Three Names on the Wall

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, at the mill by the weir, where the same wheat is ground by two men and sold in very different sacks.

Two millers grind one field of wheat,
Same stones, same grain, same measured seat.
One sells it plain: it's flour, that's all.
One gives three names upon the wall.
Same sacks go out. One's asked for twice.
What did the naming do to price?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two millers in the town I've never named, and their flour, in the old chorus, was equally good. Same wheat, near enough, same stones, same careful sieving.

The first sold flour. If you asked him what he had, he would say flour, and if you pressed him he would explain that he had some finer and some coarser, and that the fine was dearer, and he could do you a middling if you preferred.

All of which was accurate and none of which a customer could carry home in her head. So she asked the only question available to a person holding no distinctions: how much a sack. And having asked that, she was comparing him with the mill at Netherby on the single dimension he had left her, which was price, and she went where it was a penny cheaper.

His finer flour, which really was finer and cost him more to make, sold rarely, since it existed in his customers' minds only as the dearer version of the same thing.

The second miller sold three flours and each one had a name painted on the wall behind him.

The Household, plain and cheap, for everyday baking. The Fine White, sieved twice, for cakes and anything for company. And the Baker's Strong, which he sold only in ten-stone sacks to people who baked for a living, and which he would not sell in small quantities at all.

Nothing in the mill had changed. Same wheat, same stones, same three grades that had always existed and had always been available to anybody who asked in the right way.

What the naming did was give the customer something to want, and then something to say. A woman could walk in and ask for a stone of the Fine White, which is a thing she cannot do until it has a name; and she could tell her sister to get the Fine White, which is a recommendation with an instruction inside it. Compare that with telling her sister that the miller by the weir does a nice fine flour, which is a compliment with nothing actionable in it whatever.

It also settled his prices. Two flours with two names are two things, and two things may fairly cost different amounts, whereas the dearer version of one thing invites a customer to wonder why she is paying extra for flour. The Fine White sold three times what the unnamed fine flour had sold, at a better margin, and nobody once queried it.

And the Baker's Strong did something he had not expected. By naming a flour for people who bake for a living, and refusing to sell it in small sacks, he told every professional baker in the district that he understood their trade, and they came to him, and they buy a great deal more flour than households do.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

An unnamed thing cannot be asked for, recommended, or compared on anything but price. That is three separate injuries from one omission. A customer cannot request what has no name, so she requests the category and you are one supplier of a commodity. She cannot pass it on, so your best work travels as a vague compliment rather than an instruction. And with no distinctions offered, the only remaining question is what it costs, which is the argument you least want to be having, as the crowded end letter set out at some length.

So the work here is not invention but division and labelling. Almost every trade already does three or four distinguishable things and sells them as one blurred offering described in a sentence beginning with the word "we". Separate them, name them plainly, price them separately, and say who each is for. The naming does not make them different; it makes the difference visible, which is the whole of it.

Two rules for the names themselves. Plain and descriptive beats clever every time: a name that must be explained is worse than no name, and a name that makes a customer feel foolish for not knowing it is worse still. And name it for the customer or the use rather than for your process, since Baker's Strong tells a baker it is his, while a name drawn from your own methods tells him only that you are pleased with yourself.

Then the third grade, which is the one most trades never build. Something specific and slightly exclusive for the customers who matter most: the version they cannot get elsewhere, sold on your terms, that signals you understand their situation particularly. The refusal to sell it in small sacks was not haughtiness. It was the clearest possible statement of who it was for.

Three questions, and answer them with a pen and your actual list of work:

1. How many distinct things do you actually sell? Write them out as a customer would experience them, not as your invoices describe them. Most trades find three or four hiding inside what they have been calling one service.
2. Can a customer ask for it by name? Say the sentence aloud as she would have to say it. If it comes out as a paragraph of explanation, she will not attempt it, and she certainly will not repeat it to her sister.
3. What is your Baker's Strong? The thing built for your best sort of customer, named for them, sold on your terms. If you have not got one, you have been selling to households and hoping bakers wander in.

The Answer to the Riddle

What did the naming do to price?

It removed the question. When there is one flour, the only thing to discuss is what a sack costs, and every customer in the district becomes an assessor of pennies. When there are three, the discussion is which one she wants, and a woman choosing between the Household and the Fine White is not comparing your mill with Netherby at all. The wheat was identical. The stones were identical. The only difference was that one miller had given his customers words, and words are what a customer thinks with.

The verse:

A nameless good is bought on cost,
And all its finer parts are lost.
Paint up three names upon the wall,
And they'll not ask the price at all.

Until next time. Go and separate what you sell into three named things this week, and write plainly who each one is for.

P.S. Once a name is up, leave it alone. A thing renamed every eighteen months never accumulates anything, and the whole value of a name is that it collects the good opinion of everybody who has used it. The miller's grandson was still selling Fine White, and that was the point of it.

Also in the archive: The Needle Man's Round, Three Tables and The Second Rung.