The Man Who Was Not There

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the person who decides it was never in the room.

Two firms both win the one they meet,
Both leave the kitchen table sweet.
One trusts her to explain it right,
One writes the words she'll need that night.
Same wife, same husband, same amount.
Whose case survived the second count?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the work, all together now, was equally good. Both sat down with the same sort of customer and both won her over completely.

The first left it there, which is what winning somebody over usually feels like. She had asked good questions, understood the answers, and said she would talk it over with her husband that evening and let him know.

What happened at that table is where the sale was actually decided, and neither firm was present for it.

She had spent an hour with a man who knew his trade. Her husband had spent no time with anybody, and arrived at the conversation with one fact, which was the amount. So he asked the questions a person asks when they know only the number: why so much, could we not get it cheaper, do we need it this year.

And she, who had been perfectly convinced at three in the afternoon, found that she could not reproduce the argument. The reasons had been good and they had been his reasons, delivered in his words, and she had not written any of it down. What she had left was a feeling of confidence and no ammunition, which loses every time to a specific question about money.

She rang the next morning to say they had decided to wait a bit. The firm recorded it as a lost sale on price, which it was not. It was a sale lost in a conversation nobody had prepared her for.

The second firm did three small things before leaving.

They left one page behind, written for the person who had not been there: what the trouble is, what will be done, what it costs, what it costs to leave it, and the date. Not a brochure, a page.

They said plainly, and without embarrassment, that the two questions she would be asked that evening were why so much and why now, and gave her the answer to each in two sentences she could actually say.

And they offered a thing that costs nothing and is almost never offered: if he would rather ask me himself, I am about all evening, and I would sooner answer him directly than have you carry it.

He did not ring, as it happens. But the page was on the table, and she had two sentences ready, and the decision took ten minutes rather than being postponed indefinitely.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

You are rarely selling to the person you are speaking to. You are equipping them to sell it to somebody else, badly, later, without you. Every household and every business has a second person: the husband, the partner, the one who signs, the trustee, the parent. That person did not meet you, has none of your reasons, and will arrive at the discussion holding the single least favourable fact available, which is what it costs.

So the question at the end of any meeting is not have I convinced her. It is what will she have to say tonight, and can she say it. A customer who is persuaded but unarmed is in a worse position than one who is merely interested, because she must now defend a decision she cannot explain, and she will retreat to the only safe answer available, which is that they will think about it.

Arm her, and it takes ten minutes. Leave one page written for the absent person rather than for her, since the two need different things: she needs to remember, he needs to be persuaded from nothing. Name the objections he will raise, out loud, and give her the two sentences, because a person who has been told what is coming does not panic when it comes. And offer to speak to him directly, which is often declined and always noticed.

Two cautions. Do not treat the absent person as an obstacle to be got round, since your customer will hear it and will not thank you for the tone. And do not send fourteen pages, which is the proposal mistake in a new place: the page must be readable by a tired man at nine in the evening who did not ask for it.

Three questions, and use a real recent loss:

1. Who else had to agree? Go back over the last five jobs you did not win. Name the person who was not in the room. If you cannot, you have been selling to households and firms as though they were individuals.
2. What could she actually say? Write the two sentences your customer would need to answer why so much and why now. If you cannot get them down to two, she certainly cannot.
3. What do you leave behind? If the answer is a quotation, that is a number with no argument attached, handed to the one person in the house who has heard nothing else.

The Answer to the Riddle

Whose case survived?

The one that was written down for a man who had not met anybody. Both firms convinced the woman at the table, equally and honestly, and one of them then sent her into an evening conversation with nothing but a good impression and a large figure. Her husband was not being difficult, and she was not being weak. She had simply been asked to conduct a negotiation on behalf of an absent expert, unprepared, against the only question that matters at nine at night, which is why does it cost that much.

The verse:

You won the one who sat with you,
And left her all alone at eight,
To argue with a man who knew
One fact about it: what you'd take.

Until next time. Go and write the one page for the person who is never in the room, and give it to your next customer with the two sentences she will need.

P.S. In trade, the absent person is usually whoever holds the budget, and the page wants the same shape with different words: the cost of the trouble continuing, what changes, the figure, and the date. Your buyer is going to have to justify you to somebody, and every hour you spend making that easy is worth two spent persuading him.

Also in the archive: The Fourteen-Page Proposal, Boots in the Same Ditch and The Demonstration.