How Many Pints Were Drawn

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, at the back door of an inn on a Tuesday, where the barrels are being rolled down into the cellar.

Two brewers serve the selfsame inns,
Same ale, same cask, same price per tun.
One rolls it down and takes his coin,
One asks how many pints were drawn.
Same landlord, and the same trade too.
Which brewer's barrels never stopped?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two brewers supplying the inns around the town I've never named, and their ale, in the old chorus, was equally good. Same price the tun, same delivery day, same cellars.

The first understood his customer to be the landlord, and his job to be getting good ale into the landlord's cellar at a fair price. He did that faultlessly for twenty years.

What he never asked about was what happened to the ale afterwards, which was the only thing that decided whether he would sell any more of it.

So when a landlord's takings were poor, the brewer heard about it as a reduced order, and could do nothing about it except worry, or offer a shilling off the tun, which helped nobody. He had no idea whether the ale sat unmentioned on a slate nobody read, whether it was served too warm, whether the landlord ever told a customer what it was or where it came from. His barrels went into a dark place and were never seen again until an order was smaller.

He was, without ever framing it this way, entirely dependent on the selling ability of men he never advised.

The second brewer asked, on the first delivery, how many pints came out of a barrel in a week, and then asked it every month thereafter, and wrote the answers down.

Within a year he knew things no landlord knew. That the inns where the ale was named on a board sold half as much again as those where it was simply on tap. That it moved on Fridays if it was mentioned at all on Thursdays. That one landlord in six was serving it in the wrong glass and losing the head on it.

So he began arriving with more than barrels. A small painted board with the ale's name on it, free. A sentence the landlord could say to a customer who did not know what to order. A note of what the best inns were doing, since a landlord will take advice from another landlord's takings when he will not take it from a brewer's opinion.

None of this was charity. Every extra pint drawn in that cellar was a barrel he would sell again in a fortnight, so his help and his profit pointed in precisely the same direction, which the landlords could see perfectly well and which is why they took the advice.

His orders grew without his ever asking anybody to order more. And no landlord who had raised his own takings by a fifth was ever tempted to change brewers for a shilling.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

If your customer sells on what you supply, your sales are decided by how well he sells, and that is your business whether you attend to it or not. Most suppliers stop at the delivery, which is a natural place to stop and the wrong one. What happens after your goods leave your hands determines the size of the next order, and if you take no interest in it you have handed the growth of your own trade to somebody who is doing their best without any of the knowledge you have.

And you do have the knowledge, which is the part worth noticing. You see thirty cellars and he sees one. You know which board, which sentence, which day and which glass works, because you are the only person in the arrangement who can compare. That comparison is worth more to your customer than a shilling off the tun and costs you nothing to give away.

So arrive with more than the goods. Bring the thing that makes them sell: the sign, the words, the sample, the note of what the best of your customers are doing. Ask the one question that tells you how it is going, and ask it every time, since a supplier who asks how many pints were drawn is a supplier who finds out about a problem in March rather than in the size of the June order.

Two things follow, and the second is the one that lasts. Your customer stops being able to compare you on price, because the man he would be comparing you with brings barrels and nothing else. And you become, in a quiet way, part of how his business works, which is a position the second rung letter described in another form and which no rival can undercut, since what he would have to undercut is not a price.

Three questions, and answer them about your largest customer:

1. What happens to your work after you deliver it? Describe it in detail. If you cannot, you are guessing about the only process that determines your next order.
2. What do you know that they cannot? You see many and they see one. Write down the three things the best of your customers do differently, and take that list to the rest of them.
3. What is your one question? How many pints came out of the barrel, in your trade's terms. Ask it at every visit, write the answers down, and you will have a better view of your own market within a year than any survey could buy.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which brewer's barrels never stopped?

The one who cared what happened in the cellar. Both men brewed the same ale and sold it at the same price to the same houses, and one of them delivered it and hoped, while the other took an interest in whether it was drunk. He gave away boards, sentences and other men's takings, none of which cost him much, and every one of which came back to him in the size of the next order, because a supplier who makes his customer money has stopped being a supplier and become part of the trade.

The verse:

Roll down the barrel, take the coin,
And hope the cellar does the rest.
Or ask how many pints were drawn,
And go and tell him what sells best.

Until next time. Go and ask your largest customer what happens to your work after it reaches them, and take them one thing you know that they cannot.

P.S. This holds even when your customer is the final user rather than a seller, with one word changed. Ask what happens after your work is finished, find out where people go wrong with it, and arrive next time with the answer. It is the same trade: you have seen thirty of these and they have seen one.

Also in the archive: The Second Rung, The Piano in the Parlour and The Ironmonger's Second Question.