A Cart of Its Own

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town no man came to his trade with a clean sheet. He came carrying whatever the worst man in it had last done to somebody's sister, and the householder held that reputation before she held his hand.

Two carriers in one town, the same vans and the same pair of horses.
Both moved households, and both printed six hundred bills in the same week.
One printed that he was careful, reliable, and moderate in his charges.
The other printed what becomes of your looking glass between the two houses.
Same vans, same men, same money for a day and a team.
Which of the two was asked about the price last?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two carriers in the town I have never named, both of whom moved households. Each had a covered van, a pair of horses, two men and a lad. Each charged much the same for a day, and each would have told you, truthfully, that he was good at the work.

The first carrier was in fact the more careful of the two, and took a quiet pride in the way his lad packed glass. When trade thinned he had six hundred bills printed, and on them he put what the trade puts. Removals undertaken to any distance. Careful and experienced men. Furniture handled with every care. Moderate charges. Every word was true and he could have sworn to each line before a magistrate. What came back was a thin trickle of the work he already had and three enquiries that began with the price and ended there. He concluded that removals were bought on price alone, which was true of the enquiries he had gone looking for.

The second carrier had something happen to him. At the end of a small removal out past the brewery the woman stood in the empty hall with her hands in front of her. She did not ask about the money, which was agreed. She asked how she was to know that it had all come. He had no answer except that it had. She went up the stairs to count, and he stood there and understood that she had been afraid of him since Tuesday.

So he did a thing that cost him an evening. He called on eleven households he had moved and asked each what they had been worried about on the morning of the van. Two said the money. One said the weather. Eight said one thing in eight arrangements of words. That something would be broken or would not arrive, and there would be no proving when it happened or whose hands had been on it last. None had said so at the time. You do not accuse a man in his own yard of being about to lose your clock.

He made two changes. The first was a book of numbered sheets. Before the van moved, he and the householder walked the rooms and everything went down on the sheet, piece by piece, with the marks already on it written in. The scratch on the sideboard, the cracked pane in the corner cupboard. She kept the top copy, and at the other end she walked the sheet with him and ticked it, which took nine minutes. The second change was a small flat cart, and on it went the looking glasses, the clock and the wedding china, driven by him.

Then he went to the same printer. His bill did not say that he was careful. It said this. Everything you own is written down at your door, with its marks, before the van moves, and read back to you in the new house before my men go. You keep a copy in your hand all day. Your glass and your clock travel in a cart of their own, and I drive that cart.

The enquiries that came back did not begin with the price. Several began with a story about a previous removal.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Your advertising's first work is to answer the fear your whole trade has earned, not to claim the virtue your whole trade has claimed. The first carrier wrote about himself. The second wrote about the nine minutes in the hall, and the nine minutes were not about him at all.

Here is why it falls that way. Nobody reads your bill in an empty head. The householder reads it holding one bad story, usually not her own, and that story does more work in the room than any line you write. Careful and experienced is no answer to it, being the sentence the firm in the story had printed, in the same words, for the same money. A claim costs a liar exactly what it costs you, and so it tells her nothing.

A described practice is different, and the difference is not sincerity. It is that a practice is expensive to print falsely. A man who prints that your goods are written down at the door and read back at the other end has either begun doing it or has arranged to be found out by teatime, on the one day of the year the customer watches everything. This is the quiet half of carrying the risk yourself instead of leaving it on the buyer. A guarantee pays her after the harm. A practice tells her how the harm is prevented, which is what she wanted to know in the hall.

Notice too that he found the line by asking about a morning that was over, which is the only way it is ever found. The fear is not stated in an enquiry, and by the time of a complaint the thing has happened. See also what customers tell you when you ask what they did.

Two cautions. Do not raise the fear in order to answer it. The second carrier printed no word about breakages and never named another firm. He described a sheet of paper and a small cart, so the woman with no fear read a careful system and the woman with one read an answer. Name the dread outright and you hand it new to half your readers. And do not print a practice you have not got. The bill becomes a promise collected on the day, and a broken promise is worse than the bland bill you began with.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. What were they afraid of before they chose me? Ask five past customers that question, in those words, about the morning the work began. One answer will arrive more than twice. That is the one.
2. Which of my claims could the worst man in my trade print tomorrow? Take a pencil to your bill, your van and your website. Careful, reliable, professional, friendly, quality, established. Strike every line he could have for the price of the ink and see what stands.
3. What is the practice that answers it? Write one sentence in which somebody does something, at a stated moment, that the customer can see. If nobody in it does anything, you have written another adjective in a longer coat.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of the two was asked about the price last?

The second. Both men were careful and only one stopped saying so. Careful and experienced left the householder nothing to compare but the figure, so she compared figures. A numbered sheet in her own hand and a cart with her looking glass in it gave her something else to weigh, and the money went where it belongs, near the end of the conversation.

The verse:

The careful man said careful,
as the careless man had done;
the one who named the numbered sheet
was asked the price last of anyone.

Until next time. Go and strike out every word on your own advertising that your worst rival could print for the price of the ink.

P.S. There is a second use for the answer once you have it. The fear that made the sheet of paper is the one that loses you the work at the door, and a practice answers it faster out loud than in print. The second carrier took to saying it in the first two minutes of every house he walked, before a room was measured, because a householder who has stopped bracing herself can hear what a van costs.

Also in the archive: Never the Finest Black, Everyone Does It, Nobody Says It and The Pail on the Landing.