to act in such a way that some resources remain available for when later needs arise; in the case of sales, for instance, this could mean not aggressively pursuing all potential leads in a target company at once, leaving a remainder that can be approached in leaner times, as in “Let’s not contact every VP this round, we want to leave some fruit on the tree”; alternatively the phrase can mean to intentionally omit something due to prioritization of other issues, in this way potentially avoiding boiling the ocean, as in “We don’t have to analyze every single customer demographic before we set our prices, it’s okay to leave some fruit on the tree”; related to juice not worth the squeeze, in which something is left undone due to minimal expected payoff