The Millwright's Two Pounds

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, or rather a full day beyond it, at a mill that has stopped turning and a miller who wants to know why.

Two millwrights ride the selfsame road,
Same day, same mill, same broken load.
One looks and tells, and asks no fee,
One charges for the looking, plainly.
Both name the fault. One does the work.
Which man rode home with nothing earned?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two millwrights within reach of the town I've never named, and their knowledge, in the old chorus, was equally deep. Both could stand in a stopped mill for an hour and tell you what was wrong with it, which is a thing that takes twenty years to learn and about an hour to perform.

The first went out to a mill a day's ride away, as he always did, at no charge, because everybody in the trade went out at no charge and a man who asked for money to look would have been thought grasping.

He spent the morning at it, found the fault, which was in the bearing and not in the obvious place, and explained to the miller exactly what wanted doing and in what order, and gave him a price for the work. Then he rode home, a day and a half of his life spent, and waited.

The miller, now in possession of a complete diagnosis, did the sensible thing from where he stood: he showed it to a cheaper man, who had not the knowledge to have found the fault himself and every ability to carry out the repair once told. The cheaper man did the work at a lower price, and did it adequately, and the millwright's twenty years had been given away in a morning to a rival who did not have them.

This happened to him perhaps eight times a year and he called it the cost of doing business. Eight times a day and a half is a fortnight, and the fortnight was spent training his competitors.

The second millwright said something different when the letter came. I charge two pounds to come and look, which takes a day and includes a written account of what is wrong and what it will cost to put right, and the two pounds comes off the price if you have me do the work.

A third of the enquiries stopped there, which was the first benefit and looked at the time like the first loss. The ones who stopped were the millers who had wanted a free opinion to take elsewhere, and he had spent years riding out to them.

The rest paid, and here is what the two pounds did beyond covering his day. It made the visit a piece of work rather than an audition, so he arrived as a man doing a job instead of a man hoping for one. It bound the miller slightly, since a man who has paid for a diagnosis feels differently about the man who wrote it. And the written account was a thing of value in itself, which meant that even when the miller went elsewhere, nobody could say the millwright had been used, because he had been paid.

He rode out half as often and earned rather more, and stopped training the cheaper men entirely.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

If the valuable part of your trade is the knowing rather than the doing, and you give the knowing away, you have arranged to be paid only for the easy half. In a good many trades the diagnosis is the thing that took twenty years and the execution is what anybody competent can manage once told. Handing over the first for nothing, in writing, with a price attached, is not generosity: it is a specification, and specifications are exactly what a cheaper rival needs and cannot produce.

So the question worth asking of your own free visit is a plain one. What am I giving away, and could somebody else carry it out with what I have just handed them? If the answer is yes, you are not quoting, you are consulting for nothing and then bidding for the labour.

The remedy is old and simple. Charge for the diagnosis, keep it modest, and credit it against the work. That sentence loses you the people who were never going to hire you, keeps everybody else, and costs you nothing with the customer who intended to proceed all along, since he pays the same in the end.

Two conditions make it work rather than merely sound brave. The paid visit must produce something the customer holds afterwards: a written account of the fault, the order of the work, the figure. Charge for a look and give nothing tangible and you will deserve the objection you get. And say the sentence without apology, in the same tone as your price, because a fee mumbled is a fee argued with, exactly as the lead time is.

Three questions, and be honest about the first:

1. How many free visits did you make last year, and how many became work? Multiply the misses by the hours. That figure is what you have been paying to educate your competitors, and it is usually a fortnight or more.
2. Could a cheaper man execute what you write down? If your quote contains the method as well as the price, you have been giving away the part that took you twenty years and charging for the part that took twenty minutes.
3. What is your sentence, and what does it produce? Write the fee, the day, the written thing they receive, and the credit against the work. Say it aloud until it sounds ordinary, since it is ordinary in every trade that values its own knowledge.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which man rode home with nothing?

The one who was paid nothing for the only thing he could do that nobody else could. He gave a day and a half and twenty years to a miller who used them exactly as any sensible man would, and then he called it the cost of doing business, which is what we say about costs we have decided not to look at. His rival asked two pounds, lost a third of the enquiries in an afternoon, and never again wrote a specification for another man to carry out.

The verse:

The knowing took you twenty year,
The doing takes a lad a week.
Give one away and charge the other,
And wonder why the purse is meek.

Until next time. Go and count last year's free visits, then write the sentence that charges for the next one and credits it against the work.

P.S. A hundred of these letters now, and the miller's lesson is as good a place as any to mark it, since it is the argument underneath a great many of the others. What you know is worth more than what you do, and almost every trade has it the other way round on the invoice.

Also in the archive: The Quick Call, The Price of an Hour and Let Them Try It.