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You are stranded in a desert. There is no civilization visible and worse still, you have no food or water.

After three days of walking you are cramping up - overcome with exhaustion and dehydration. The wind beats fine sand against your exposed face and neck.

"One more sand dune," you say, while you climb up over the hump. Suddenly, your legs collapse and you roll down the other side of the dune.

You awake with blurred vision and try to wipe the sand away from your stinging eyes. As you turn your head, you notice the sun is setting and in the distance... another mirage. Covered in hot sand you almost give up hope.

You have gone nearly four days with out water. Your mind is hazy so you focus hard again - nothing. As the sun drops further the shadow changes. Wait - could that be a palm tree?

Using your last burst of energy you pull yourself up and stagger towards the oasis. There's got to be water there!

You lean against the nearest palm tree and see a small muddy bed with some water floating on top. You drink it up and believe you have never tasted anything so wonderful - water - water - water!

How much sweeter the water would have been with out the presence of camel dung.

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 universal lead definition).

Brian Carroll is the CEO of InTouch Inc. InTouch is a 50-person company focused on delivering effective lead generation solutions for "the complex sale."
Brian authors the very interesting B2B Lead Generation Blog which focuses on B2B lead generation, sales leads, and marketing for the complex sale.