The Sweep Who Came Unasked

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town every chimney wanted sweeping twice in the year, and hardly a householder in it had the thing done above once in two.

Two sweeps in the town I have never named, the same rods and the same brushes.
Both climbed clean, charged one and sixpence a flue, and left no mark on the paper.
One waited to be sent for, and came when the smoke began to blow back.
The other asked three shillings in January for the whole of the year.
By Christmas the second had swept a hundred flues more and walked half the distance.
Same trade, same brushes, same one and sixpence. How?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two sweeps, then, in the town I have never named. Both had gone up chimneys as boys and come down them as men who could do it without black on the skirting. Both charged one and sixpence a flue, threepence more to carry the soot away, and both were trusted in houses where a careless man is never asked twice.

The first waited to be sent for, and that is not idleness. He was at the kitchen doors daily, cap in hand. But the sending for was the householder's to do, and she did it when the smoke came back into the room, which in most houses was once in eighteen months. He swept two hundred and sixty flues that year, and crossed the town four times most days, his calls coming from everywhere in no order whatever.

The second did one thing differently, and he did it with a pen in January. He wrote a plain card and took it to every house he had swept. Three shillings for the year. Two sweepings, one in spring when the fires go out and one in September before they are lit. The soot carried off both times, never left in a sack on the step. A word on the state of the flue, and early news if a brick or a pot wanted seeing to. He came in his own order, street by street, down the hill.

Four in ten said yes in the first fortnight. By the third year he had a hundred and eighty houses in the book at three shillings, which is twenty seven pounds standing on paper in January before he had climbed anything at all, and three hundred and sixty flues to sweep for it. The walking halved, a morning's street not being a street crossed eleven times.

Be fair to the first sweep. He was not the lesser workman. His trouble was not in his hands. He had chosen, without ever deciding it, to sell the same small decision to the same householder over and over, and that decision could always wait a month, nothing in the house being wrong today. He did not lose the work to the other sweep. He lost it to next spring, the quietest competitor any of us has.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Work that every customer agrees is necessary and nobody thinks urgent must be sold once, by the year, or it will be sold again and again and mostly not at all. You are not short of agreement. Ask any householder whether a chimney wants sweeping twice a year and she will say it does. Ask her to have it done on the fourteenth of April and she will tell you about the fourteenth of April.

The money goes missing neither to a rival nor to the price. It goes to postponement, almost free for her and ruinously dear for you. A yearly arrangement does not ask her to want sweeping in April. It asks her once, in January, to want a swept chimney for a year, and nobody has ever argued against that.

It also changes what your price is compared with. One and sixpence is weighed against another man's one and fourpence, there being nothing else about a single sweeping to weigh. Three shillings for the year is compared with nothing, since nobody else is selling a year. She weighs it against a twelvemonth of not thinking about the chimney, and against the night she lay awake listening to the flue, both larger than the fourpence. That is the mechanics of putting your profit where the buying repeats, with the whole of the repeat agreed in advance.

Then your own side of the ledger, the half most trades forget to price. A known year is money. You can round your work geographically instead of chasing it, and the walking saved is profit no customer paid for. And the sums arrive on dates you chose rather than dates you waited for, which is the other half of the wait for your money being part of your price.

Now the fair objection. A standing charge can quietly become a charge for nothing, and a householder who pays three shillings for twenty minutes of September will do the arithmetic and feel robbed. The answer is to load the year with what costs you little and is worth much to her: the soot carried off, the look at the pot, the news of the cracked flue in April when mending is cheap and not in December. An arrangement that does nothing visible each time it comes round is an invoice rather than a year, and invoices for nothing are cancelled in the end by everybody.

Two cautions. Do not price the year as the sum of the visits with a little off for loyalty, which teaches her your ordinary figure was soft all along, and she will test it next on everything else. Price the year on what it contains, including what you have added. Second, write its end as plainly as its beginning: what is in, what is not, what the extra work costs, and how either of you stops it, with a month's notice and no ill feeling. An arrangement with no ending written into it does not last longer. It merely ends worse.

Three questions, for the week in front of you:

1. Which part of my work does every customer agree is necessary and nobody thinks urgent? That is the part to sell by the year, and it is usually the checking rather than the doing.
2. What would a year of me cost, and what would be inside it? Write the figure, then three things to include that cost you under an hour each and save her a worry. If you cannot find three, you do not know what she fears.
3. What am I spending at present on being sent for? Count the quoting, and the knocking at doors you have already worked behind.

The Answer to the Riddle

Same trade, same brushes, same one and sixpence, and by Christmas the second man had swept a hundred flues more and walked half the distance. How?

Because the first sold a sweeping, which can always be had next month, and the second sold a year, which could be decided upon only once. The hundred extra flues were not taken from his rival. They came out of the springs when nobody sent for anybody.

The verse:

The soot comes down for one and six, the figure fair and plain,
But she will send for you in March, or April, or again.
So price the twelvemonth, not the hour, and name what it contains,
And let the deciding happen once, and keep what that obtains.

Until next time. Go and write on one side of paper what a year of your work would cost and what would be in it, and put it in front of the six customers who send for you oftenest.

P.S. If you believe your trade has nothing in it that repeats, you have looked at what wants doing and not at what wants looking at. A man who builds ladders sells one in nine years. A man who looks over eleven ladders each spring and writes down which two will not do another picking sells something every spring, and is the obvious person to buy the tenth from.

Also in the archive: The Oil After the Lamp, The Monday He Kept Empty and The Bale He Could Not Buy.