Three Tables

Dear friend,

The riddle first, as the tradition demands. Back in the old town, in the cabinet-maker's showroom, where three tables stand and only the order of them is in question.

Two makers show three tables each,
Same three, same wood, same price for each.
One starts below and climbs the shelf,
One starts above and holds himself.
Same buyer walks in either door.
Why did one spend a good deal more?

Hold your answer. Story time.

The Story

Two cabinet-makers in the town I've never named, and their tables, in the old chorus, were equally well made. Each had three to show: a plain one at four pounds, a better one at seven, and a fine one in figured oak at fourteen.

The first showed them from the bottom, which is what a considerate man does when he does not wish to seem grasping. Here is the plain one at four pounds. Then, if the customer seemed interested, here is the seven. And then, tentatively, there is also this one at fourteen, though of course that is a good deal more.

Watch what that order does to a mind. Having met four pounds first, the customer's sense of what a table costs is now four pounds. Seven has become nearly double, and fourteen has become an extravagance, and every step upwards is felt as money being taken from him. He nearly always bought the four pound table, occasionally the seven, and left slightly relieved.

The second maker showed the fourteen pound table first, and not apologetically. He showed the figured oak, explained why it cost what it cost, let the man run his hand along it, and did not rush to relieve him of it.

Then he showed the seven, which is the same table in plainer wood, and then the four.

Now four pounds is not the price of a table. It is the cheapest of three, and seven is the sensible middle, and the customer who buys the seven feels he has been prudent rather than extravagant, having declined the fourteen with his own free will. That man buys at seven and leaves pleased with himself, which is a different condition entirely from leaving relieved.

Same three tables. Same prices. Same customer. The only thing that differed was which one he saw first, and it was worth about three pounds a sale across a whole trading life.

And there is a second effect, larger and slower. The maker who leads with the fourteen sells one now and then, which the first maker almost never does, since he has taught every customer before they reach it that fourteen is a great deal of money.

Mark the condition that keeps this honest, because it is the whole of it. The fourteen pound table was real. It stood in the showroom, it was worth every shilling, and he would have been delighted to sell it. He was not showing a thing he never expected anybody to buy in order to make the seven look small, which is the trick a certain sort of dealer plays and which a town works out within two seasons.

The Lesson, Since You've Earned It

Nobody knows what anything ought to cost. They only know what it costs compared with the last figure they heard. A price arriving alone in an empty mind has nothing to be measured against, so the customer measures it against whatever you showed them first, and if you showed them nothing first, they measure it against a number they invented on the way in. Which means the order in which you present things is not a matter of manners. It is the frame the whole decision happens inside, and you are choosing it whether you attend to it or not.

So the useful habit is simple and slightly uncomfortable: lead with your best and most expensive, explained properly rather than mumbled, and let the customer come down if they wish. The instinct to start low comes from kindness and from a fear of seeming grasping, and it does two harms at once. It makes everything above the first figure feel like a loss, and it quietly ensures your best work is almost never bought.

The same holds for a single price with nothing beside it. A figure standing alone is compared to nothing, or worse, to what a rival charges for a lesser thing. Give it something honest to stand next to: what the situation is costing them now, what the larger version would run to, what your rival's cheaper arrangement does not include. That is the arithmetic the too expensive letter asked you to do, arriving one step earlier, before the objection has formed.

And the boundary, which matters more than the technique. The expensive option must be real, deliverable, and something you would be glad to sell tomorrow. A decoy that exists only to make the middle look reasonable is a lie told with furniture, and it works precisely twice, after which a small town understands exactly what you are doing. The honest version and the shabby version look identical on the day and differ entirely over a decade.

Three questions, and go and look at how you actually present things:

1. What do your customers see first? Your page, your quote, your conversation. If the first figure is your cheapest, everything after it is climbing uphill, and you have set that hill yourself out of politeness.
2. Do you have a real top option? Not a decoy: a genuine best version you would be pleased to deliver. Most trades have one lurking and never show it, which is why they never sell it and why their middle looks expensive.
3. What does your price stand beside? If it stands alone, find the honest comparison: the cost of the problem continuing, the larger version, what the cheaper option excludes. Then put it there, in writing, before anybody has to ask.

The Answer to the Riddle

Why did one spend more?

Because he had been shown the fourteen pound table first, so seven pounds arrived as restraint rather than as extravagance. Nothing about the tables changed, and nothing was hidden from him, and he made his own choice freely in both shops. The first maker, out of consideration, had spent the first two minutes teaching his customer that a table costs four pounds, and then spent the rest of the visit arguing against his own lesson.

The verse:

A price alone means nowt at all,
Till set against another's call.
So show the best, and show it whole,
And let them choose the lesser role.

Until next time. Go and change the order of what you show, so the first thing a customer meets is your best work and not your cheapest.

P.S. The same applies to the bad news you must sometimes deliver: the overrun, the extra, the thing that will take longer. Give the full picture first and the particular figure afterwards, rather than the reverse. Not to soften anybody up, but because a number heard in the dark is always larger than the same number heard in daylight.

Also in the archive: What Your Price Says Before You Do, Three Names on the Wall and And What Comes Back For It.