Great Filter Jeopardy Pitch Angle
Nasa's California Jet Propulsion Lab recently built on this interesting notion from 1998 of American economist Robin Hanson;
The Great Filter theory suggests that intelligent life forms tend to destroy themselves before being able to make contact off-planet.
Also bouncing off the Drake Equation with its reasoning as to how infinitesimal the chances are of another creative, self-aware, technology-shaping creature being around elsewhere in the universe the same time as us. And resolving the Fermi Paradox [aka, Where Is Everybody?] by suggesting aliens duly sabotage themselves before making First Contact.
Perhaps, current prophesy warns, AI is our species' Great Filter?
Whatever, it appears to have a Sales parallel. One which we might use to good affect.
How many an entire corporation, individual business unit or even lone employee is on the verge of wiping themselves out? Specifically before being able to make their equivalent of 'contact off-planet'? Which could be anything from successfully generating a new project, through stealing a march on competition to ensuring you keep all your clients?
This impending destruction is one from which they are blissfully unaware. Oblivious to the oblivion.
Yet we may be able to shed a touch of the ol' FUD to focus buyer minds here; Fear Uncertainty Doubt.
The difference is not so subtle. Compare those sales you ever got from asking someone to make something a bit better, with those where you stave off possible disaster.
If you can cast your solution as crucial protection enabling survival, you're usually way more likely to prevail.
[For those of a Strategic Selling persuasion, this is like moving the 'buying mode' to one of Trouble.]
The key is finding an attribute, lever or outcome that if unaddressed, could see them stagnate, rapidly languish behind, or leave a critical defence openly vulnerable.
If left to its own devices, such 'dysfunction may snowball quickly into the Great Filter'.
Once you've identified this, then you can frame your proposal as preventing the Great Filter in their world.
You could even then try replacing the superlative Great with a word of your own to brashly 'out' the undesirable threat.