The Single Errand

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, two nurserymen sent out the same number of sheets in the same February, and one of them asked for a great deal less.

Two nurserymen, the same roses and the same dark soil in the pots,
The same February, the same forty households, the same boy with a handcart.
One sheet offered trees, roses, seed potatoes, glass and a day at the nursery.
One sheet offered a single rose, planted, at a price, before the end of March.
The generous sheet was admired in five kitchens and answered in none of them.
Which man asked for less, and why did the smaller ask bring back the more?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two nurserymen in the town I've never named, both good growers, both honest about what would take in a cold garden and what would not. They worked the same forty-odd households along the same three lanes, used the same printer, and each sent a sheet out in February, when a garden is bare and a householder can still be made to think of June.

The first man had the better nursery and the better sheet. Two columns, properly set, his name across the top in a good face. It offered apple and pear on his own stocks, six sorts of rose, seed potatoes by the peck, glass at a fair figure, and an invitation to walk round the beds. At the foot it said orders might be left at the nursery, or sent by post, or given to the boy, or mentioned at his stall on market day. Every word was true, and he was proud of it, and so he might have been.

The second man's sheet had one thing on it. A rose of one named sort, the old dark red that does well on a north wall, planted by him in the householder's own garden, three and sixpence, and he would be doing that work in the last fortnight of March and at no other time. At the bottom was a slip with a line for the house and a line for the day, and the boy would call for the slips on Friday.

The first man's sheet was read more carefully and kept longer. It went behind the clock on the dresser, where such things go, and two of the forty households ordered from it that year, which is not nothing. The second man's sheet was read once and acted on. Eleven slips came back on the Friday, and he spent the last fortnight of March on his knees in eleven gardens. In nine of them he was asked, while the soil went back round the roots, whether he did anything about apple trees.

Be fair to the first man. He was neither lazy nor vague. He thought it wasteful to spend a whole sheet on one rose at three and six when the same money would describe the whole nursery. The arithmetic of the paper was on his side. Only the arithmetic of the reader was against him.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Every extra request you put in a message reduces the chance that any one of them is carried out. The requests do not add. They divide. A reader asked to do one thing either does it or does not, and a fair number do it. A reader asked to do five must first decide which, and that sorting is a second piece of work, unpaid, which he will put off until a clearer evening that never comes.

It helps to remember what you are interrupting. Nobody sits down to read your sheet. They read it standing up, coat half on, between two errands of their own, and the question in their head is what they are now expected to do, and whether it can be done before the kettle boils. One rose, a price, a fortnight and a slip can be done in that time. A range and four ways to order cannot be done at all, there being nothing there to do, only things that might be done sometime. It is the machinery I have written about as the size of the step you put in the way.

There is a second effect, quieter and worse. A sheet of many offers is written from behind the counter, not in front of it. It lists what you have, in your own order, and leaves the reader to work out which part is any use to him. A single ask makes you do that sorting yourself, which is most of what a marketing decision is. The man who wrote about one rose settled the sort, the wall, the price and the fortnight. His rival settled nothing, so the settling was left in forty kitchens, where it did not happen.

You may object that customers cannot buy what they have never been told about, which is true, and is the argument of my letter on the customers who do not know half of what you sell. The answer is sequence, not silence. Tell them everything over the year, one thing at a time, and ask once in each.

Two cautions. First, one ask is not the same as few words. The second man could have written four sides on that rose, its parentage, its scent, the wall it wants, and been the better for it. Length is not the enemy. Forks in the road are. Second, the ask must suit where the reader stands. If a person has never heard of you, the one thing you ask may be very small, a name and an address, or a date to be looked at. Choosing the largest possible ask and calling it focus is appetite with a tidy sheet round it.

Three questions, and the first is the whole of the work:

1. What is the one thing you want done, and could it be done before the kettle boils? Write it as an instruction, with a verb and a date in it. If you cannot put it in a sentence, your reader cannot obey it in one movement.
2. How many requests does your last message contain? Count them honestly. Reply to this, ring the office, call in and see us, follow the page, read the guide. Most trades find four where they thought there was one.
3. If they do the one thing, what happens next? An ask that leads nowhere is worse than none, since it spends the only willingness you were given. Know the second step before you print the first.

The Answer to the Riddle

Which man asked for less, and why did the smaller ask bring back the more?

The second, who asked for one rose in one fortnight and nothing else. He asked for less because he had already done the deciding, and what reached the reader was not a nursery to consider but an errand to run. The first asked for more and so asked for nothing, since a sheet offering five roads offers no road, and a householder who cannot tell what he is meant to do does what he was doing before you arrived. And note where the apple trees were sold. Not on the sheet that listed them. In nine gardens, in March, by a man on his knees who had come about a rose.

The verse:

One sheet held all his garden, the trees, the glass, the roses,
One sheet held a single rose, its price, its fortnight, and a slip.
The first was much admired and put behind the parlour clock,
The second went back down the lane with eleven names to plant.

Until next time. Go and read the last message you sent your customers, count the things it asks them to do, and strike out all but one.

P.S. The same rule holds across a counter, where it costs you faster. Put two questions to a customer in one breath and you get an answer to the easier one, and never learn what you wanted to know, since he has answered you and considers the matter closed. One question, then silence, then the next.

Also in the archive: The Nine Headlines, The Six Channels and Read It Aloud at Home.