Everyone Does It, Nobody Says It

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the lesson costs nothing whatever to act on, which is the usual reason nobody does.

Two workshops do the selfsame steps,
Same care, same checks, same careful preps.
One writes that all their work is sound,
One writes the steps, and lists them down.
Same trade, same hands, same eleven stages.
Why was one read across the ages?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the work, all together now, was equally good. Genuinely identical processes, the same eleven stages, done to the same standard, because that is simply how the work is done properly and everybody in the trade knows it.

The first firm described itself the way everybody in that trade describes themselves. Quality workmanship. Attention to detail. Fully qualified. Standards you can trust.

Not one word of it was false, and not one word of it did any work. A customer reading four such firms in an evening receives no information whatever, and does what people do when given nothing to choose between, which is choose on price, or on whoever answers first, or on nothing at all.

The second firm did something so simple that they were embarrassed to do it. They wrote down what actually happens.

Every piece is checked twice before it leaves, once by the man who made it and once by somebody else, and the second man signs it. The materials are ordered from one supplier they have used for eleven years, and are measured on arrival rather than taken on trust, because about one delivery in twenty is wrong. Each job is photographed before and after. The offcuts are kept for six months in case a repair is wanted. The van is loaded the night before so nobody is rushing at seven in the morning, since almost every mistake in this trade happens in a rush.

None of it was special. That is the whole point and it must be insisted upon. Every decent firm in the trade did all eleven stages, and the owner said so when it was suggested to him: why would we write that down, everyone does it, you cannot make a good job without it.

Which is precisely why it worked. Everyone did it and nobody had ever said it, so the first firm to describe it appeared, to a customer who has no way of knowing what happens in a workshop, to be the only firm doing it.

And notice what it did to the reader. Where a claim invites a doubt, a description invites a picture. Nobody argues with the offcuts being kept for six months; there is nothing to argue with, it is either done or not, and the specificity itself is the proof. Being told a firm is meticulous asks you to take somebody's word. Being told the van is loaded the night before lets you see it.

They put it on the page, in the quote and in the first conversation, and their enquiries began arriving already convinced, asking when rather than whether. Their rivals read it and thought it faintly odd, and went on writing that their standards could be trusted.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The customer cannot see inside your workshop, so nothing that happens in there exists until you describe it. Your trade's ordinary care, the checks everybody does, the standards no professional would dream of skipping: all of it is invisible, and invisible things cannot persuade. The first firm to say them aloud owns them, not by any trickery, but because the customer has nothing else to go on and no way of knowing that the whole trade does the same.

And understand why nobody does it, because the reason is instructive. The people who know the process best find it dull, since to them it is merely the work. Familiarity is what keeps a good story untold: you cannot see the interest in the thing you do every day, and the very ordinariness that makes you think it not worth writing is what makes it new to a person who has never been inside a workshop like yours.

Then the second half, which matters as much. Specificity is itself a form of proof. Eleven years, one supplier in twenty wrong, six months of offcuts, checked twice and signed: none of those is an argument and all of them are believed, because invented details are vague and true details have numbers in them. A general claim can be made by anybody at no cost, which is exactly what your customer suspects, and it is why the signs on the high street are read by nobody.

Two cautions. It must be true, all of it, since you are inviting a customer to picture a thing and they will notice if the picture and the job do not match. And do not merely list the steps as a diagram of your process, which nobody reads either: say what each one prevents, since the offcuts kept for six months only mean something when the reader understands they are there for the repair nobody has asked for yet.

Three questions, and answer them by walking through a real job rather than from memory:

1. What are the steps you would never skip? Write down every check, precaution and habit in one ordinary job, including the ones you consider too obvious to mention. Especially those. The list is nearly always longer than people expect and has never once been written down.
2. Which of them has a number in it? Twice, eleven years, one in twenty, six months, the night before. Numbers are what a stranger believes, and every vague sentence you can replace with a specific one is a doubt removed for nothing.
3. What does each step prevent? Write the consequence beside it: this is why nothing arrives short, this is why the rushing does not happen, this is why a repair in March is possible. A step without its reason is administration. A step with its reason is persuasion.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why was one read?

Because a description can be pictured and a claim can only be believed or doubted, and a stranger choosing between four firms on a Tuesday evening has no grounds for believing anybody. Both workshops did all eleven stages. One said its standards could be trusted, which is what the other three said; the other said the van is loaded the night before because almost every mistake in this trade happens in a rush, and the reader, who has never been in a workshop, thought: that is a firm that has thought about this. The advantage was not in the work. It was in the telling, and it had been sitting there unclaimed for years.

The verse:

The care you take is dark and hid,
Unseen behind a workshop lid.
Say plainly what your own hands do,
And all the trade's good name is you.

Until next time. Go and write down the eleven things you would never skip, put a number in as many as you truthfully can, and say what each one prevents.

P.S. Expect a rival to copy the list within the month, and let them. They will be the second firm to say it, which is worth a fraction of being the first, and half of them will copy the words without doing the steps, which a customer discovers in due course and never forgives.

Also in the archive: The Sign Nobody Read, Ninety Facts and The About Page.