A Lead Generation Fable

You are stranded in a desert. There is no civilization visible and worse still, you have no food or water. Lead Generation Moral: Give sales people - who are dying of thirst - dirty water and they will gladly drink it... but if they are not thirsty - they will spit it right back at your face. Sales people's discriminating taste depends largely on if they are thirsty or not. If they are satiated (busy closing a big deal) then you can almost bet that even clean water (qualified leads) will be ignored. If sales people are dehydrated - even if your leads are crap - they'll still want more. To optimize lead generation ROI - marketers must strive to give thirsty sales people (those who are motivated to follow-up) only filtered water (qualified leads) that has been treated with reverse osmosis (a Brian Carroll is the CEO of Brian authors the very interesting