On any given day, you can walk through the ShareFile sales floor and hear the constant hum of people prospecting, performing demos with clients or huddling together to share insights with each other. At the same time, you may see a person whizzing by on a scooter or two people battling it out on the foosball table. I sat down with a few Sales Managers to see what keeps our sales team performing at such a high level while enjoying a fun work atmosphere.

Grant Kitching, Senior Manager of Vertical Sales, believes that daily collaboration among teams is the main driver of a high-performing, innovative sales team. One of the ways ShareFile supports this idea is through “scrums.” These daily meetings were originally a part of the agile development movement to ensure better product releases through tighter communication between developers, product managers and other key stakeholders. Every morning at ShareFile, Lead Generators, Sales Executives and Directors on vertical sales teams meet in “scrums” to discuss daily numbers and projections, competitors, or articles. This gives an open forum for team members to share best practices and hold one another accountable.

Peter Hebert, Director of Product Development, has managed ShareFile’s development team since he joined the company in September 2007. In that time, he’s seen the ShareFile grow from a small team with 1,500 clients to the data sharing branch of Citrix, serving over 28,000 companies worldwide. Read below to learn how Peter and the development team have adapted to these changes and kept their focus on making ShareFile great.

Sarah: Can you tell me a little about your job role and how it’s changed since you originally joined the ShareFile team?

Peter: I started at ShareFile as Director of Technology, managing development and technical operations. It was a pretty small operation – for the first few months, there was only one other engineer. We slowly added more developers, but since the Citrix acquisition our department has grown quickly.

As a 3-year Movember veteran, I have learned a few things that might help out rookies.

You will irritate friends and family. My mouth merkin managed to ruin both my wife’s birthday AND Thanksgiving at my in-law’s. I won’t even mention my father-in-law’s face when I showed up at the country club to play a round of golf with him and his friends.

The early days of your ‘stache are not pretty. The fun days are at the end of November. By then, your moustache is grown in and you look like Magnum PI circa 1987. For the first two weeks, be prepared to look like my high school gym teacher circa 1983. Not pretty.

Last week I sat down with some of our newest team members to find out what they think of their experiences so far.

Amanda Yost had this to say.

“I started with ShareFile just over a week ago. I have had so much fun as a Sales Associate as I get the opportunity to talk with various people from all over the country to learn about how we at ShareFile can make their work life easier and more streamlined. I love that I get to offer a helpful service all day!”

Alex Hofford stays busy. He’s a ShareFile account manager, improv comedian, bar trivia host and our Quarterly Theme Ambassador. What does the ShareFile Quarterly Theme Ambassador do? Read below to hear from Alex himself.

Sarah: How do you define your role as Quarterly Theme Ambassador, and how did you get involved with it?

Alex: I coordinate ShareFile communications and events to promote our company quarterly theme, which is chosen by our executive team each quarter. The quarterly theme gives us all a common direction and inspiration for the quarter. To support the themes, I plan surprises, events and general messaging to get everyone excited about our current focus.

I recently sat down with Nicole Collins, a project manager at ShareFile. Let me begin by giving you a glimpse into daily office life at ShareFile: Nicole spreads vibrancy throughout the office with her cheerful personality while making sure things runs smoothly. Whether troubleshooting network operations or making sure there are healthy snacks for employees, Nicole does everything with a smile. Let’s get to know Nicole a little bit and hear about a few project management tips she has that are worth sharing.

As ShareFile Marketing Specialist Jennifer Smith wrote recently, ShareFile has big plans for expansion into a new space. While we celebrate our growth, it’s still easy to forget that ShareFile grew from a one-person company to a team of 185 in only a few years. I recently spoke with Nate Spilker, Director of Client Services and one of the first ShareFile employees, about the original ShareFile office and what it’s like to be part of a growing technology company.

Sarah: Can you tell me about your role at ShareFile and how it has changed with the company’s growth?

Nate: I joined ShareFile in fall of 2007 as Vice President of Operations. At the time, we were a company of four employees, so I was responsible for a variety of things, from office management to database design and maintenance. Every employee fielded customer phone calls, and over time we built dedicated teams for account management and customer support. Today, I oversee these teams.

Justin Ware has been a key part of the ShareFile design team since he joined the company only 6 months ago. With previous experience in branding and print design, Justin has been able to bring a holistic, consistent approach to ShareFile materials for marketing, development and sales. In the one question, mini-interview below, Justin shares his ultimate advice for new designers.

Sarah: What advice would you give a small business looking to take their web design to the next level?

Justin: Strategy and planning are essential to successful design. Keep this idea in mind, and you can set clear, achievable goals for a design project and take some of the subjectivity out of the process. If you can, sit down with everyone involved with a project to discuss the objectives before getting started. This makes it much easier to talk about your decisions later in the process.

Remember that design is about more than just making an attractive deliverable; the design needs to communicate an idea to the end viewer. Well-designed collateral should be informative and should leave you with a positive feeling about a company’s product or services.