The Third Paper

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, where two carpenters priced the same cart shed for the same farmer in the same week of March, and the man who went last took the work.

Two carpenters in one town, the same seasoned oak, the same day rate, the same steady hand on a saw.
Both were asked in one week to price a cart shed for a farmer who meant to have three figures before choosing.
One measured on the Tuesday and had his estimate on the kitchen table by Thursday morning.
One measured on the Tuesday, asked when the thing would be decided, and brought his figure on the Saturday night.
The papers were within a pound of each other, and that year the second man took four such jobs in five.
Why should the same price, in the same hand, be worth more for arriving last?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two carpenters, in a town I have never named. Both bought their oak off the same yard by the river, both had shavings to the ankle and the smell of cut wood about them, and neither was the cheaper.

In the first week of March a farmer on the ridge wanted a cart shed. Four bays, open to the south, pantiles over, posts standing on padstones so the feet would not rot. He told each man who came that he would have three prices before he decided anything, which is what a careful man says and means.

The first carpenter came on the Tuesday, measured the ground, asked sensible questions about the width of the wagon, and had a clean estimate in the farmer's hands by Thursday morning. Forty-one pounds, plainly written, no padding in it. Most trades would call that good practice.

But consider what the paper did at the kitchen table. The farmer had never had a cart shed built, and he read it the way you read a document in a trade you do not know, which is to say for the number first and then, slowly, for the education. It told him that posts may be oak or larch, that a pantile roof wants a certain pitch, and it raised the question of what the floor was to be. By Thursday evening he knew six things about cart sheds he had not known on Tuesday, every one of them learned from the only man who was not there to be asked about them. The third carpenter came on the Friday and spoke well for larch, and the farmer, who now had an opinion, said he would rather have oak.

The second carpenter had done one dull thing differently. Before leaving on the Tuesday he asked how many others were pricing it, and when the farmer meant to settle on a man. Three, and the Sunday. So he said he would bring his figure on the Saturday evening, and asked for a quarter of an hour at the table when he did.

On the Saturday the other two papers were out, because by then the farmer was living with them. The carpenter asked what had come up since he was last there, and out it came: the oak, the floor, the pitch, and one real worry, which was that the north end of that ground lies wet after a hard winter. Neither of the other papers mentioned it, because on the Tuesday he had not yet worked out that it mattered.

The carpenter walked up to the wet corner with him in the last of the light, came back, and added two padstones higher than the rest and a course of stone under the sill. Forty-one pounds and twelve shillings. On the Sunday the farmer chose him, and would have told you he chose the man who understood the ground.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

A customer taking three prices cannot properly judge the first one, because he has not yet learned what there is to judge, so the first paper he reads teaches him the questions and the last paper he reads is the one that answers them. Be the first to reply and the last to price.

No price is ever read on its own. A figure arriving into an empty head has nothing to be compared with but the customer's hopes, which are always low, and his fears, which are always vague. He cannot tell whether forty-one pounds is generous or steep, so he files it as the thing the others will be measured against. That is all going first buys you: you become the ruler somebody else gets to hold.

Larger than that is the education. The customer learns what matters from the estimates themselves, and he learns it in order. Every paper that crosses his table raises a question the next man will be asked about, and the last man is the only one asked all of them while he is still in the room. He alone can see, from the way the questions are put, what his rivals left out. The second carpenter did not divine the wet corner. He arrived at the hour when the farmer had worked out what was worrying him, which is also the hour a man is tired of the subject and looking for a reason to stop looking.

You will hear the opposite argued, and it deserves a hearing: that the first number sets the anchor and the rest is judged against it. There is something in that, but notice who it serves. It serves the man who wants his figure to be the one the others must argue with, which generally means the man who is cheapest and knows it. If you are not the cheapest, anchoring your own work is a gift to the men behind you.

Two cautions. First, last is not slow. What you delay is the paper, never the person. Reply the hour the enquiry lands and measure early, since a customer who has to chase you has settled something about you before he reads a figure, and the speed of your first answer is often what puts you on the list at all. The second carpenter was at that farm before his rivals. Only his price came late. Second, you cannot always be last. Small urgent work gets no three estimates, and if the man says he decides on Thursday you are there on Wednesday. Ask for the position rather than manoeuvre for it, since the advantage rests on his believing you the straightest of the three.

Three questions, and the first costs you nothing but the nerve to ask it:

1. Where are you in the order? How many others are pricing this, and when do you mean to decide. Asked at the end of the visit, and almost nobody asks it. The answer tells you what day your paper should land, and whether this is a real job at all.
2. What have the others taught him? Come back with your figure and open with what has come up since you were there. You are not fishing for rivals' prices. You are asking what he has learned to care about, which is the specification nobody wrote down.
3. What if you are first anyway? Ask for a second hearing. A line at the foot of the estimate does it: when you have the others, I should be glad of ten minutes before you choose. That turns first into last.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why should the same price, in the same hand, be worth more for arriving last?

Because the first estimate was read by a man who did not yet know what he was reading, and it taught him. By Saturday he knew what a padstone was, what a floor would cost and that his north end lay wet, and each lesson had been paid for by somebody else. The first carpenter lost neither on price nor on skill. He gave the farmer his education and left before the examination.

The verse:

The first good paper on the table teaches as it lands,
And schools the man who reads it in the questions he should ask.
Be quick to come, be slow to price, be standing in the room
The evening that he knows at last what he is buying for.

Until next time. Go and ask the next person who wants a price two things before you leave: who else is pricing it, and what day they intend to decide.

P.S. There is a quieter use for the question about the decision date, and it has nothing to do with your rivals. Most work that is lost is not lost to another trade. It is lost to a man who never got round to it, and the only warning is a vague answer about when he will choose. The farmer who says Sunday will do something on Sunday. The one who will have a think and come back to you in the new year has told you, without meaning to, that your estimate is going into a drawer. Write it, but write the short one.

Also in the archive: The Questions He Gave Away, Away in April and Eight to Twelve Hundred.