The Chair You Cannot Fill

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the subject is a job that can be delegated in every part except one, which nobody tells you before you delegate it.

Two owners hire the selfsame hands,
Same fee, same month, same fair demands.
One hands it over, walks away,
One keeps one thing and lets them stay.
Same help, same spend, same year gone by.
What did the first not keep? And why?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two owners in the same trade, and their businesses, all together now, were equally good. Both had reached the point where they could no longer do their own marketing in the evenings, and both, sensibly, went and got help. Same sort of help, at roughly the same fee, in the same month.

The first was relieved, and said so. He had never enjoyed that side of it, did not understand it, and was glad to hand it to somebody who did. What he handed over was everything: the words, the offer, the choice of who to talk to, the judgement of what was working, and, without quite noticing, the question of what his business was for.

He judged the arrangement by the only thing he could still see, which was activity. Reports arrived monthly and were full of things done. He read them the way a man reads a document in a language he does not speak, looking for a tone rather than a meaning, and the tone was always positive.

A year in, he could not have told you what a customer cost him to win, which of his services the enquiries were actually for, or what the people who did not buy had said. Nobody was hiding any of it. He had simply never asked, because asking would have meant admitting he did not know what to ask, and that is a harder thing than most people will do in a meeting.

What he got was work that was perfectly competent and slightly wrong, in the way that all work is slightly wrong when the person doing it has never stood in your yard. The words described his trade rather than his customers' trouble. The offer was the one he had mentioned on the first call, eleven months earlier, and had since stopped believing in. And when it did not work, nobody in the arrangement had the standing to say so, since he did not know and they could not tell.

The second owner used the same sort of help for the same sort of hours, and kept three things on her own side of the table.

She kept the offer and the price, because those are the business rather than the marketing of it, and no outsider can decide what you will sell or what you will charge for it.

She kept the customer knowledge. Every month she wrote down what the last ten buyers had actually said, in their words, and handed that over as raw material. Her people wrote better copy than she ever could, and they wrote it out of her sentences rather than their imagination.

And she kept the numbers and the list. She knew what an enquiry cost, what a customer was worth, and which door they came in by, and the names lived on her own ground rather than in anybody else's account, as the owned audience letter insisted.

What she delegated was labour and craft, which is a great deal, and worth every penny she paid for it. What she never delegated was knowing.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

You can hire the doing. You cannot hire the caring, and you must never hand over the knowing. Marketing has parts that a specialist will always do better than you: the writing, the placing, the building, the fiddly machinery of it. It also has a part that cannot be given away at any price, which is the decision about who you serve, what you promise them, and whether it is working. Give that away and you have not bought help, you have appointed somebody to run your business in the one area where you have no idea what is happening.

And notice the failure that follows, because it is rarely dramatic. Nobody is negligent. The work arrives, it looks professional, the reports are full. But the offer slowly becomes the one you described on the first call rather than the one you now believe in, the words drift towards describing your trade rather than the customer's trouble, and there is no one in the arrangement able to notice, since the person who knows the customer is not looking and the person looking has never met the customer.

So keep four things on your side of the table, whoever you hire and however good they are. The offer and the price, which are the business itself. The customer's own words, gathered by you, monthly, because that is the raw material nobody else can go and get. The numbers that matter, chiefly what a customer costs and what a customer is worth, which are the two figures every other decision hangs on, as the bidding letter set out. And the list, on ground you own.

Then judge the work by outcomes rather than activity. A report full of things done is not evidence of anything, and asking a plain question you fear looks ignorant is the cheapest hour you will spend all year. There is no shame in not knowing the machinery. There is real cost in pretending you do.

Three questions, and answer them about your own arrangements rather than in principle:

1. Could you say, today, what an enquiry costs you and what a customer is worth? If not, that is the whole of your problem, whoever you employ. Those two figures are yours to know, and every judgement about whether the help is working is impossible without them.
2. Who last wrote down what a customer actually said? If nobody did, or it was a year ago, your marketing is being written out of memory and inference. Ten sentences a month, gathered by you, will improve the work more than changing supplier ever does.
3. What are you judging the arrangement on? Read the last report you received and mark each item as a thing done or a result. If it is nearly all the first, ask for the second, plainly, this week. A good supplier will be relieved that somebody is finally asking.

The Answer to the Riddle

What did the first owner not keep?

The knowing. He gave away the labour and the craft, which was sensible, and then gave away the judging along with it, which left nobody at all in charge of whether any of it was any good. His supplier could not supply that, at any fee, because it is made of things only he had: standing in his own yard, hearing what customers say, and caring what happens in March. He did not buy bad help. He bought help and then vacated the one chair in the room that could not be filled by anybody else.

The verse:

Hire the hands, and hire them well,
The words, the craft, the how, the sell.
But keep the knowing close and near,
Or no one's minding it all year.

Until next time. Go and write down what an enquiry costs you and what a customer is worth, and take those two figures to your next meeting.

P.S. This cuts both ways, and I say it as one of the hired hands. The supplier who is given no offer, no numbers and no customer words is being asked to invent a business from the outside, and will produce something competent and slightly wrong, and be blamed for it. The best work I have ever been part of came from owners who kept their chair.

Also in the archive: The Boy Minding the Shop, What You May Spend and Ninety Facts.