The Cider at the Farm Gate

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, or rather three miles out of it, at a farm gate where the best cider in the county is sold to anybody who happens to be passing.

Two makers press two equal casks,
Same apples, same October's task.
One sells it at his own farm gate,
One puts a cask in every inn.
The better cider's up the lane.
Then why is it the worse one's drunk?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two cider makers within reach of the town I've never named, and their cider, in the old chorus, was equally good, though if you had asked anyone who knew, the first man's was better.

He sold it at his gate. His farm was three miles out along a lane that flooded in November, and he reasoned, not unreasonably, that good cider would draw people to it. Some it did. A man who had tasted it once might make the journey twice a year with a cart, and he would tell people about it, and they would nod and say they must try it sometime, and sometime rarely came.

Because a man is thirsty in the evening, in the town, at the inn he is already sitting in. He is not thirsty three miles up a flooded lane on a Tuesday afternoon, and there is no amount of quality that moves the thirst to where the cider is.

So the best cider in the county was drunk by perhaps forty households, all of them devoted, and the maker took this as proof that his trade was a small one.

The second maker had the slightly inferior cider and a different understanding of what he was selling.

He put a cask in every inn on the road, on terms the landlords could live with. He had a boy with a barrow at the market on Wednesdays. He sold by the stone jar at the two grocers in the town, and he would deliver a cask to any house that took one a month, on the Friday, without being reminded.

None of that improved the cider by a single degree. What it did was arrange for his cider to be present at every moment when somebody in that district wanted cider, which is the only moment a sale has ever occurred.

He sold twenty times what his rival sold, of a worse product, and the forty devoted households up the lane were nearly all of them drinking his in the town on the evenings when they could not face the drive.

And note the quiet effect over years. Because his was the cider people drank, his became the cider people meant when they said cider, and the better stuff up the lane became a thing enthusiasts mentioned, which is a category with a very small till.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A sale happens where the want is, and the want does not travel to meet you. Most trades put nearly all their effort into two things, making the product good and telling people about it, and almost none into the third, which is arranging to be present at the moment and place where the customer actually wants the thing. That third is worth more than the other two combined, because a want that meets no supply is not postponed; it is satisfied by whoever happens to be standing there.

And the gate is more common than you would think, in your century as in the old man's. The tradesman who can only be reached by a telephone that is answered between nine and five. The firm that will only sell the whole job when the customer wants a part. The shop that is open when its customers are at work. The service that exists in one place and one form and requires the buyer to come to it, on its terms, at its hours. Every one of those is a fine cider up a flooded lane.

So ask where the want occurs and go there. In which room, at what hour, on which day, in what size, through whose hands does a person in your district want the thing you make? Then arrange to be present in that room, at that hour, in that size, and through those hands. The inn, the barrow, the grocer's shelf and the Friday delivery are four different answers to the same question, and each catches a want the others miss.

Two cautions. Being everywhere badly is the six channels problem and not what this letter asks; the cider maker chose four places where the want actually gathered, and served each properly. And going to the want will cost you margin, since the landlord takes his share and the boy takes his wage, which is why the man at the gate kept all his margin on a fortieth of the trade.

Three questions, and answer the first by watching rather than guessing:

1. Where and when do your customers actually want you? Not where you would like them to come: where the want arises. The evening, the site, the other trade's counter, the moment something breaks. Name three such moments.
2. How many of those moments are you present at? If the honest answer is one, and it is your own gate, you are selling to the devoted forty and calling it a small trade.
3. What would it cost to be in the inn? The margin shared, the arrangement made, the hours changed. Set it against twenty times the sales, and notice that the man who keeps all his margin on a fortieth of the trade has not, in fact, done the sum.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why is the worse cider drunk?

Because it is there when the thirst is. The better cider is three miles up a lane at an hour when nobody is thirsty, waiting for the want to make a journey wants do not make. One maker spent his years perfecting the thing and the other spent his arranging for the thing to be present, and in every district in the world it is the second man's product that becomes the word for the product, however good the first man's is.

The verse:

The finest cask up flooded lanes
Is drunk by forty and no more.
Put yours in every inn and grocer's,
And be the cider that they mean.

Until next time. Go and name three moments when your customers want you and you are not there, and arrange to be at one of them by the end of the month.

P.S. The man at the gate had one advantage he never used. Forty devoted households are exactly the people who will carry a stone jar to a friend's table, and had he sent each of them away with a spare jar and a word, his cider would have travelled to the town without him. The want will not come to you. Your customers, properly equipped, will go to it.

Also in the archive: The Six Channels, The Well on the Ridge and The Words She Typed.