn Integration for Scheduled Meetings (ReadyTalk already offers automated promotion through Facebook and Twitter)
• Enable your participants to easily share your upcoming webinar on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn through the registration page and event emails

As a chairperson, you have the option to turn the ability for your participants to share your event on their social networks at any time.

And that’s not all. We’ve also added the ability to add an upcoming meeting to Google Calendar, to help increase the efficiencies for both the chairperson and participants.

Remember to refer to last week’s blog post to learn about some of the user interface changes!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to event services and our conference center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.

It’s no secret that finding top technical talent in the Denver market is competitive; the Denver Post published an article back in February 2011 that headlined “Colorado Companies Struggle to find Software Developers.”  ReadyTalk has made the effort to face this competition head on by hiring us, Katie Green and Catherine Harrison! We focus specifically on finding the top technical talent by scaling the pages of the internet and hitting the Denver tech scene. We search for the geekiest, smartest and most passionate Software Developers Denver has to offer.

Together we have a total of 15 years recruiting experience including one year each as Technical Sourcers with Google.  As Technical Recruiters with ReadyTalk we proactively search and reach out to Software Developers in the Denver area that might have what it takes to join the ReadyTalk Engineering Team. We know we represent a fantastic company and an excellent product which makes our job fun and rewarding.  We also have the added advantage of learning something new each and every day from our candidates and our engineering colleagues.  We most recently decided to start learning more numbers to Pi in an effort to “fit in” after noticing one of our engineering co-workers was wearing a T-shirt that said “Approximation Is For Wimps”.   Feel free to check in to find out how we are doing.

Learn more about ReadyTalk’s engineering culture or check out our current openings.

Kelly Valdes, our newest marketing intern, started just last week. She’s writing weekly to document her experience in working with Marketing and other departments at ReadyTalk. Stay tuned for further antics from Marketing and to experience our great culture through an intern’s eyes.

My name is Kelly Valdes and I am the new Marketing intern at ReadyTalk. I am excited for this new opportunity to join the web and audio conferencing world. I look forward to learning more about the dynamics of Business to Business Marketing and further expanding my industry experience here at ReadyTalk.

Here I am about to conclude my first week here at ReadyTalk, and it’s just in time for Marketing happy hour. Getting to know my co-workers and continually meeting new faces has been so much fun. Allison Wolfe [the other marketing intern] was so helpful on my first day. She was so nice and did a great job teaching me Salesforce and showing me the ropes, and not-to-mention where to find all the yummy snacks in the kitchen. I discovered on day 2, after spending $20 for parking, to never neglect checking the Rockies schedule for day games. Sarah, the awesome office manager, luckily hooked me up with a Light Rail pass which will be a life-savor.

I experienced my first meeting with the marketing team regarding Dreamforce and man am I jealous that everyone is at San Francisco! The meeting was filled with jokes and laughter, clearly signifying how closely knit the marketing team is, but bottom-line, I now understand all the dedication and teamwork it takes to plan a business trip and creating a booth at a conference. Melanie, the events coordinator, has done a great job with getting everything organized and ready to go.

It’s great having Mike McKinnon [senior demand generation manager] around who loves lacrosse as much as I do and played both collegiately and professionally. He is doing an excellent job incorporating me onto the marketing team and helping me with Salesforce. I did a few mini projects for Tracy [channel marketing manager] this week and have learned more about the research that goes into target marketing and sales.

It’s been fun catching up with old friends from high school and college randomly on the 16th Street Mall. I feel so grownup going to happy hour or dinner with my friends and family and telling them about ReadyTalk. I discovered last night that my neighbor across the street uses our audio and web conferencing software and loves it. Naturally, everyone is jealous of the fact that there are kegs in the kitchen and the great location of the office.

Being in an office with people who encompass such high energy and positive attitudes is refreshing and motivating. It is evident how much ReadyTalk employees enjoy their jobs and work environment. There’s a clear “work-hard, play-hard” aura in the building. Overall, I am extremely happy with this opportunity and first week at ReadyTalk. I am happy to have Teresa Lawlor [director of marketing] as my boss and to work with such an excellent team.

While it’s been a few months since we’ve last blogged on the contextual interview process at ReadyTalk, we’ve been hard at work behind the scenes.  The 1^st round of interviews for the IT Specs/Contracts user has completed and is currently under review by our team, while the final round of interviews for the marketing user wrapped up just a couple weeks ago. Another round of thanks to our participating customers, we really appreciate the feedback!

As we last left it, our team was analyzing data from the 1st round of interviews with our marketing users, and gearing up for the 2nd round.  During the 1^st round of contextual interviews, we utilized a set of questions to understand our customers’ day-to-day responsibilities, and how these contribute to the overall goals of their company.  We matched the comments made during the interviews to the Elements of Performance that ReadyTalk believed were very important to our customers when it came to an audio and web conferencing provider.

During the 2^nd round, our customers reviewed and validated these Elements of Performance and then revised them based on their needs as a marketing user. To finalize the Elements of Performance, and ranking order, we took the average of the rankings across the 14 individuals from 10 different companies.

And finally, the last round of interviews. This is where we ask our customers, how does ReadyTalk measure up against other providers of audio and web conferencing tools? How can ReadyTalk deliver more value on each Element of Performance and help you perform your job to its upmost potential?  This isn’t an easy feat, but we are here to support our customers as much as we possibly can.

In the coming weeks, we will comb through all of the data that has been gathered, and determine how this process will translate into the ReadyTalk product roadmap, as well as how we can continue to best serve our wonderful customers!

Beth is a Product Marketing Manager and works with our customers to understand their needs as they relate to event services and our conference center, which is used to setup the details of our clients’ upcoming meetings. Outside of the office, Beth loves to spend time with family and friends, cook, and hit the slopes.