low-hanging fruit

low-hanging fruit

1. That which is especially easy to obtain or achieve. Often implies something that is perhaps not as satisfying as that which takes more effort or skill to obtain or do. Jokes about the president's peculiar way speaking are pretty low-hanging fruit, if you ask me. It was low-hanging fruit, but the first-round victory is good to get under our belt all the same.
2. Someone who is very easy to persuade, swindle, or sell to. You've got to learn how to spot people who've just gotten paid—they're eager to spend their wages, so they're always low-hanging fruit.
See also: fruit
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.

low-hanging fruit

Fig. the easiest person(s) to sell something to, to convince of something, or to fool. (From the much older easy pickings.) People who always want to be the first to buy something, they're low-hanging fruit for this product. Don't be satisfied with the low-hanging fruit. Go after the hard-sell types.
See also: fruit
McGraw-Hill Dictionary of American Idioms and Phrasal Verbs.

low-hanging fruit

People use low-hanging fruit to refer to the things that are the easiest to achieve or get. I think there's a lot of low-hanging fruit that we can go after in terms of reducing our costs.
See also: fruit
Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.
See also:
  • nose around for (someone or something)
  • nose about
  • nose around
  • there must be something in the water
  • throw (someone or something) on the scrap heap
  • eighth wonder
  • as is
  • biggest frog in the puddle
  • the biggest frog in the puddle
  • the biggest toad in the puddle
References in periodicals archive
Poorly-secured cloud apps can be low-hanging fruit for attackers.
low-hanging fruit: In business speak, it is always preferable to pick the low-hanging fruit first because it is an easy sale.
Another low-hanging fruit is great gains in the fuel efficiency of internal combustion engines, taking automobile mileage from, say, 56 kilometers per gallon in the U.S.
There are so many opportunities to gather this low-hanging fruit that it's hard to choose a bad place to start.
Now, that's not the only criteria because certainly you may want to have new ones that you may not be as well-evolved in but the low-hanging fruit would be a natural place to first start making the assessments, depending on the current education levels or access to capital resources, and ideas to look at the low-hanging fruit," he further said.
Philadelphia, PA, September 17, 2014 --(PR.com)-- For twenty-plus years, Jeremy Eden and Terri Long have helped companies of all sizes make millions by harvesting their low-hanging fruit. In this Soundview Live webinar, Eye-Opening Ways to Improve Productivity & Profits, they will show you how.
Tot) often businesses don't recognize the most obvious opportunities (hence, the titular low-hanging fruit) to improve earnings "without risk and without much effort."
"This is a very low-hanging fruit," commented Auken.
I have often found these to exist as low-hanging fruit staring us in the face.
After all they can only reach the low-hanging fruit.
Would it be churlish to suspect that this work is "the easy bit" - some of that "low-hanging fruit" that managers like to pick?
"This is low-hanging fruit in providing solutions that improve school safety for students, teachers, staff and administrators," Olsen said in a written statement.
Speaking publicly for the first time about his experiences as a covert operative since leaving the Met in 2011, Plowman also accused the undercover unit of targeting "low-hanging fruit" instead of individuals at the top of the criminal chain.
Educators are fond of using the reference "picking the low-hanging fruit." By this they usually mean that when changes are made, we should begin by addressing the easily achievable, more obvious, and often less costly problems and issues.
The US Conference Board's global economic outlook has called into question the 'BRICs' miracle (Brazil, Russia, India, China), arguing that the 'low-hanging fruit' from cheap labour and imported technology has already been picked.