Taking the Doom/Abundance 'p'

So you've heard of p(doom). The probability the human race will destroy ourselves through some or other AI mishap. Hey ho.

The very coinage of this framing hijacks most debate. It if bleeds, it leads, I guess. With added frisson of irresistible fix for end-of-the-world conspiracist moon howlers who tend to produce and devour greater volumes of noise than those who may purposely working away with diligence.

It works because of what Prospect Theory showed. Loss motivates more than equivalent gain. Cialdini later became a bestseller in part building on the same lever. Anxiety amplifies.

I blogged on a Sales application of this thinking three years back in 2023. Here's another.

Those not predisposed to such negativity have tried to rebalance said debate. They don't bother themselves with portents of disaster. Instead, they promote that AI will rather unleash an era of abundance for humanity.

Whatever level of Maslow's pyramid may vex you, worry no more. What a time to be alive.

Whilst this might not strictly be an actual binary decision between poles on a spectrum between doom and abundance, the fact that pretty much any business buyer will sit somewhere between them is something we can swing to our advantage.

It is not controversial to say that seasoned solution sellers tend to prefer prospects who seek to stave off a looming threat.

Indeed, that stalwart Strategic Selling identifies four potential “response modes”. Of which the one bleeping brightest is forever where they feel in "trouble".

That is not to say pitching sunlit uplands of say the "growth" variety cannot work. Even if in today's nascent AI terms, doom might curry action swifter and deeper than abundance seems to engender.

So grading where our prospect personalities actually sit on such scale can help our positioning.

Some may well seek to ward off doom, others run towards a horizon of abundance.

The fact that the latter might well be a fix for the former matters less than when we know which they stand nearer.

In thirty-odd years in sales rooms, every top sales performer I’ve heard and worked with uses the same focus. Find the pain, then make it as big as possible in the buyer’s mind. Doom may just be the biggest pain on offer right now.

So citing this AI battle may well be a deceptively simple way of getting to grips with their inner drivers. Then wherever they need to go, we alone can uniquely shape our pitch to get them there best. Consider for instance;

"What’s louder in your head (with AI), the upside, or the risk?"