The Quick Call

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as always. Your century today, and the subject is the most generous hour in modern trade, which is also the most wasted.

Two advisers take one call,
Both give an hour, both give their all.
One pours out answers, warm and free,
One maps the trouble, then the fee.
By spring, one's booked, one's merely kind.
Which hour sold? And what's behind?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two consultants, one trade, and their advice, all together now, was equally good. Both offered the thing your century calls a quick call, free of charge, no obligation. Both meant it kindly.

The first was magnificent on those calls. Forty-five minutes, sometimes an hour, and by the end of it the caller had the lot: what was wrong, what to change first, which tool to use, what he'd do in their shoes and in what order. He was not being foolish; he was being generous, and he believed, as many good people do, that generosity is a form of marketing.

The calls all ended the same way. This has been so helpful. Let me have a think and come back to you. They almost never came back. Not because they were thieves: because they left the call holding a list of five things they now believed they could do themselves. He had spent an hour proving that the problem was solvable, and then handed over the solution, and the only thing left to buy was labour, which every small business owner on earth believes they can supply from their own evenings.

He did about four of those calls a week. Call it a hundred and fifty unpaid hours a year, which is a month of work, given away to people he described, when tired, as tyre kickers. They were not tyre kickers. They were people he had personally talked out of hiring him.

The second consultant did it almost backwards, and the difference sounds administrative until you watch what it does.

Before any call, three questions on a form: what's happening, what have you tried, what would fixing it be worth. Ten minutes of the caller's time, which most people gladly spend, and the ones who won't were never going to spend money either. So she took six calls a week instead of twenty, and she arrived at each one already half informed.

On the call she mostly asked. Where does it break, how often, what did that cost you last quarter, who's doing it now. And her generosity, which was real, went into the diagnosis rather than the prescription: by minute twenty the caller could see the shape of their own problem more clearly than they ever had, along with a number attached to it. Then one of two endings, both said plainly. Either: this is a piece of work, it runs to about four thousand, shall I send you the outline this afternoon. Or: you don't need me. Do these two things and call me in a year.

She gave away, in truth, more than her rival did. She simply gave away the part that makes a buyer feel the problem, and charged for the part that solves it.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The free hour must make the problem clearer, not the to-do list longer. Every free consultation is a small piece of theatre in which the customer learns something about themselves, and you get to choose what. Teach them that their trouble is bigger, costlier and more specific than they realised, and they will want it dealt with by the person who could see it. Hand them a numbered list of tasks and you have taught them that the whole business is really just a Saturday's work, which is exactly what they wanted to believe when they picked up the phone.

So the sin is not generosity. It is generosity in the wrong shape and at the wrong moment. Advice dispensed before the problem is felt is a gift, and a gift ends the transaction. The same advice arriving after the diagnosis, inside a plan with a price on it, is a service, and a service begins one.

Notice too what the little form did, because it is the same sieve you have met three times in this series now, in a different coat. It cost her nothing, sat there working while she slept, and sorted the people who had a problem worth money from the people who had an idle Tuesday. The price does that at the counter; the rule does it at the door; the questions do it before the call is ever in the diary.

And say the ending out loud. The commonest failure of the generous hour is not the giving, it is the finish: a warm goodbye, no named next step, no number, and both parties left waiting for the other to be brave. Name the work, name the price, name what happens this afternoon, and do it while they can still feel the problem you just described.

Three questions, and go and look at your last five calls before you answer:

1. What happens before the call? If the answer is nothing but a calendar link, you are seeing everybody, and everybody includes a great many people who cannot buy. Three questions, ten minutes, sent in advance: it will halve your calls and double what happens in them.
2. Were you diagnosing or dispensing? Roughly what share of those hours was you talking? Past half, you were performing competence, which is a lovely feeling and sells nothing. The buyer is convinced by what they hear themselves say about their own situation, not by what you know.
3. What was the named next step, and did you say the number? Write down how each of the five calls ended. If more than one ended in "have a think and let me know," the trouble is not the quality of your advice. It is that you keep leaving the last two sentences unsaid.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which hour sold, and what's behind it?

The second, and what is behind it is simply the order of things. Both gave an hour; one spent it proving the problem was small enough to handle alone, the other spent it showing how large it truly was and then offering to carry it. The first man's callers left grateful and equipped. Grateful and equipped, friend, is what a customer looks like on their way to somebody else, or to nobody at all.

The verse:

An hour poured out upon the floor
Wins thanks, a wave, and nothing more.
So name the ill before the cure,
And half your callers will be sure.

Until next time. Go and write your three pre-call questions today, and put the price into the last minute of the very next call you take.

P.S. If it feels miserly to hold something back, consider that the man who gave everything away helped nobody at all. His callers went home with lists they never worked through, and their businesses are exactly as they were. Generosity that changes nothing is only a pleasant way of wasting two people's afternoon.

Also in the archive: The Millwright's Two Pounds, Boots in the Same Ditch and The Free Guide.