The Good Iron on the Axle

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the wagon yard, at the moment when everything has been agreed and the hand is half out to be shaken.

Two wrights both build one waggon fair,
Same price agreed, same timber there.
At shaking time comes: what's your best?
One knocks off ten to close the rest,
One smiles and says the price still stands.
Which wright was asked again next year?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two wagon builders in the town I've never named, and their waggons, in the old chorus, ran equally true. Each agreed the same job at the same figure with the same sort of farmer, and each came to the moment of the handshake.

And each heard the same sentence, said pleasantly, almost as an afterthought: and what can you do on the price?

The first knocked off ten shillings, for a reason that felt overwhelming at the time. He had spent two hours on the drawings. The farmer was as good as agreed. And ten shillings, against the whole job, was very little to risk it all for.

That reasoning is exactly why the question gets asked, and it is why it works. A man at the moment of shaking hands has already spent his afternoon, already pictured the money, and already told himself the job was his, and a small sum weighed against all of that looks like nothing. The customer was not being sly. He was simply asking a question that costs him nothing and occasionally produces ten shillings.

What it produced besides the ten shillings was this. The farmer now knew that the first figure had been soft, so the second waggon began at a different place, and the third began lower still. Every job thereafter carried the same last-minute question, because it had worked, and questions that work get asked again.

And there was a subtler cost. The farmer did not think better of him for the ten shillings. He thought, quietly and without malice, that he had probably been asking too little all along.

The second wright had a settled answer, worn smooth from use, and he gave it with a smile and no stiffness at all.

I keep one price, and it is the price I would give my brother, so there is nothing to knock off. What I can do is this: I will put the good iron on the hinder axle rather than the plain, which I would charge two shillings for, and you shall have it, because you have been straight with me and I would rather give you something than take something off.

Then he put his hand out and said nothing more, which is the bookseller's discipline arriving at the last possible moment.

The farmer shook it. Everybody does, since the question was never a condition, only a question, and a man who has been given something has no grievance to carry home.

And next year the farmer did not ask, having learned that the price was the price, and that asking produced a courtesy rather than a discount.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The last-minute question is asked because it costs nothing to ask, and it is answered because you have already spent the afternoon. That is the whole mechanism. Everything you have invested by the moment of the handshake, the drawings, the hours, the picture of the money in your head, is leverage you have handed the customer without either of you intending it, and ten shillings against all of that will always look small.

So the answer must be decided long before the moment, since anything invented at the handshake will be invented by a man who badly wants to shake it. Write it down, learn it, and let it contain three things. That you keep one price, said as a plain fact about how you work rather than as a rebuke. Why, in half a sentence: it is the price I would give my brother. And something given rather than taken off, which is the piece most trades leave out and which does all the work.

The giving matters because the customer's question is rarely about the money. It is about wanting to feel he did well, and a man who leaves with the good iron on the axle has done well, and it has cost you two shillings instead of ten and has not moved your price by a penny. The cousin's latch was the same trade in a different yard: give a thing with a shape, never a reduction with none.

Two cautions. Say it the same way every time and to everybody, since a price that holds for some and bends for others is not a price, it is a negotiation you have not admitted to. And do not be cold about it: the question is perfectly fair and the man asking it is not an enemy, and a wright who bristles has turned a pleasant afternoon into a contest he can only half win.

Three questions, and answer the first honestly:

1. When were you last asked at the handshake? Recall what you said. If you improvised, you improvised at the worst possible moment, with everything you had already spent sitting on the scale.
2. What is your sentence? One price, the half-sentence reason, and the thing you will give instead. Write it now and say it aloud until it sounds like the ordinary way you do business, because that is exactly what it must sound like.
3. What is your good iron? The small thing you can add that costs you little and is worth having: the better fitting, the extra visit, the finish you would normally charge for. Decide it in advance so you are never hunting for it while a hand is out.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which wright was asked again next year?

The first, and every year after, since he had taught a reasonable man that the question pays. His rival was asked once, answered with one price and a better axle, and was never asked again, because the farmer had learned the two things that end the whole business: that the figure does not move, and that asking is met with generosity rather than resistance. Ten shillings changed hands in one yard. In the other, two shillings of iron did the same work and left the price standing.

The verse:

They ask because it costs them nought,
You yield because you're nearly bought.
Keep one price, give a thing instead,
And they will never ask again.

Until next time. Go and write your handshake sentence, and decide today what your good iron is.

P.S. If the customer presses a second time, having heard your sentence, that is worth noticing rather than resenting. He is telling you plainly that price is the thing he is buying on, which means he will be gone the moment somebody cheaper appears, and you are deciding not whether to lose ten shillings but whether to spend a year of Tuesdays on a man who was never going to stay.

Also in the archive: And What Comes Back For It, The Cousin's Gate and Three Gates.