The Crowded End

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the subject is a decision most trades never notice they have made, usually in their first year, and then live inside for thirty.

Two firms sell skill at honest rates,
Both work the hours, both watch the dates.
One serves the ones who count each pound,
One serves the ones who look around.
Same hands, same craft, same working day.
Why did one struggle all the way?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms with the same skill, and the work, all together now, was equally good. Same training, same standards, same town.

The first served whoever came, which meant, in practice, the people who ring round for three quotes. Not bad people at all, and not poor ones necessarily: simply customers for whom the price was the deciding fact, because for them the thing being bought was a grudge purchase they had put off for two years.

Notice what that customer does to a business, over time, without ever meaning any harm. She haggles, because the money genuinely matters to her. She takes a long while deciding, and often decides not to. She wants everything included and notices every extra. She is anxious throughout, which means telephone calls. And at the end, if anything at all falls short, she is more disappointed than a wealthier customer would be, because she has spent money she felt.

So he worked hard, kept his prices keen, and was busy, and could never work out why busy never turned into money. It was not his craft. It was that every hour he sold was sold to somebody for whom the fee was the whole conversation.

The second firm looked at their own books one winter and found something that changed everything. About a fifth of their customers had never mentioned the price at all. Not because they were careless with money, and mostly they were not rich in any grand sense, but because for them the thing at stake was larger than the fee: a business losing trade every week the problem continued, a house going on the market in March, a job that had to be right because somebody's name was on it.

That fifth of the customers took less time to sell to, argued about nothing, paid on time, referred people like themselves, and generated a fraction of the anxious telephone calls.

So they went looking for more of them, and the change was less dramatic than it sounds. Same trade, same tools. They wrote about the situation those customers were in rather than about the service. They asked one question early, which was what happens if this does not get sorted, since the answer sorts people faster than any qualifying form. They stopped chasing the enquiries that opened with what's your best price, politely and without any grievance. And they raised their rate, which cost them a great deal less trade than they feared, because the customers they had chosen were not deciding on it.

They did fewer jobs the following year and earned considerably more, and the year was pleasanter, which does not appear in any ledger and matters more than most things that do.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

You are not choosing what to sell. You are choosing who has to say yes. Most trades believe they picked a product and then took whatever customers arrived. In truth the customer was chosen first, usually by accident, in whatever way the first few came in, and everything afterwards follows from it: the price you can charge, the arguments you must win, the pace of the work, and how your Tuesdays feel.

And the crowded end is the bottom, always, in every market. That is where the most sellers are, competing on the only thing left when nothing else has been established, and where the customer has the least room to be generous. Meanwhile there is a quieter part of every trade occupied by people for whom the fee is not the deciding fact, and they are not necessarily wealthy: they are simply people with something larger at stake than your invoice. A deadline, a reputation, a business bleeding money, a house that must sell.

So the question that finds them is about consequence, not budget. Not what were you looking to spend, which invites a defensive number, but what happens if this is not sorted. A person who can answer that in specifics has already told you that your price is the smaller number in their arithmetic, exactly as the seedsman understood about the man buying seed for eleven acres.

Two honest cautions. This is a choice, not a moral ranking, and the customer counting her pounds deserves your best work if you serve her; the point is to decide deliberately and build the business around it rather than drifting into the crowd. And do not simply raise your prices and hope the better customer appears. The ache you name, the proof you show and the guarantee you offer must all speak to somebody with something at stake, or you will merely be expensive in the same market you were cheap in.

Three questions, and take the books rather than your impressions:

1. Which customers never mentioned the price? Go through the last twenty and mark them. Then look at what those people had in common: the situation they were in, the deadline, the thing at risk. That is your description of a customer worth finding, and it is written in your own invoices.
2. What does an hour spent on each sort actually earn? Include the quoting, the chasing, the reassuring calls and the making good. Most trades find the keenest-priced work costs two or three times the hours per pound earned, which is the whole reason busy has not turned into money.
3. What would you have to change to speak to the other end? Usually the opening line, the question you ask first, and the proof you show. Rarely the craft. Write the three changes down and make one of them this week.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did one struggle all the way?

Because he sold to people for whom his fee was the largest number in the decision, and his rival sold to people for whom it was one of the smaller ones. Same craft, same hours, same town. One spent his working life arguing about money with people who could not help but argue about money, and called it a difficult trade. It was never the trade. It was the end of it he had wandered into, on no particular day, without ever deciding anything.

The verse:

Where every seller stands, they haggle,
And every pound becomes a battle.
Find those with more at stake than cost,
And half the argument is lost.

Until next time. Go and mark the customers who never mentioned price, write down what they had in common, and put that situation in your opening line.

P.S. If your trade genuinely serves people with little to spend, and many honourable trades do, the letter still holds with one word changed. Look for the ones with the most at stake rather than the most in the bank: the person for whom your work prevents a far larger loss. That is the same customer wearing plainer clothes.

Also in the archive: The Clockmender's Price, The Innkeeper's Rule and Twenty Strangers.