Ben Stokes fetched Rs 12.5 cr from Rajasthan Royals, while Jaydev Unadkat, Manish Pandey and Lokesh Rahul had the teams go gaga over them in the latest edition of the IPL auction. Eight teams spent an awesome Rs 431.7 cr in the 2018 IPL auction, trading 187 players.   To a layman, this would seem to be an exorbitant splurging of money as the players are contracted just for the duration of IPL and are free to play anywhere in the world and for any team, they want to, for the rest of the year. But this has an important lesson for us as business people i.e. of not weighing the contribution of a resource towards the ultimate goal by the time spent but by its utility, expertise, ROI and fit with what we want to achieve. Businesses, especially Medium and Small Businesses must take a cue from the strategies adopted by teams at IPL teams, and work to maximize their marketing returns by investing in correct resources like Outsourced CMO , without bothering about the time ...