In 1999, on a trip home from a trade show in Los Angeles, Stan Kitson, co-owner of Kitson Marketing, dreamed a big dream.

He had just been to an annual trade show where manufacturers in the audio industry paraded their newest and greatest products. Our audio client was coming home with a stack of leads. It had been a successful show. And Stan was wondering how it might feel if those leads were actually distributed to the best sales person to follow up and managed to see the results.

The reality (this is 1999) was that those leads would mostly grow cold on the sales manager's desk because assigning each of them out...well, there just wasn't an easy method to do so and there were so many other fires to put out and the daily grind of the office would make tradeshow successes fade quickly...it would be work as usual.

He dreamed of a "system" where leads could be uploaded, and distributed easily by the sales manager. A system where the rep receiving the lead could accept or decline it so that all leads had follow-up. And then, what if there were a system to take the lead through the entire sales process. This way sales reps enlist sales support in setting meetings and sales management would be able to monitor the pipeline and sales rep would know where he or she was at an given time in achieving this month's sales goals.

The thought captivated Stan and when he returned to the office, one of the first calls was to a technology development firm with particularly astute programmers to see what we could get going. Brainstorm sessions led to a complete blueprint for what was to become our first InTimeTools® system, especially designed for the sales needs of manufacturers and using the latest in extranet technology.