The Hay in the Field

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the last dry week of July, when the hay is cut and lying and every farmer in the parish is watching the western sky.

Two sellers hawk one canvas sheet,
Same weave, same price, same measured feet.
One says: your hay will keep so well.
One says: one wet week costs you twelve.
Same farmer stands in the same field.
Which words moved him? And what did they yield?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two canvas merchants in the town I've never named, and their sheets, in the old chorus, were equally sound. Same weave, same waxing, same eighteen shillings.

The first sold the benefit, which is what every sensible seller is told to do. He stood at the gate and said that with one of these sheets a man's hay would keep beautifully: sweet, dry, good colour, and worth having in February.

Every word true. And the farmer, standing in his own field with the hay lying and the sky doing whatever it was doing, listened politely and said he would think about it, because what he had been offered was an improvement to a situation he was currently coping with.

He had coped for eleven years. Some of those Julys had been fine. He knew, in a general way, that hay spoils in the wet, and he had absorbed the losses when they came without ever adding them up, since a loss absorbed a little at a time is not experienced as a loss at all.

The second merchant said something different, and it took him rather longer, which is part of the point.

He asked how many acres were down. Twelve. He asked what the farmer got for good hay in February, and what he got for hay that had been rained on twice and gone dusty, and the farmer, doing the arithmetic aloud for the first time in his life, arrived at a number somewhere near twelve pounds for a bad week.

Then the merchant said only this: the sheet is eighteen shillings, and we get a wet week in July about two years in three.

No pressing. No warning about the sky, which he could not have made good on anyway. He had simply moved the conversation off what the farmer might gain and onto what he already had lying in the field and stood to lose, which are two entirely different objects even when they are, on paper, the same eighteen shillings.

The farmer bought two sheets.

And mark the honest bones of it, because everything here rests on them. The number came from the farmer's own mouth, not the merchant's. The two years in three was true and checkable by any man in the parish. Nothing was invented, no urgency was manufactured, and the merchant would have said the same thing in a dry year. He had told a man the arithmetic of his own field, and the arithmetic did the selling.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

People will do more to hold on to what they have than to acquire something better. The same sum, described as a gain, is politely considered and deferred; described as a loss already in progress, it becomes something a person wants dealt with. That is not a trick of language. It is how the thing is actually weighed, and the seller who describes only the sunny outcome is offering an improvement to somebody who has been coping for eleven years and will go on coping.

Which is why the benefit alone so often loses to nothing at all. Your rival in most sales is not another firm; it is the customer continuing as they are, and continuing as they are looks free, because losses absorbed a little at a time never present a bill. Your work is to gather them into one place and put a figure on them.

Then the manner of doing it, which decides whether this is honest or shabby. The number must come from them: ask what it costs now, in money or time or spoiled work, and let them arrive at the figure by their own arithmetic, since a number a man has said aloud himself is one he believes. Yours would be doubted, and rightly. And the frequency must be true and checkable, two years in three rather than any moment now, because as the letter on writing what you would read at home said, an invented likelihood works once and costs you the rest.

And keep the tone of the merchant at the gate. He did not frighten anybody. He asked three questions, stated one price, named one true frequency, and stopped talking. Fear pressed hard produces a customer who feels handled and resents it later; arithmetic laid out plainly produces a customer who has decided something, which is what you actually want and what survives the winter.

Three questions, and take a real customer rather than a general one:

1. What is the situation costing them now? Not what your work would give them: what the present arrangement takes, week by week, in money, hours or spoiled work. If you cannot answer it about your last three enquiries, you have been selling improvements to people who are coping.
2. What are the three questions that let them work it out themselves? Write them down. They will be about quantities, prices and frequency, and they must be the sort of thing a customer can answer from their own knowledge in under a minute.
3. What is your true two years in three? The honest frequency or likelihood behind the risk you are naming, stated in a form anybody could check. If you have not got one, say so plainly and rely on the arithmetic alone, which is quite strong enough.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which words moved him?

The ones about the hay he already had. The first merchant offered a better February to a man who had survived eleven of them, which is a pleasant thought and easily put off until next year. The second put twelve pounds of the farmer's own money on the ground in front of him, in the farmer's own figures, and set eighteen shillings beside it. Nothing was exaggerated and nothing was hurried. The sheet was the same sheet; only the arithmetic had been done out loud.

The verse:

A better year is easy missed,
For men have coped, and men persist.
But count what's lying in the field,
And eighteen shillings soon is sealed.

Until next time. Go and work out, with your next enquiry, what their present arrangement is costing them, and let them say the number aloud.

P.S. There is a line here and it is worth marking clearly. Naming a real cost a man is already paying is a service to him. Inventing a danger to make him move is not, and the difference is not in the words but in whether it would still be true if he never bought anything from you.

Also in the archive: The Draper's Three Days, Aspirin and Vitamins and When They Say It Is Too Expensive.