Let’s cut to the chase. Your clients don’t give a damn about compliance.
If they could, they’d do the absolute bare minimum—send an intern to a three-hour training, slap together some policies from Google, and call it a day. And honestly? They’d probably get away with it.
Why? Because the risk of regulatory enforcement is dropping fast.
The federal government is slashing jobs left and right. The same people responsible for enforcing compliance laws? They’re packing up their desks. So, when your client asks, “What are the chances we actually get audited?”—they’re not wrong. Those chances were already low. And now? They’re practically zero.
But here’s the problem: the real risk isn’t compliance.
It’s extortion.
Hackers Have a Business Model—and It’s Better Than Yours
Your clients think of hackers as some hoodie-wearing guy in a basement, pounding away at a keyboard like he’s in a bad action movie. That’s not how this works.
Cybercrime is a business. And business is booming.
For as little as $66 on the dark web, a wannabe cybercriminal can buy an entire Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) kit—prebuilt malware, phishing templates, even customer support to help them launch their attack. Some ransomware gangs even have money-back guarantees if their targets don’t pay up.
These guys don’t break in anymore. They just log in using credentials your client leaked three years ago in a breach they didn’t even know happened.
And once they’re in? They own everything.
The Three Things Your Clients Actually Worry About
Your client doesn’t care about checklists. They care about survival.
And after working with thousands of businesses, I can tell you there are only three things that actually keep them up at night:
- Outages. When their systems go down, they lose money. Period. They know this. They just don’t believe it will happen to them.
- Reputation. A breach means telling their customers, their partners, and in some cases, their competitors, that they failed to protect sensitive data.
- Liability. Lawsuits. Fines. Getting dragged through courtrooms. The real terror isn’t the hacker—it’s what comes after.
And that’s why compliance is the wrong conversation.
Positioning Security as Financial and Legal Protection
Most MSPs screw this up. They try to sell security by talking about IT.
Your client doesn’t care about zero-trust architectures or layered defenses. They care about not paying a lawyer $500 an hour to defend them in court after they get hacked.
So stop selling security. Start selling protection.
The Risk Conversation That Turns “We’ll Think About It” into “When Can We Start?”
If your prospect says, “We’ll think about it”—it’s because you’re talking about the wrong thing.
Here’s how you flip the conversation:
Them: “We don’t have the budget for this right now.”
You: “Okay, but if you got hit with ransomware tomorrow, would you have the budget for that?”
Them: “We’re already compliant.”
You: “Compliance doesn’t stop lawsuits. If you were breached, do you have the documentation to prove you took the right steps to protect customer data?”
Them: “We have cyber insurance.”
You: “Great—have you read the policy? Because 44% of claims get denied. Do you have the documentation to back up your security program?”
This isn’t about scare tactics. This is about risk transfer. Your clients transfer risk with contracts, with insurance, and with security measures.
And if they still say no?
Get It in Writing—So Can Defend Yourself When You Are Blamed Later
Here’s where MSPs get burned: a client declines security services, then gets hacked. And guess who they blame?
Not the hacker.
Not their own terrible decisions.
They blame you.
This is why Risk Acceptance Documents exist.
Not a Declination of Service letter. Not a quick email. A real document outlining:
- The risk they are choosing to accept
- The consequences they could face
- Their signature acknowledging that they understand
This does two things:
- It protects you legally.
- It forces them to stop and actually think about what they’re doing.
I can’t tell you how many times a business owner starts signing that document—then suddenly decides, maybe we should just move forward with security instead.
The MSPs Scaling Revenue by Selling Cyber Liability Protection
The fastest-growing MSPs aren’t selling cybersecurity. They’re selling liability protection.
They don’t talk about compliance.
They don’t talk about IT.
They talk about protecting their clients from lawsuits, downtime, and public humiliation.
And when you shift the conversation to that—the price of security becomes a bargain.
So stop selling Compliance-as-a-Service. Start selling Cyber Liability Guard.
If you want to see how to make this shift in your MSP, let’s talk.
Because your clients don’t care about compliance.
They care about not getting sued.
