Eleven Boxes and a Postcode

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, two upholsterers worked a hundred paces apart, and this once I must lend the town a century it never had.

Two upholsterers in one county, the same horsehair and the same webbing.
Both charged forty pounds for a wing chair, and both did it properly.
Both had a handsome page with their work photographed upon it.
One asked a stranger eleven questions before he would hear from him.
One asked three, and kept the rest for his own first reply.
Which workshop was the busier, and which knew his customers better?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two upholsterers, in a town I have never named, though this time the town has telephones in it. Both shops smelled of hide glue and old dust, both kept the tacks in a tin lid, and both were found the same way: a page of photographs, a few lines about the trade, and at the foot a form for a householder to fill in.

The first man's form was the better piece of work, and I want that said plainly. He had built it after a wet Tuesday spent driving eleven miles to a sofa that proved to be chipboard with a broken frame, half a day and a gallon of fuel gone for nothing. That evening he wrote out every question he wished he had asked. Name, address, postcode, telephone, electronic mail. What furniture, how many pieces, whether the fabric was to be supplied or chosen. Roughly what the householder had in mind to spend, and when the work was wanted. And last, where they had heard of him, to know which advertisement earned its keep. Eleven questions, every one sensible, and he would have defended any of them across his bench and been right.

The second man had much the same form, given him by the fellow who built his page. What he did differently took twenty minutes on a Sunday evening. He stood in his own yard and filled the thing in on his telephone as a stranger would, the light going and one hand on the gate. He reached the question about what he had in mind to spend and stopped, because he did not know what to put, and he had written it himself. A low figure might lose him the good work; a high one be taken for an offer. He went in for his tea and the form was never sent.

On the Monday he cut it to three lines. What would you like done. How may I reach you. Your name. Underneath, in small plain words, that a photograph helped if they had one, and not to trouble if they had not.

From then on the messages came better than twice as often, and a fair number were worth nothing: a mattress to be collected, a caravan seat. Ten minutes a week at the outside. The rest he answered inside the hour, with two questions of his own in the reply: where in the county, and had they a photograph. Nearly everybody answered, and by the third exchange he knew the postcode, the fabric, the money and the month, in the householder's own words rather than in boxes. The first man kept the better hand with a hammer and the fuller book in spring, when householders are patient. From October to February, when they are not, the other had the work.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Ask a stranger nothing before he has replied to you that you could just as easily ask him after. Information is dear before the first exchange and almost free afterwards. The upholsterer who learned the most asked the least, because he asked second.

Consider what you are doing when you put a question before a man who has not yet spoken to you. He owes you nothing. Every question is a gate he must open to reach the thing he came for, which was to learn whether you can help him. Turn it about and the same questions cost nothing. He has written, you have written back, and now they are plainly in the service of an answer he wants. A man who has begun something will finish it. A man who has begun nothing walks away from a postcode box.

So the long form feels like diligence and is not, quite. The saving sits on your side of the bench; the cost falls on his, at the moment he is least invested and most easily lost, as does the wait your own page imposes on him. Nor does the length sort the serious from the idle. It sorts by patience, by typing, and by the light where the man is standing. The householder with money in the bank and a chair she has waited two years to have done is not necessarily patient; she is doing this from the kitchen with the dinner on. Patience is not intent, and filtering on it only proves you prefer customers who are good at forms.

And a question in a box is not the question asked aloud. Across a bench, what had you in mind to spend takes two seconds, and he may answer with a question of his own: what does a chair like this usually run to. In the box he cannot ask that. He must guess, and guessing wrong either way has a cost he can picture, so he closes the page. A form is a conversation in which you ask everything and he may ask nothing, much the reason a hidden price costs you more than a published one.

Two cautions. Some trades truly cannot answer without a fact or two. I am not telling you to quote blind, only to put the asking in your reply, where you can say why you want to know. The exception is a question deciding whether you can serve the man at all, which for most trades is how far off he lives. If a wrong answer there wastes his week as well as yours, it earns its place, first and plainly worded. The graver caution is the other. Fewer gates means more messages, more of them poor, and if you cannot answer quickly you have only lengthened the list you feel guilty about. A short form is a promise to reply. Do not make it until you can keep it.

Three questions, and the first you can answer tonight:

1. How many questions does your own form ask, and when did you last fill it in yourself? Not at your desk. On your telephone, outdoors, one-handed, as your customers do.
2. What would you do differently today with each answer? If you would do nothing until you had written back anyway, the question belongs in the writing back.
3. Which single question decides whether you can take the work at all? Most trades have one. Keep it, put it first, let the rest go.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which workshop was the busier, and which of the two knew his customers better?

The second, on both counts, and the second count is the part worth having. The man with eleven questions put them to strangers, who answer briefly or not at all. The man with three put his to people who had already written to him once, and they told him everything, in sentences, in their own words. He came away knowing more than the long form had been built to collect. That form was not thorough. It was merely early.

The verse:

A gate set up before hello
Will keep the willing out.
Ask little first and much thereafter,
Once he has turned about.

Until next time. Go and fill in your own enquiry form from your telephone, and strike out every question you could have asked in your reply instead.

P.S. Whatever you keep, do not let it be where did you hear of us. That one is for your benefit, and it is the only question on the list he can see is for your benefit, which makes it the dearest of the lot. Ask it on the invoice, when he is pleased with you and glad to be useful.

Also in the archive: The Price Behind the Form, Two Bars of Signal and The 9:47pm Enquiry.