As I’m writing this, I have live coverage of the hurricane on the TV in the background because my beach house is directly in line with the storm.
The area is under an evacuation order…but of course, you have the weatherman, standing on the beach in his raincoat, hood up, hunched over his microphone getting the crap beat out of him as he reports what’s going on.
Big surprise: It’s raining hard, windy as hell and the waves are surging. What’s also not a surprise? There are a handful of people casually strolling along the beach right behind him like it’s a Tuesday in July – and one genius actually in the water, swimming.
Every hurricane, it’s the same story. Massive flooding, power outages, buildings collapsing and the complete loss of emergency services are predicted days ahead. People are warned, repeatedly, to get out. In 30A, Florida, some of the bridges have been closed, so if you didn’t GET out, you WON’T get out now.
Yet…there’s always a group of people who think they’re going to “Lieutenant Dan” that shit and sit on the top of their shrimpin’ boat in the middle of a hurricane, whooping and hollering, “Blow, you son of a bitch! YOU’LL NEVER SINK THIS BOAT!” It’s one of the great scenes in movie history. But that’s a MOVIE. A romantic idea.
What they forget is that every OTHER boat in that harbor got smashed into toothpicks. For every lucky Lieutenant Dan, there’s a whole marina full of wrecks. Most people who stay to “ride it out” don’t end up strapped to a mast shouting at God, having the time of their life.
They’re up on the roof of their house, surrounded by fast-rising water, soaking wet, clutching a trash bag of their belongings in one hand and their cat in the other, hoping someone in a rowboat will come along and rescue their ass. (The cat, for the record, did NOT vote to stay.)
We all saw video footage of that guy during Hurricane Helene in 2024. Thousands who chose to stay were left without drinking water, food, electricity, battery backups, flashlights and other survival supplies.
They ignored every warning to evacuate, thinking, “I’ll be fine.”
In some cases, these people don’t have the financial means to evacuate or are physically unable. Those are real tragedies. But in a LOT of cases, these same folks have the latest iPhone and a boat in the driveway…but no backup plan for emergencies…and clearly not enough sense to get the heck out of the way of danger when they KNOW they don’t have one.
This mentality is precisely the reason why selling LOSS PREVENTION is so much more difficult than it should be. Cybersecurity, disaster recovery, cyber-liability insurance, compliance audits or even managed services.
First, most people think, “Not me.” I’m too small. I’m in the cloud. I don’t need “all of that.” My people are too smart. I’m too smart. Or, it’s willful ignorance. They hope their IT guy has it covered and choose to trust RATHER than verify. If they verify, they know they’ll find something they’ll have to address and spend money on, so they don’t look.
Second, specific to the difficulty of selling IT loss prevention, it’s also difficult to sell because there’s no immediate ROI. At least none they can feel.
People spend money on things that give them a dopamine hit. Almost everyone in Florida, where my house is, has a swimming pool, but nearly no one has a generator. A swimming pool provides ROI. The kiddos are happy, the wife is happy and the neighbors are jealous. But a generator? It sits in the garage with the POTENTIAL to be useful someday…and nobody is picking a beach house based on the existence of a generator.
So, two things to remember.
First, remind YOURSELF that not all gains can be measured by the increase. Sometimes gains are measured by losses avoided. If YOU don’t have adequate protection of your downside in the form of money saved, no debt, over-insured, solid contracts in place, you’re as dumb as the guy I just saw attempting to swim in the Gulf.
Then, when you go to sell some type of loss prevention solution to your clients or a new prospect, you can’t go easy and hold back on scaring them because you don’t want to be seen as fearmongering. Nuts. The weatherman isn’t fearmongering when he tells you to evacuate and warns that you could die if you stay. He’s doing his job. So are YOU when you tell your clients you won’t allow them to put themselves, their business, employees and clients in danger.
Selling is convincing a prospect to make a buying decision that is GOOD for them.
Show them the wrecked boats.