Sriharsha N Nagaraj

All business owners and CEO’s of growing companies often say,” I don’t’ want to put my money in Sales.” or “It is not the right time to invest in sales.” I hear a lot of these. The reasons being crystal clear for everyone to take a step back in investing in Sales because they are unsure of clients or the projects that fall into their lap. They are unsure of finding a prospect that generates revenues for them. This is the case of a Catch 22 situation.

Now let me spell out what a Catch 22 situation is – a knotty problematic situation for which the only solution is denied by a circumstance inherent in the problem. It is a deadlock situation where any two actions are waiting for the other to complete. To be clearer here I would like to quote the famous show-business catch–22: “No work unless you have an agent, no agent unless you’ve worked.”

Recently I was conversing with the CEO of an Event Management company. He was explaining to me a Catch 22 situation. This company was a celebrity management agency. They managed celebrity promotional events, parties or ribbon-cutting ceremonies for hospitals, schools, spas and jewelry stores. So I was thinking about how many sales conversions these events would have resulted in for the company. As per his stats, it was very little.

I have been seeing these Catch 22, or what people often call CHICKEN and EGG situations, in all walks of business. I have pondered over on this issue and how we minimize the cost of investment in sales for developing companies to crack the CATCH 22 situation.

Hurrah! What is working out for me is Referral Marketing! Yes, Referral marketing accounts for about 1/3 the cost of overall investment and hence Catch 22 situation can be overcome.

The Asentiv Flagship Product REFERRAL MARKETING PLAN has changed the way I look at Advanced Client Acquisition and it gives me immense fulfillment to see my clients acquiring clients through Referral Marketing also.