Away in April

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, two coachbuilders were called up to the same coach house in the same March to look over the same landau, rotten in two panels and cracked through a shaft, and both came away meaning to ask fourteen pounds ten.

Two coachbuilders, the same town, the same landau in the same coach house,
The same two rotten panels, the same cracked shaft, the same fourteen pounds ten.
One took his measurements, walked home, and wrote his estimate that evening.
One took his measurements, asked two questions, and wrote nothing until they were answered.
Both were honest men, both named the same money, and either could have done the work.
Why was one estimate read twice over and the other read once?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two coachbuilders in the town I've never named, each with a yard off the same road and a long shed where a body could stand on trestles with its wheels off. In March both were asked up to a house on the hill, on separate days, to look over a landau that had stood out through a wet winter with its head down. Two panels gone soft under the paint, one shaft cracked where it met the futchell, the lining marked, the leather dry. Both men pressed their thumbs into the same places, found the same work, and reckoned the same fourteen pounds ten.

The first coachbuilder did what the trade teaches. That evening he wrote a good estimate: the two panels, the shaft, the lining and the leather, each with its figure, and the total at the foot. Underneath he wrote that the work would be done by his own men, that he had been thirty years in the trade, and that he would have it back as quickly as ever he could manage. He sent it up the hill next morning.

The second coachbuilder wiped his hands, stood up, and asked two questions. The first was when she must have the carriage back. The second was what would decide it between him and whoever else she was asking.

She told him both, because people generally do. Her daughter married in the second week of May and the landau had to carry her to the church. But that was not the thing she minded. The thing she minded was April, when her sister came to stay and there were calls to pay all over the parish. A month of hired flies had kept her from having the work done at all these two winters. And yes, she had asked one other man, and she supposed it would come down to which of them she believed about the time.

His estimate, written the next evening, began with a fortnight. The carriage would leave her coach house on the Monday after next, while the lanes were still too bad for calling, and be back the Saturday before the month turned. April she would have her own wheels under her. Then the panels, the shaft, the lining and the leather, each with its figure, and fourteen pounds ten at the foot, the same as the other man's. At the end, one plain sentence: if the timber under the second panel proved worse than it looked, he would send word the same day with the cost, and the carriage would be home before April regardless.

She read that one twice. He had the work.

Be fair to the first man. He padded nothing, his joints would have held as long as the other man's, and his varnish was as good. He answered the question he was asked, honestly and promptly. It simply was not the question she was deciding on.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Before you put a price on paper, find out what will decide it, and then write the paper to that. An estimate is not a statement of what work costs. It is an answer to a question, and the question is in the customer's head, not yours. Most of us answer the one we would ask in her place, the price and whether the man is any good, those being the two we have practised explaining. Meanwhile she sits in her parlour weighing a month of borrowed gigs.

Why it works is plain enough said out loud. You cannot be chosen for a reason the customer has not got. If what will decide it is the fortnight, every line spent on your thirty years is a line not spent on the fortnight, and the man who spends his the other way about beats you at the same money. That is the whole of writing to be decided upon, and the asking is how you learn what to write.

There is a second thing the asking does, worth more than the first. A customer who has not been asked how she means to choose has usually not decided. She has a worry and no shape to it. The man who asks is the first to help her give it a shape, and the shape she says out loud she tends to hold to afterwards, having heard herself say it. Note where she stood when she said it. She stood beside you.

And it must be asked beforehand, while the thing is still to be decided. Ask afterwards why she chose as she did and you get a reason invented on the spot to tidy up a feeling, which is the trouble with asking a question people cannot answer. Ask beforehand and you are not asking her to explain herself. You are asking what she is worried about, which she knows perfectly well.

Two cautions. First, two questions, plainly put at the end of looking at the work, and then stop. She is not obliged, and if she does not know yet, that is the most useful answer of all, because you may then say what you think ought to decide it. Second, do not use what you learn to bend. A man who hears the date and promises it anyway has moved his failure to a worse week, where it costs him a wedding and his name on the hill. If what will decide it is a day you cannot keep, say so in one sentence and go home, an hour lost instead of a fortnight.

Three questions, and the first is answerable before you put this down:

1. What did the last three customers who chose you say decided it? If you cannot answer in their own words, you have been writing every estimate since to a guess, and the guess is usually your own price.
2. What is on the other side of the date they give you? Nobody wants a carriage in May. They want a wedding. The date belongs to something else, and that something else is what you are paid to protect.
3. How far down your estimate does the thing they care about appear? Count the lines. If it is on the second page, it is not in the estimate at all.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why was one estimate read twice over and the other read once?

Because one was about the work and the other about her April. Both found the same faults and named the same money. One spent two minutes finding out what the money would be weighed against, then put the fortnight at the top of the page where she could not miss it. The other wrote a correct answer to a question nobody had asked him.

The verse:

One walked home with his measurements and wrote the figures out,
One asked what would decide it, and wrote nothing till he knew.
The ash was the same ash, the money the same money,
But one of them priced a landau, and one of them priced April.

Until next time. Go and ask the next person who asks you for a price what will decide it, before you write the price down.

P.S. Ask the same thing of work you have won, at the moment you win it, which is the one moment a customer will tell you anything. Ask what nearly stopped her. You will hear the same three or four answers over a year, they will not be the ones you would have guessed, and then you may answer them before anybody has to ask.

Also in the archive: The Questions He Gave Away, The Man Who Was Not There and Set Aside at Nine in the Evening.