Someone is bound to mention an aircraft crashing on a business site. Once sensitised to massive, yet improbable, catastrophic events the salesperson asks the group to imagine the impact of such a disaster. Again the negativity is enhanced. Next they tell a story, in pseudo documentary style, about the most recent catastrophic event which the client will have heard about via the media. Often they will portray themselves as having some arcane inside knowledge of the event.
Imagination is very powerful and fills the gaps with horrific and graphic images.
Now the salesperson need only mention IT failure, which is seldom understood by the majority of the audience, to complete the picture of horrific physical, mental and commercial chaos which would result from an incident. Having thus induced, in the average board of directors, a state of advanced corporate anxiety, the sales person closes the sale. If the salesperson has neither relevant data on likelihood, probabilities, nor cost analysis to substantiate claims made, nor the ability to provide it if asked, then the sale verges on the fraudulent. This technique is akin to getting one's doctor to induce depression and then being thankful for the costly prescription of Prozac. Such a sales technique is unsustainable in the long term.