Spring has arrived and warm weather is on its way (for most of us, anyway)! Finally, right? And that means it’s time to make those summer plans. Are you planning on taking a vacation? How much time do you take off during the summer? Do you work on your vacations? Tell us in our summer vacation survey. Your responses will help us craft an infographic on how to enjoy your summer while still getting work done. Not only will we post the infographic here when it’s complete, but there’s also a $15 Starbucks gift card in the mix for one random survey participant. Thanks for helping! And no matter what your plans are, we hope a relaxing and rejuvenating summer lies ahead.   Photo credit: Caleb Dorfman via Flickr

We’ve always thought of online meetings as the next best alternative to in-person meetings. They were born out of business continuity needs, so when weather, costs, time or various other dependencies keep us from attending our meetings in person, we can continue to get our work done together. But as we started taking more and more of our meetings online, we noticed some serious bonuses of the online environment. You won’t hear us say that there’s no need for in-person meetings anymore, but we do want to point out some pretty nifty upsides to meeting online aside from the sayonara you can say to your commute. Upsides to online meetings Taking notes on your computer during an online meeting beats taking them on a notepad that, at best, you later transcribe onto your computer for safekeeping and, at worst, you lose or spill your coffee on. There’s no travel time necessary in between meetings. Video conferencing makes it feel like you’re meeting in person, since you still see facial expressions and gestures. Everyone can see the presentation clearly on his or her own screen. Sometimes we bring our laptops to in-person meetings and join just the web part of the online meeting so we can still see the presentation and chat panel. Attend meetings all over the country and world all in one day. Since you’re already actively working on your computer, you can search online or through folders for any data and files that come up during the meeting rather than waiting until after the meeting and following up about it. Recording online meetings make it really easy for people who missed the meeting to be briefed on what happened, and attendees can review what happened if they need to. You don’t have to book a conference room. You can avoid sick meeting attendees, who always insist on shaking your hand or borrowing your pen during an in-person meeting. Use what would have been your commute time to sleep in later, exercise or do whatever else you want to do. Meet immediately as needs come up, since you don’t have to travel to meet. You can stay home when bad weather or illness strikes and still attend your meetings. Everyone looking at the work getting done on screen fosters group focus. People may be more likely to join an online meeting, since they don’t have to host someone in their office or drive to a different office. Meeting online has some serious bonuses, including increased productivity, focus and flexibility. We’re sure you’ve got your own ideas for why meeting online rocks. Send us your responses on Twitter @gotomeeting. Photo credit: Farouq Taj via Flickr

A nice problem to have … is still a problem. Conversion Rate Experts (CRE), a web optimization firm founded by scientist Dr. Karl Blanks and Internet marketing expert Ben Jesson, had too many clients too far away from its Staffordshire (UK) headquarters. It was an inevitable problem, really. Quick flashback: The duo developed a new approach to increasing the effectiveness of websites while working as in-house marketers for an international telecoms company, and, within 12 months, the firm’s sales tripled. Soon the behemoth of all things web Google came calling, inviting them to consult on its split-testing software. Back to CRE’s international expansion struggles, the founders weren’t looking for someone to cry them a river. But they did want to find a way to provide all those faraway customers with friendly and personal service. You can probably guess where the story goes next: Blanks tried out several different online solutions, and GoToMeeting rose well above the rest. Why? Because it had all the features the firm needed while also being easy to use. Blanks is a big enough fan that he recorded a short video about how CRE is using GoToMeeting. It’s only 45 seconds long, but it manages to cover one of the fundamental problems with the science of teleporting and tell the story of a team member who participated in 39 meetings in one week with people in a number of countries he couldn’t even remember. (We checked back. It was 11 countries. That’s a lot of money saved on airfare.) And like any smart team, the people at CRE found other great uses for their newly adopted technology. Like allowing staff to work remotely - 30 of its expert consultants are located remotely across 12 different countries. Has GoToMeeting helped your small business succeed? If so, please tell us more! Check out our video gallery and record a short snippet about you, your business, and how you’re using GoToMeeting. We’ll feature the video on our web and social channels, and maybe even write about it (and you) on the blog! Photo credit: Doug88888 via Flickr

The work week starts and I’ll bet you do things in a certain pattern that has little variation. It’s great to be organized and have methods of doing your work. It keeps you efficient and allows you to perform. The problem that creeps up on all of us ever so silently is complacency. Most people don’t even recognize that they’re trapped. We continue to do things the same way and never think that stagnation occurs. How many training sessions state that people won’t make change happen because things have "always been done this way"? The other side of this spectrum...

So you’ve moved your events online, and now you want to make them better: expand reach, improve participation and better your reputation. But where do you start? These five GoToWebinar tips are as good a place as any. 1.     Customize and separate your GoToWebinar panel. As the event organizer, you own the event, but did you know that you also own the layout of your GoToWebinar panel during your event? To efficiently reference the information on the GoToWebinar panel that you need, you can separate and undock parts of it. Take the Q&A panel for instance: when you press the button with two arrows on it in the top right corner, the Q&A pane pops out and stands alone in case you want to minimize the control panel. On a PC, you can also undock the attendee list, chat pane and audience view. 2.     Use right click as a shortcut. When it comes to muting and unmuting, promoting attendees to panelists or dismissing someone from the session, you need to be able to complete these actions quickly. Enter the right click shortcut in the GoToWebinar attendee list. By right clicking an attendee’s name, you can mute and unmute their line (as long as they are using VoIP or have entered their telephone audio PIN). You can also promote them to panelist or organizer, let them see the attendee list, send them a chat message or even dismiss them from the session. This makes the attendee list your one-stop shop for all things webinar administration. 3.     Let participants show webcams. Live video conferencing engages participants more than audio alone. It’s more interesting to watch someone speak rather than just hear them, so when you get to the Q&A or discussion portion of your webinar, consider opening phone lines to let participants ask questions verbally, and, if they’re up for it, ask them to turn on their webcam while they ask the question. To do so, you’d have to promote the attendee to be a panelist, but, it might be worth the effort. Not only will you likely see a spike in attentiveness, but also the questions and answers might spark a discussion that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. 4.     Create polls in session. The aim of any event is to engage and inform your audience, and a sure way to up level your event is to respond to participation in real time. Notice a spike in participant attentiveness or contribution? If so, you may consider launching an ad-hoc poll related to the current topic. Just select Create a New Poll from the drop-down menu under Polls in the GoToWebinar control panel to create a poll in session. You can create up to eight polling questions before or during a webinar, and organizers will be able to see poll results during a webinar as well as in the Attendee Report and Performance Report once the webinar has ended. 5.     Ask anything in the post-event survey. If you’re using the post-event survey to gain feedback on the value of your event, that’s great! Hopefully the responses are helping you to improve your events. However, there are no rules when it comes to the post-event survey. If there’s research you’ve wanted to procure from your audience, why not poll them on that topic as they leave the webinar? You have up to eight questions to pose in the post-event survey, so figure out what data you’re after and ask for it! Two birds meet one stone. How are you up leveling your webinars? We’d love to hear your tips for producing better events on Twitter @gotowebinar. Photo credit: iamtheo via Flickr

By Tim Wackel A few months ago I decided it was time to move forward with a significant home improvement project. I began the process by calling several companies who had done similar work in the neighborhood. Every company was eager to send a representative who spent considerable time with me reviewing the project and gathering the information necessary to submit a proposal. All of the representatives I met with were friendly and had the expertise and experience I was looking for, and their companies had impressive resumes of similar projects they had successfully completed. I was very clear on how fast I wanted the work performed and everyone agreed that my expectations were within reason. This was going to be a difficult decision … or so I thought. After all that work, three of the reps were never heard from again. I’m guessing everyone has experienced this frustration, but I’m still amazed when it happens to me. There aren’t many people on earth who have lots of extra time on their hands. Why in the world would a rep invest over an hour with a prospective buyer and then not follow up? Was the project too small? Did something more profitable fall into the pipeline? I guess I’ll never know. A quick phone call or email explaining the situation would have gone a long way toward gracefully bowing out and saving their brand’s reputation. While I had some reps bail on me, other reps sent competitive proposals in a timely fashion and then immediately went into hard-close mode. Asking for my business came easily for these reps but asking for my thoughts and reaction wasn’t as easy. I started to feel like I was buying aluminum siding and decided that wasn’t much fun. So I soon eliminated those reps from further consideration. What is the "secret" to effective follow-up? And how can you ensure that you don’t push too hard, too little or not all at? Here are four simple but valuable ideas to help you gauge your effectiveness: Don’t put it off. Remember that your prospects are also prospects of your competition. When it comes to follow up, do what you say you’re going to do, when you say you will do it, or don’t say anything at all! Everyone gets busy, and it’s easy for follow-ups to fall through the cracks. Don’t put it off. Use some form of contact-management software to help you track commitments. Don’t like what your company uses? Buy your own! It will be the best $200 investment you make this year. The discipline of keeping your commitments costs pennies, but the regret of having them slip can cost thousands! Ask great questions! Most sales people believe that "listening" is the most important sales skill. And it is important … but it isn’t number one. Asking great questions is the key to moving opportunities forward. "What did you like the best about my proposal?" "What was missing?" "What, if anything, was off target and needs to be re-worked?" "In an ideal world, what would this look like as we move forward?" Follow-up is your opportunity to learn and reposition. Don’t blow it by forgetting to ask high-impact questions. Your goal is not to sell something but to help them make a great buying decision. Remember to keep your focus on them by asking great questions. Be persistent, not pesky. Be sure that you have a good, productive reason for every contact. Not many people are interested in having their sales rep "check in" to see if they’ve made a buying decision, but they are interested in having you follow up to add value to their decision-making process. Share relevant, new ideas or have one of your existing loyal customers call to discuss their experience working with you. Prepare for every touch point by creating a simple agenda or outline for the conversation. Sharing this with your prospect at the beginning of the call demonstrates that you’ve done your homework and respect their time. Don’t just wing these conversations. Just say no! If, for whatever reason, you decide not to pursue an opportunity, contact the prospect right away and let them know. Introduce them to someone else in your organization or refer them to a competitor. Prospects appreciate the truth just as much as you do. Don’t just disappear! Learn the art of a graceful exit and save your reputation and personal brand. Remember that word-of-mouth marketing is a powerful tool, but it cuts both ways. Everyone appreciates the truth - it’s the trademark of a successful rep. Focus on speaking more truth with prospects who aren’t the right fit. They will appreciate it, and it will free you to focus your energies on other opportunities. Your ability to master the skill of effective follow-up is crucial to your long-term accomplishments. Most reps are great at the first few contacts, but very few know how to truly nurture an opportunity. Learning the art of effective follow-up builds clients, success and your personal brand. Are you mastering these skills? If not, you should be. Want to learn more about the art of the follow up? Join Tim on April 8 for a webinar to hear more tips and tricks and get all your questions answered! Tim is the founder and president of The Wackel Group, a training and consulting firm dedicated to helping organizations find, win and keep customers for life. He is a member of the American Society for Training and Development and holds a professional membership in the National Speakers Association. He earned his Electrical Engineering degree from the University of Nebraska and lives in Dallas where he and his wife raised their two children and are now enjoying their empty nest. Photo credit: *sax via Flickr

In recent years there has been a movement in businesses to reduce outdated systems and increase productivity by embracing automated paperless billing - and AvidExchange is realizing real success offering these solutions. One of the key components to their growth is their ability to foster targeted and meaningful relationships with clients and prospects using Citrix solutions. "In an effort to continuously find new ways to communicate our message to a widely untapped market, we invested in Citrix to utilize their world-class tools to convey our paperless story to the midmarket," says Tom Spencer, SVP Sales & Marketing at AvidXchange. Instead of endless cold calls and generalized junk mail sent to pre-purchased lists, AvidExchange is practicing what they preach by updating their processes to include educational webinars. And what a difference that has made! In fact, they have been able to double their number of new customers over two years using GoToWebinar. By developing a webinar strategy to disseminate information to larger audiences, AvidExchange has discovered a few best practices to share. 1.       Track your leads. Optimize your communication efforts with customers and new leads by collecting and maintaining your audience members’ information using a solution like your GoToWebinar account. Create a unique URL that can be tracked and collect valuable customer insights upon event sign-up that can be managed in one place. This will make maintaining detailed records of new leads a lot easier. 2.       Arrive early, start late. Arrive early to your webinar to practice and load your materials for attendees so you feel prepared and ready to go. Instead of starting your event on the hour, AvidExchange recommends starting 2-3 minutes after the actual start time to allow people time to join and handle any technical difficulties they many have joining for the first time. 3.       Tell audience what they want to hear. Focusing on valuable educational content will attract larger audiences. Provide best practices, industry trends or audience benefits, but don’t discuss your company specifically. Introduce your solution at the end of the event and try to focus more on how your solution solves the problems you have identified during your webinar. Finally, set expectations of what attendees will be receiving after the webinar (a call from a rep, slides, a recording, etc.). 4.       Detailed follow up means better close rates. You already know to follow up with customers and leads within 24 hours of your virtual event with a recording or supporting materials. AvidExchange, however, uses a built-in GoToWebinar feature to further personalize interactions and address customer needs. They recommend saving your questions and polling responses for reps to have when following up with leads. Overall AvidExchange has seen conversion rates that run 50% for registrants to participants and up to 70% for sponsored webinars. Those are some pretty impressive conversion rates! Learn more about webinar program best practices from GoToWebinar. Photo credit: Richard.Asia via Flickr 

After reading my coworker’s recent post about the online meeting vows, I was inspired. Why, you ask? Because we’ve all had an online meeting where someone accidentally interrupted or derailed everyone from the tasks at hand. But instead of calling someone out, we wanted you to laugh out loud at this little list of online meeting pet peeves that all of us encounter some time or another. 1. When you coworker’s dog is "contributing" a little too much.   2. When someone is typing but you can’t figure out whom - and it’s really, really loud.   3. When you realize you sent that private chat message … to everyone in the group.   4. When you realize that you had something in your teeth the WHOLE TIME and no one told you.   5. When you realize you’re not recording … and you should be.   6. When someone is doing something distracting on camera, but you have to pretend to ignore it.   7. When your coworker’s baby joins the video conference.   8. When  someone accidentally ends the event early … for everyone.    9. When your non-work friends send you an IM while you’re still screen sharing.   10. When you share your webcam only to realize that your light source is behind you.   11. When your coworker starts talking about something you can’t see because they forgot to share their screen.   12. When everyone on the call gets a case of the giggles … and can’t stop.   13. When you realize your boss is a mouth-breather.   14. When someone forgets to mute their cell phone and its ring tone is "The Macarena." What’s your online meeting pet peeve? Send us a GIF that shows your reaction on twitter @gotomeeting. Gifs courtesy of: Giphy.com Photo credit: Ealasaid via Flickr

Today we have a guest post by Dr Sandra Bond Chapman, PH.D. Founder and Chief Director of the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas, Dee Wyly Distinguished University Chair and author of Make Your Brain Smarter, is committed to maximizing cognitive potential across the entire lifespan. As a cognitive neuroscientist with more than 40 funded research grants, Dr. Chapman’s scientific study elucidates and applies novel approaches to advance creative and critical thinking, strengthen healthy brain development, and incite innovation throughout life. On average we now live to the age of 80 or older, but our brains are only in their prime until our early 40s. We go almost half of our lives with a brain in a declining condition. Workplace culture and unhealthy habits are the key culprits prematurely robbing us of mental prowess at midlife. Memory, speed of thinking, problem-solving, reasoning and decision-making all power down in our last 30 to 40 years. In a healthy brain, cognitive decline occurs because we let it. Cubicles, unfocused meetings, unproductive conference calls and an excess number of opinions can drive brain drain in the workplace. But it’s not just our work environment that drains our brain of its vitality. Personal habits also influence which path our brain takes: health or unnecessary cognitive decline. Many of the practices we mistakenly take on and believe to be productive, competent and hard-driving skills for career acceleration are actually toxic to our brain. Take Control of Your Brain’s Health You can retrain your brain for health and productivity by taking advantage of a unique quality known as neuroplasticity, the brain’s inherent ability to adapt and change throughout life. Cognitive decline in healthy adults is not an inevitable consequence of aging. Our brain is at least as modifiable, if not more so, as any other part of our body. Here are a few common brain-drain habits and how to combat them: Tethered to technology The need to respond instantly to every email, phone call, text or social media post is rewiring our brain to be addicted to distraction. In this ADHD-like state, we struggle to focus for long periods of time and think deeply about one thought, idea or task. Renounce these toxic tech tethers and "unplug" for a little while. Give your brain some time away from the constant distraction of your smartphone’s siren song and you will find it easier to focus on the task at hand. Multitaskaholic Multitasking is like asbestos to the brain. Our brain is not wired to do more than one task at a time. Multitasking causes brain fatigue and reduces productivity and accuracy. A task that would normally take 25 minutes to complete without interruption takes more than 2 hours when multitasking or allowing disruptions. Embrace the lost art of single-tasking and perform tasks sequentially for optimum brain performance, productivity and accuracy. You will find it easier to get everything on your to-do list done without having to keep switching gears. Constant mental work Just like unrelenting and constant physical exercise causes overexertion and bodily injury, constant mental work is harmful to the brain. Take a brain break and practice doing nothing. When working on mentally challenging activities for more than 25 minutes at a time, step back for 5 minutes. Your brain will quickly reset and recover from fatigue. As an added bonus, new ideas are likely to arise regarding your task. Our work at the Center for BrainHealth at The University of Texas at Dallas is dedicated to improving brain performance in individuals of all ages and stages. We have developed strategies that are scientifically proven to make your brain smarter, increase its lastingness and even improve its health. You can create positive brain change when you commit to a brain-healthy lifestyle. If you want to thrive from 9 to 5, you will have to drastically change the way you engage your brain. Make sure that your best brain years are ahead of you - not behind you. If you want to learn more about how to change your brain habits, read our white paper for brain-bettering tips. Photo credit: Hey Paul Studios via Flickr

Our kick-off meeting was an unqualified success - thanks to the overwhelmingly positive attitude that the twelve participants brought to the table. This was a big U--shaped table and with a podium in the middle. Folks came to the podium with well prepared material that opened up discussion. Those who sat around the U kept  the discussions lively, critical, and solution-oriented. Let's do  the same on-line. These conversations can continue on this website and  become more practical, specific and actionable. We have a lot to accomplish in a few months. Thanks for reading -- please write, too.   PS: I am starting a discussion of  Tempo and Progression - based on Joyce's presentation and meant to guide Thomas's music, which will drive the game and the brushing lesson itself.