Story
THE CLERK WHO PRINTED PRICES
Aaron Montgomery Ward was born in Chatham, New Jersey, on February 17, 1843. He was apprenticed at fourteen. He cut staves in a barrel factory for 25 cents a day. Then he stacked brick in a kiln for 30 cents a day. His first store job paid $6 a month plus board. By the time he was selling goods to anyone, he had spent years being paid in cents.
He worked his way up from $6 a month to $100 a month plus board. Then he decided to sell to farmers directly out of Chicago and skip the small-town store and its markup. The idea was generally considered to border on lunacy. Before he could open, the Great Chicago Fire destroyed his first inventory.
In August 1872 he tried again with two fellow employees and $1,600 in total capital. He rented a small shipping room on North Clark Street. The catalog was one sheet of paper, 8 by 12 inches, listing 163 products with the price of each and instructions for ordering. There was no argument printed on it. A farmer could hold that sheet next to the shelf at the store in town and settle the question himself. Ward tied the business to the Patrons of Husbandry, the Grange, so the men reading the sheet were reading it inside an organization they already trusted. By 1883 that sheet was a 240-page book carrying 10,000 items.
The Code
Code 7 — Provide Undeniable Value Every Time
Code 7 of 7 · Business Brainwash
Be so good, so consistently, that the value is undeniable and the price is a formality.
Say what you mean, mean what you say. Apologize fast, kill your ego faster. Be afraid NOT to improve.
- Say what you mean. Mean what you say.
- Apologize fast. Kill the ego faster.
- Be afraid not to improve yourself and your systems.
Lessons
Four shifts that make this Code real.
PRINT THE NUMBER
The first catalog was a price list. What it is, what it costs, how to order. No selling copy, because none was needed.
When the value is real, stating it plainly beats describing it well. Persuasion is what you reach for when the number is weak.
MAKE IT CHECKABLE
A farmer could carry that sheet into the store in town and compare it line by line. Ward did not ask to be believed. He handed people the means to verify him.
Value a customer can confirm without you is worth more than value they have to take your word for.
STAND NEXT TO TRUST YOU HAVE NOT EARNED YET
Ward associated the business with the Grange. Farmers who had never heard of him had heard of the Grange, and the railroads centered on Chicago carried the goods the rest of the way.
A stranger with a better offer still loses to a familiar name with a worse one. Put your offer where your buyer already trusts the room.
STOCK BURNS, METHOD DOES NOT
The fire took the goods. It did not take the arithmetic of buying in volume and shipping direct. Ten months later he reopened with $1,600 and two partners in a shipping room.
Know which part of your business is the asset before you lose the other part.
Data
THE FIRST TWENTY-EIGHT YEARS, IN NUMBERS
Ward began with almost no capital and one page. These are the reported figures, and each one can be looked up.
Wikipedia; Chicago Park District
Figures are as reported in the cited encyclopedia entries and the company's own published history. Dollar amounts are nominal and not adjusted for inflation.
Strategy
The play: state the value so plainly the buyer can check it without you.
Take one offer you currently describe and reduce it to what it actually gives and what it actually costs. Strip every adjective out of it. If the offer still stands with the adjectives gone, you have something real. If it collapses, you were selling the description.
That is Code 7, Provide Undeniable Value Every Time. Undeniable does not mean impressive. It means a buyer could disprove it if it were false, and cannot, because it is true. Ward printed 163 prices on one sheet and let a farmer walk it into a store and test him. Build the offer that survives that walk.
Hopkins wrote ads the way Ward wrote a price list. Specific claims, tested against real orders, nothing stated that could not be defended. Read it for the discipline of saying exactly what the thing does.
Rewrite your main offer as a price list this week: what the buyer gets, what it costs, how to order. If you cannot say it that way, the offer is not finished.
References
Sources for this article.
- Aaron Montgomery Ward — Wikipedia
- Montgomery Ward — Wikipedia
- A. Montgomery Ward Park — Chicago Park District
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Code 7 · Provide Undeniable Value Every Time
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