What scares you these days?
Such a looooong list to pick from.
Recently, I feel like the kid in the movie The Sixth Sense…only I see stupid people. And like Bruce Willis’s character, who doesn’t know he’s dead, they don’t know they’re stupid.
You’ve probably seen the “man on the street” interviews where someone stops random people and asks them questions they should know the answers to. In a recent one, a man was asked, “What’s 11% of 100?”
The man said, “Bro, these are trick questions!” and went on to guess “11.5” – and he was the sharpest out of the bunch. Another guy guessed there were 2,700 weeks in a year. Another guessed “1” when asked how many inches were in 2 feet. So dumb they could hide their own Easter eggs.
What’s truly scary to me is that these people are out there running things. We can only pray that someone with a solid 6th-grade education is overseeing their work.
Two points about this.
First, it’s critical to understand that the majority of people you sell to are astonishingly uninformed and willfully ignorant about IT, security and compliance and have NO IDEA what “good” is, yet they will form strong opinions and come to firm conclusions entirely based on how they FEEL about it. Not based on facts. Not based on logic.
They FEEL like they’re “fine.” They FEEL that what they have is sufficient. They FEEL like they don’t “need all of that.” More accurately, they WANT to feel “fine” about these things so they don’t have to act and spend the money.
That’s why selling on facts and reason is insufficient – you must make them feel anxious and fearful or they won’t buy. Hence the need for some type of diagnostic process that reveals and proves the need. Even then, selling won’t be a slam dunk every time, but your chances of closing go up exponentially when a prospect can clearly see they are NOT fine and you don’t hold back on the consequences of their decisions.
Many MSPs don’t like this fact about selling and influence, calling it “fearmongering.” To be clear, I’m in no way suggesting you falsely alarm someone or manufacture fear when it’s not warranted just to sell something. But here’s a fact: An undisturbed prospect will not buy, and if you refuse to tell a prospect the truth about what will happen when they get hacked, you’re not helping them. You are allowing them to feel smart and safe when they are far from it.
Second, as an entrepreneur running a business, YOU need to be hyperaware of how your feelings are driving your decisions and FORCE yourself to do the necessary research to hunt for FACTS upon which to make important decisions.
In marketing, there are a lot of people walking around making decisions based purely on how they feel about the media or messaging, not on whether it works or not. I remember the partners of a very small MSP (well under $500K in revenue) leaving one of my workshops at the first break and telling my team they “would rather be poor than do THAT type of marketing.” I’m sure they’ll get their wish.
There are MSPs that feel they should get more than a 1% response rate right out of the gate or “feel” this is too much work – these are common reasons for failure to launch and to getting a successful sales and marketing function going in their business. They feel that addressing a prospect’s B.S. objection head-on is “hard selling” and unprofessional. When presented with long copy, they feel that “no one will read all of that.” They feel that cold calling just annoys people and therefore shouldn’t be used (yet they’re perfectly happy t0 spam the crap out of people).
Feelings are fine to acknowledge – but you have to know the difference between a preference or feeling and a hard fact.
