Hoyle at the Far End of the Market

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the glover's doorway, where a man has come in asking for something the glover does not make.

Two glovers hear one wrong request,
Same trade, same door, same hopeful guest.
One says he cannot help, good day,
One names the man across the way.
Both lose the sale. Same empty till.
Why was one asked again? And still?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two glovers in the town I've never named, and their gloves, in the old chorus, were equally well cut. Both were asked, several times a month, for things they did not make, since a man who wants gloves often wants other things and does not know who makes them.

The first answered honestly and briefly. He did not do that, he was sorry, good day.

Nothing wrong with it, and nothing gained by it. The man went away with the same problem he had come in with, and remembered the visit as a wasted quarter of an hour, and did not think of the glover again for a year, since the encounter had contained no information and no use.

What that glover had was perhaps forty such conversations a year, every one of which was a person standing in front of him with a need, and every one of which he let out of the door with nothing.

The second kept a book. Not of customers: of tradesmen. Who did the good lettering, who could be trusted with a small repair, which of the two saddlers was better with a difficult horse, who was reliable in August when everybody else was away.

So when a man came in asking for something he did not make, he did not say he could not help. He said: I do not do that, but Hoyle at the far end of the market does, and he will make it properly, and tell him I sent you.

Three things followed from that sentence, and none of them was a sale that day.

The man went away helped rather than turned away, which is a different memory entirely, and the story he told was that the glover had sorted him out, which is not even accurate and is what people say.

Hoyle, being sent trade for nothing, sent trade back, and the two of them did rather well out of one another for twenty years without any arrangement ever being written down.

And the third thing, which was the largest and the slowest. Over years, that glover became the man people asked first, about anything. Not because he knew everything, but because asking him always produced an answer, and a person who reliably produces an answer becomes the first door in the street, which is a position no advertising can buy and which begins with sending work away.

He also learned, from forty conversations a year, exactly what the town kept wanting and could not find. Twice in his life he added a line to his own trade on the strength of it, and both times he was right, because he had been told forty times before he acted.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A person you cannot help is not a wasted conversation unless you waste it. They arrived with a need, which is the scarcest thing in any market, and the fact that it does not match what you sell is a matter of accident rather than of value. Sending them away empty converts a live want into nothing at all. Sending them somewhere useful converts it into a small debt, a story, and a connection with another tradesman, none of which cost you a penny since the sale was never available to you.

Which is why the book matters more than the impulse. Anybody can offer a vague suggestion; the useful thing is a name, a location and a reason, and that requires knowing your own trade's neighbours well enough to send somebody confidently. Most people never build that, and so their referrals are hedged and half-hearted and help nobody.

And note the second harvest, which is the one nobody counts. Every request you cannot fill is a report from your market about what it wants and cannot get. Written down over a year, those refusals are the cheapest research available to any business, and they will tell you what to add long before any amount of speculation would, as the boy's list did in a smaller way.

Two cautions. Only send people to tradesmen you would use yourself, since a bad recommendation is charged to your account and not to theirs. And do not expect a return from the man you send to, or you will keep score, and keeping score is visible and spoils the whole thing. It comes back or it does not, and it usually does.

Three questions, and start the book this week:

1. How many people do you turn away in a month? Count them. Every one arrived wanting something, and if they left with nothing at all, you have been letting live demand walk back out of the door in silence.
2. Who are the six names in your book? The people you would send somebody to without hesitation, in the trades adjacent to yours. If you cannot name six, that is a fortnight's work and it will repay you for the rest of your career.
3. What are you asked for that you do not do? Keep the list for a year. If the same thing appears twenty times, your market has told you something you could not have worked out at a desk.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why was one asked again?

Because he had been useful once when there was nothing in it for him, which is the only form of usefulness anybody remembers. Both glovers lost the same sale on the same morning, and one of them lost it into a closing door and the other into a name, a direction and a message to pass on. Twenty years later one man was a glover and the other was the first door in the street, and the difference began with work he could not do.

The verse:

The man you cannot serve today
Is still a man who wants a thing.
Send him to Hoyle across the way,
And see what such a sending brings.

Until next time. Go and write down six tradesmen you would send somebody to without hesitation, and start keeping the list of what you are asked for and cannot supply.

P.S. This is also the graceful answer to the enquiry you could take and should not: the job at the wrong end of your trade, or the customer you know will be trouble. Naming somebody better suited turns a refusal into a service, and the man you decline that way speaks considerably better of you than the man you serve reluctantly.

Also in the archive: The Innkeeper's Rule, The Cart in the Frost and The Boy Minding the Shop.