The Hot July

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town there were two coopers either side of the brewery yard, and the whole difference between them was one sentence spoken in a cellar.

Two coopers in the town I have never named, the same oak and the same iron hoops.
Both were called down to the brewer's cellar in a hot July.
Both found the very same fault, and both quoted twenty new casks at one figure.
One went back up the steps with thanks and no order.
The other had the work in his book before he was out of the yard.
Same trade, same reading, same price. How?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

The trouble had begun the autumn before, in the counting house above the brewery. The old grey casks were tired, but a new copper was wanted and money does not stretch twice, so the brewer said the sensible thing in front of his two partners: the casks will see another season. It was agreed and written in the book. Then came July, the hottest anybody could remember. By the middle of the month two of the houses he supplied had sent beer back, and the cellar had a smell in it that a brewer dreads, sharp and vinegary under the sweetness. He sent for a cooper.

The first came within the hour and was thorough. He knocked each hoop and listened, put his nose to the bung, and showed where the wood had shrunk away from the iron. All of it was true. Then he said the rest, which was also true. These should have gone last back end. The wood is spent and has been spent a twelvemonth. I said as much when I was down here in the autumn. He said it civilly, and twice, because a thing so plainly right seemed only to want repeating. The brewer agreed the casks were tired, thanked him, and saw him up the steps. No order came. In September he bought twenty casks from a man in the next town.

The second cooper came down on the Thursday and read the casks exactly as the first had. Then he said this. We have had five weeks of weather such as I never knew, and a cellar holds heat long after the yard has let it go. Oak that would have carried another winter in an ordinary season has dried and let its hoops go slack in this one. Your casks have not failed you, they have been asked a question nobody put to them before. Twenty new ones at such a figure, and I can have six down these steps by Friday week.

The brewer went up and told his partners the summer had done for the casks and six were coming on Friday. Nobody in that room had to mention last autumn. The order was written that week.

Be fair to the first man. The autumn decision was the larger cause, so if honesty means naming the biggest, he was the honester of the two. But both causes were real, and only one cooper asked what his customer would have to say out loud before signing.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A man will buy the remedy and he will not buy the blame, so when you explain what has gone wrong, put a cause in front of him that stands outside him. He is not refusing your work. He is refusing the sentence he would have to say first.

Begin with what the purchase actually costs him. Your quote names the money, which is seldom the whole account. If he decided the other way in front of other people, and most decisions of any size are made in front of somebody, then changing course costs him a small public retraction besides, which appears on no estimate and is often the dearer item. When your explanation requires him to say I was wrong last autumn before he can say order the casks, you have attached a confession to your invoice.

This is why such a customer does not argue. He cannot state the true objection without making it, so he says he will consider it, and buys in the end from a stranger who arrives with no memory attached. Where a man goes quiet after a reading he agreed with, suspect it is not the reading he is stuck on. He is working out what he would have to tell the people he must tell.

The remedy is not a trick but a choice among true things. Almost nothing goes wrong for one reason. There is his decision, and there is also the season, the wear of the thing, the growth of his own trade, a rule altered, a material gone dear, and plain time. All are true. You need invent nothing. You have only to choose which to say first, because the first is the one he carries upstairs and repeats, and a man handed a sentence he can repeat is halfway to having thought of it himself. Give him what the summer did, and his judgement comes through whole, and a whole judgement can act today.

Two cautions. The outside cause must be true. Say the summer was fierce only when it was, for a trader caught being kind about one thing is believed about nothing afterwards. Where his own decision is the only honest cause, say nothing whatever about cause: speak of what should be done from Friday onward, for the future needs no culprit. And some faults a man must own, or he will commit them again next autumn. Tell him then, plainly, but alone, afterwards, with the order settled, never in front of the people whose good opinion he is managing.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Whose decision am I asking somebody to overturn? Take the enquiries that have gone quiet and write against each the earlier choice your work contradicts, and who heard it made. That is the real obstacle, not your price.
2. What has changed since he decided? Put the outside cause in one honest line: a season, a rule, a thing worn past its work, his own trade half as big again. Find no true one and the second caution tells you what to do.
3. Where am I being right at my own expense? Read your last estimate aloud for any sentence telling the reader he should have done this sooner. Strike every one out. None of them has ever been paid for.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same oak, same hoops, the same fault found and the same twenty casks at one figure, and yet one cooper walked up the steps with nothing while the other had the order before he left the yard. How?

Because the first told the brewer his casks had gone through what he decided last autumn, and the second told him they had gone through the heat of that July. Both were true. Only the second left him able to face his partners without retracting anything. A customer who can explain his change of course makes it at once. One who would have to confess it puts you off until the memory is safely old, then buys elsewhere.

The verse:

A man will buy the remedy, he will not buy the blame,
And no part of your figure costs him more than climbing down.
So give him what the summer did, and leave his judgement whole,
And the order he was sitting on comes up before the night.

Until next time. Go and read the last estimate you sent to a customer who has not answered, and strike out every sentence that tells him he was wrong.

P.S. There is a use for this before anything goes wrong. When a customer settles on a course you think mistaken and will not be moved, write one line into the paper naming what would make the other course right later: a hot season, a heavier year, a second machine. He agrees cheaply, since it costs him nothing that day. And when the day arrives he is not changing his mind, he is keeping to a condition of his own setting, which is the easiest reversal there is.

Also in the archive: The Dearer Man, The Sum He Did Himself and The Wall Has Moved.