No Hurry at All

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town a man would sooner go without a thing he wanted than admit he had been talked into having it.

Two gas fitters in one town, the same brass burners and the same lead pipe.
Both quoted seven pounds to bring gas into a shop and the passage behind it.
Both were asked, at the counter, to leave the matter a week.
One would not leave the counter until he had an answer.
One agreed the week was reasonable, and said one sentence more.
Same work, same price, same week. Which of them got the order?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two gas fitters in the town I have never named, both good with a pipe wrench, both quoting seven pounds to take a service into a shop and give it three burners and one in the passage.

The first was the better talker and knew it. He would stand a sample burner on the counter and light it there, so the shopkeeper saw his own hands in a white light instead of the yellow of a candle, and he was right to show it. Then he put the winter in front of the man. Dark at four. The woman squinting at a bill of goods. Customers turning into the lit shop four doors along. All of it true.

And when the shopkeeper said he would think it over until the following week, the first fitter would not have it. Thinking it over, he said, was how a man lost a winter. He offered a pound off if it were settled today, then offered to start on the Monday and take the money at Christmas, then asked, in a friendly way, what exactly there was to think about. He generally left with no order, and with the shopkeeper standing further back behind his counter than when he came in.

The second fitter showed the same burner and gave much the same account of the dark afternoons, being no less certain the gas was worth having. But asked to leave it a week, he agreed that a week was sensible for seven pounds, and then said his one sentence: that the shopkeeper might very well decide against it, and that the shop had traded by candle for forty years and would trade on if he did.

Then he put three things on the counter and left. A sheet with the seven pounds in its parts, the service, the pipe, the burners, the making good of the plaster. A line saying what the gas itself would cost a quarter, which was the figure men were really afraid of. And the names of two shops he had fitted, either of which would show its bill to anybody who asked.

He came back on the day he had said, not before, and asked one question, whether the man wanted it done before the dark weeks or after Easter. He took that order more often than not, at seven pounds, having never offered a penny off anything.

Be fair to the first fitter. He was no fool and no liar, and some men want pressing and are grateful for it. He took orders that way, from the mild and the hurried, and he lost them from every man with any pride in deciding his own business, which in a town of shopkeepers is most of them.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A man pressed for a decision stops weighing your work and starts defending his right to decide. Those are two questions and he can answer only one at a time. While he is judging the gas he is on your ground, where you have the better of the argument. The moment he feels a hand at his back he is on his own ground, where the question is whether he is the sort of man who gets moved about by tradesmen, and there your figures cannot help you, because they are not what is being weighed.

This is no plea for timidity, and the men who teach the opposite are not talking nonsense. Pressure works. Any trader who has asked plainly for the business knows the sale that happened only because he asked. But look at what pressure selects. It gathers in those who find refusing uncomfortable and drives off those who find being handled unbearable, and the second sort generally have the standing to send you three more. You are not choosing between more orders and fewer, but which kind of customer your manner collects.

The second cost falls after you have left the shop, which is why traders never see it. A purchase a man cannot account for to himself is one he cannot recommend. To praise your gas to a neighbour he must first tell the story of how he came to have it, and if that story is that you would not go until he said yes, he will not tell it. It is the mechanism we set out in the matter of the reason a customer has spoken himself: what he arrives at under his own steam he can repeat in company, and what you pressed on him he cannot.

Where does that leave urgency, which is true and often the kindest thing you can tell a man. Here is the line, and I think it holds. Press on the world and not on the person. The dark comes at four whether he buys or not. Your March is full. A main costs more laid in frost. The price rises at Lady Day and rises for everybody. State those and you have set facts between the man and his decision, and he may do as he likes with them. But a pound off if he settles today, or a question about what there is to think about, is applied to him, and he feels it on his dignity rather than in his ledger. The first sort of urgency makes the week smaller. The second makes him smaller.

Then the one sentence, which looks like throwing the sale away and is the opposite. Telling a man that he may decide against you and be thought none the worse takes the contest out of the room. He is no longer holding a position. He can put his attention back on whether he wants the gas, which is all you ever wanted, and he can say a cheap no, which, as we observed concerning the customer with no cheap way to refuse, is the only condition in which he will say anything at all.

Two cautions. Handing a man his decision is not the same as leaving him empty handed, and a shopkeeper told to think it over, with no figures, no quarterly cost and no date, thinks about nothing and buys from whoever turns up next. Leave the week furnished. And do not take this for a licence never to ask. The trader who waits to be chosen fails more quietly and can tell himself it was the market. Ask once, plainly, for a decision, and be as content with a no as a yes, a clean no this week being worth more than a soft maybe carried until spring.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Which of my lines would sound like management if he repeated it at home? Say the three things you tell a hesitating customer aloud in his voice, beginning with "and then he said". Any one that makes him sound handled costs more than it brings.
2. Am I pressing the man or stating the world? Sort every piece of hurry in your selling into two heaps. Dates, weather, a full diary, prices that move for everybody, keep. Anything whose force comes from his being in front of you, strike out.
3. Have I said the sentence that permits a refusal? One line, in your own words, that he may decide against it and be thought none the worse. Put it in your next three quotations and count the answers against what the last three brought.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which of them got the order?

The second, at the full seven pounds. One of them, by refusing to let the week happen, turned a question about gas into a question about who was master at that counter, and lost it, as a tradesman always loses that one. The other furnished the week with figures and a date, said plainly that a refusal was permitted, and came back on the day he had named to ask which month suited.

He did not win by wanting the order less. He won by leaving the man the one thing no pressing can give him, which is the feeling of having thought of it himself.

The verse:

He pressed me for an answer, so
I had one ready made;
for no man likes to light his shop
and own he had been swayed.

Until next time. Go and read back the last three things you say to bring a hesitating customer to a decision, and strike out every one whose force comes from his standing in front of you.

P.S. The same law governs paper, and more sharply, since a letter can be read twice. One letter that asks for a decision and names a date reads as business. Three in a fortnight, each warmer than the last, read as need, and need in a tradesman is the one thing that makes a customer doubt the price he was quoted. If you must write again, bring something new in your hand, a figure, a date, a case from the same street, and let the asking be a line at the end.

Also in the archive: Two Answers Out of Nine, Everything Suited Him and The Dearer Man.