Sales
The Hay in the Field
One sold a better February. One asked what a wet week costs and waited. Letter No. 76 from Ben B. Tilley, on what a customer already stands to lose.
The Letters & Archive
Every letter, newest first. One lesson at a time, told as a story, hidden in a riddle, sealed with a verse.
Marketing
There Is No Crowd
Four hundred people, four hundred kitchens, and one woman holding a telephone. Letter No. 75 from Ben B. Tilley, on writing to one person and sending it to everybody.
Marketing
One of Their Own
He wrote about their business correctly and about their week not at all. Letter No. 74 from Ben B. Tilley, on the difference between learning a trade and joining one.
Pricing
Three Names on the Wall
Same wheat, same stones, three names painted on the wall. Letter No. 73 from Ben B. Tilley, on why an unnamed thing can only ever be compared on price.
Marketing
Read It Aloud at Home
He had stopped showing his own work to his wife, and could not have said when it started. Letter No. 72 from Ben B. Tilley, on the four-second test and what it saves you.
Pricing
Three Tables
Same three tables, same prices, same customer, and three pounds a sale in the difference. Letter No. 71 from Ben B. Tilley, on the order in which you show things.
Marketing
Ninety Facts
She did not write the best line in her own material. She found it. Letter No. 70 from Ben B. Tilley, on going to look rather than sitting down to think.
Marketing
The Cart in the Frost
One offered terms, one sent his cart and left before he could be thanked. Letter No. 69 from Ben B. Tilley, on giving first, and why the absence of the ask is the whole mechanism.
Sales
Let Them Try It
She was not weighing his argument against his rival's. Letter No. 68 from Ben B. Tilley, on the doubt that no sentence can reach, and the small real piece of work that ends it.
Marketing
Four Sides at the Horse Fair
Nobody read all four sides, and that was never the point. Letter No. 67 from Ben B. Tilley, on telling the whole story, and why the fault you admit sells the rest.
Marketing
Everyone Does It, Nobody Says It
Why would we write that down, everyone does it. Letter No. 66 from Ben B. Tilley, on the ordinary care nobody has ever described, and why the first to say it owns it.
Sales
The Buttons and the Book
He said he would think it over, meant it, and did not. Letter No. 65 from Ben B. Tilley, on the smallest true thing a customer can do before they leave the room.
Pricing
The Fourth Lever
He took a hundred off, then fifty more, and she still did not buy. Letter No. 64 from Ben B. Tilley, on the four things a buyer is weighing, none of which is your price.
Marketing
The Well on the Ridge
Two diggers, the same spade, and one of them working where nobody was thirsty. Letter No. 63 from Ben B. Tilley, on why choosing where to dig beats every other advantage.
Marketing
Everyone Liked It
Two rivals sent notes saying they wished they had thought of it. He got four enquiries. Letter No. 62 from Ben B. Tilley, on the difference between being admired and being paid.
Sales
April and October
Nobody has ever thought about a chimney. Letter No. 61 from Ben B. Tilley, on selling the arrangement rather than the occasion, and starting the year already half full.
Marketing
The Chair You Cannot Fill
He read the monthly reports the way a man reads a document in a language he does not speak. Letter No. 60 from Ben B. Tilley, on what cannot be handed over at any fee.
Marketing
The Half Hour in October
Eleven people came, two of them his own relations. Letter No. 59 from Ben B. Tilley, on becoming the answer to a question that gets asked when you are not in the room.
Pricing
The Crowded End
A fifth of the customers had never mentioned the price at all. Letter No. 58 from Ben B. Tilley, on the end of the market you wandered into without deciding anything.
Sales
The Demonstration
Forty people held for twenty minutes, thanked warmly, and released into a field with a hog roast. Letter No. 57 from Ben B. Tilley, on the sentence that turns wanting into buying.
Marketing
What You May Spend
One firm bids forty pounds for a customer worth a thousand, and loses every week. Letter No. 56 from Ben B. Tilley, on the number that sets the ceiling on everything you can do.
Sales
The Cooper and the Single Gate
Nine barrels in ten through one gate, then six weeks' notice after forty years. Letter No. 55 from Ben B. Tilley, on why the most dangerous number in business is one.
Marketing
The Nine Headlines
Same policy, same price, same postage, and one line changed nine times. Letter No. 54 from Ben B. Tilley, on writing to somebody instead of to a category.
Marketing
The Sign Nobody Read
Five shopfronts, five signs, and not one of them read by anybody. Letter No. 53 from Ben B. Tilley, on studying your rivals to find the thing none of them will say.
Clip this coupon
Get the next letter before anyone else
Fill in your address below and the next Tilley letter comes straight to you, free of charge, no salesman will call.
The postbox is not yet connected. One letter at a time when it is, no more.