The Woman Who Works the End

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as ever. Your century today, and the buyer in it will never touch the thing you are selling.

Two firms both fit a system out,
Same wires, same boxes, same fine route.
One sells the boss upon the spend,
One asks the girl who works the end.
Same order signed, same month, same men.
Whose system's still in use by then?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two firms in the same trade, and the work, all together now, was equally good. Each sold the same sort of arrangement to the same sort of small company, and each was bought by the man who signs things.

The first sold it to him and to nobody else, which is the ordinary way and looks like efficiency. He made the case in the language the owner cares about, which is money and hours, and he was right about both, and the order was signed in a fortnight.

What he never did was speak to the woman who would actually use the thing every day.

She found out about it when it arrived. Nobody had asked what she did now, so nothing had been arranged around it; nobody had asked what the awkward part of her week was, so the awkward part remained; and the whole business appeared in her working life as a decision taken above her head by a man who had not been in the room where the work happens.

She used it for six weeks, in the way people use a thing they did not choose, and then she quietly went back to the old method for the difficult jobs, and then for most jobs. Within the year it was a thing they had bought and did not really use.

The owner did not blame the supplier exactly. He simply concluded that these arrangements are oversold, and when he was asked for a reference he was vague, and there was never a second order.

The second firm sold it to the same sort of owner, in the same language of money and hours, and then asked for twenty minutes with whoever would be using it.

She talked for the full twenty. He learned that the difficult part of her week was not the part the owner had described, and that one small thing he had assumed would help would in fact make her Thursdays worse. He changed the arrangement to suit her, which cost him nothing, and told her he had.

On the day it went in, she knew what it was, why it was there, and what would be different about her Thursdays. She had been asked. She used it properly, because it fitted the way the work was actually done, and because somebody had troubled to find out how that was.

A year later they bought the larger version, and it was she who suggested it.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

The person who signs and the person who lives with it are rarely the same, and you need them both, for different reasons. The signer decides whether you get the order. The user decides whether the order was a good one, which governs the renewal, the second purchase, the reference and everything the farrier counted over forty shoes. Win the first and neglect the second and you will have a signed contract and a dead account.

So ask for the twenty minutes, before the sale rather than after it, and ask for it plainly: I would like to speak to whoever will be using this, because I would rather fit it to the way they work than have them fit to it. No owner refuses that, and the asking itself does you credit.

Then ask the three questions that actually matter, none of which the owner can answer for her. What do you do now, in the order you do it? What is the awkward part of your week? And what would you keep exactly as it is? That last one saves more arrangements than the other two combined, since most failures come from cheerfully improving something that was working.

And tell her what you changed because of what she said. That sentence converts her from a person who had a thing imposed on her into a person whose account of her own Thursdays altered a decision, and the difference in how the thing is then used is not small.

Two cautions. Do not use the user to go around the signer, since an owner who discovers you canvassing his staff for allies will end the relationship and be right to. And do not promise her what you cannot deliver in the effort to be liked, because she will be the first to discover it, and she is the one who talks to everybody else every day.

Three questions, and think of your last sale that went quiet:

1. Who actually uses what you sold? Name them. If you cannot, you sold to a company rather than to people, and the people are the ones who decide whether it survives the first difficult Thursday.
2. Did you ever ask them anything? Before the order, not after. If the answer is no, whatever you delivered was fitted to the owner's description of the work, which is nearly always tidier than the work.
3. What did you change because of what they said? If the answer is nothing, either you asked badly or you were not listening, since twenty minutes with the person doing the job has never yet failed to produce at least one alteration.

The Answer to the Riddle

Whose system is still in use?

The one that was fitted to a woman's Thursdays. Both firms sold the same arrangement to the same sort of owner with the same honest arithmetic, and one of them treated the signature as the finish and the other treated it as the halfway point. She went back to the old method within six weeks, not out of awkwardness but because nothing about the new one had been built for what she actually does, and nobody had thought to find out. The order was won in both houses. Only one of them was kept.

The verse:

He signs the paper, that is true,
But she will live with what you do.
Take twenty minutes, ask her how,
And build it round her Thursday now.

Until next time. Go and ask your next buyer for twenty minutes with whoever will be using the thing, and change one detail because of what they tell you.

P.S. In a household the same two people are usually the same person wearing different hats, and the rule still holds. The one who agrees the price in the front room is in a mood of decision, and the one who lives with the result is in a mood of Tuesday morning, and it is worth asking the second sort of question of them before you leave: when this is in, what will your mornings look like?

Also in the archive: The Man Who Was Not There, The Piano in the Parlour and How Many Pints Were Drawn.