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Prior to founding TechStories, Katherine Kerber spearheaded corporate communications for Legato Systems. This was before Legato's IPO, when the number one priority was revenue generation. Kerber took her lead generation responsibilities seriously. She got inside the minds of the target audience and developed ads, trade show programs, direct marketing campaigns, and collateral that strongly reinforced what those targets wanted most: reliable network data protection.

The leads came pouring in. Inside sales complained that the phone rang off the hook. These poor salespeople had to work hard to keep up with the demand for customer information. And, who could forget the looks on their faces, when Kerber returned from one Networld+Interop trade show and hand-delivered 1,600 leads to sales. Not only did they receive contact information for each person, but they also received information on what network operating systems were in place, the size of the overall network, and the current backup methods.

Much of this trade show's success had to do with a skit that was performed in the booth. It consistently drew "standing room only" crowds who enjoyed watching "Bootdisk and Bytehead Do Network Backup," a spoof on the popular cartoon series, Beavis and Butthead. This show ran every hour, and while people waited for the show to begin, they filled out cards that provided useful marketing information on the networks they managed. At the conclusion of each presentation, a drawing was held with these cards and five lucky network managers were selected to win cool Legato t-shirts. Ask us about the other extremely successful giveaway, edible ears made out of yellow-tinted white chocolate, if you want to hear the rest of that story...

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