Top Tips: Salary Negotiation Highlight Reel [Part 2]

Hello, my friends, and welcome to another exciting episode of Negotiate Anything. This show is produced by the American Negotiation Institute, and with over 5 million downloads and listeners in over 180 countries, listeners just like you have made this the number one negotiation podcast in the world. Hi, my name is Kwame Christian, and I am the founder and CEO of the American Negotiation Institute. Here at AI we believe that the best things in life are on the other side of difficult conversations. And we are passionate about providing you with the best content that will help you to make your difficult conversations easier, both at work and at home. Lastly, I want to remind you that we offer consulting and conduct trainings both virtually and in person all around the world. Our focus is in three main areas. First, negotiation and conflict resolution. Second, leadership. And lastly, diversity, equity, and inclusion. Check the link in the description below to learn more about how we could work with you and your team. And now, without further ado, let's jump into the interview.

Absolutely. And listeners, I don't want what Robin just said to go over your head. I just want to reiterate. Robin was essentially able to double her salary because she negotiated. Okay? So be mindful of that. There's value out there to be had. And if you are adding appropriate levels of value to your company and you have the skills, then you should be compensated for that. So you have to know your value, which I know is. Is one of the other things that we're going to talk about coming up in a little bit, too.

Absolutely.

Yeah. And so now let's focus on talking about strategies with recruiters. There are a lot of mistakes that people make when we're actually working with a recruiter because the dynamic is a little bit different. Can you tell us about what strategies we need to consider when working with a recruiter versus negotiating directly with the company ourselves?

Absolutely. So recruiters, for most companies, recruiters, once a job opens, they work with an hrvp, a human resources business partner, or with the HRVP to determine the compensation benchmarks for the role by geographic bands. And then they move forward with their process. And for every person who they speak with, they'll say, okay, this person comes in lower than the compensation band by like $30,000. So they're probably actually not going to bring in the value that we need. Or they'll say, okay, well, this person is over the compensation band by more than $20,000. And once you're at more than a $20,000 difference, you're looking at a pretty big lifestyle change. And so we are not going to be able to add the value that they need for their lives. So in both of those cases, they will pretty much, usually, especially in a market like today, where there's so much talent on the market that's available, they will oftentimes just reject your application based on that alone. And so what you want to do when you're first starting your conversation with the recruiter is steer it. Recruiters are trained to drive the conversation, but the great part is you can drive the conversation. You can take that power and harness it and make it your own and drive the conversation instead and steer it away from money and towards the value that you'll add to that company. And that's what you want every conversation to be about, about the value that you're going to add to the company. Because then when you get to the end stages and you start talking about dollar amounts, what you're doing is you are quantifying the intangible. And that value is often your intangible if you're in a role other than sales where you can't tie it directly back to revenue generation.

Yeah, this is really interesting. And so, Rob, and correct me if I'm wrong, it sounds like one of the main things we want to do when we're in these types of situations is stay in the game, really stay in the game. Because a lot of times we make some strategic or tactical errors early on in the interaction, and then we don't get a shot because of the mistake we made early.

It's true. It's very true. And so when I'm doing my research on companies, what I do is, yeah, I go through, of course, I read their website. You want to know their product line going into it, you want to know their competitors going into it, you want to know, you want to imagine what challenges they're facing, and that way you can figure out how you can help them overcome those challenges. And that is how you're going to position your value to set yourself up for success later on in the process. And even if you're not 100% successful, spot on about those challenges. Once you say, well, I imagine that one of your challenges is since you're going from a perpetual payment model to a monthly subscription model, you're looking for different types of salespeople, but you run with a really lean recruitment team. So you're probably having to spend $30,000 for each hire through an agency. I can come in and bring this value and bring a huge network in for you, and you're going to save so much money the company is going to save so much money that it's going to cost you way less to hire me than it is going to cost you to recruit, hire, and retain someone else. That's always what you're trying to prove. I am either going to save the company more money or make the company more money than it would cost to recruit, hire, and retain somebody else for the role.

This is incredible. I think this is really, really helpful. And again, what you're bringing now is more of a business savvy st of negotiation. Because a lot of times we just say, all right, I need a job because I need money to eat. They have a job opening and my skills meet it. Hey, I can do the job. That's why you should hire me. But what you're doing is you're taking it to another level. You're saying, okay, not only, of course, can I do the job, but I can anticipate the challenges that you have coming up. I can solve those problems at a higher level and I can be mindful about how as a, as an employee of your company. My role is profit generation. For you, it's not just making sure I can do the work. It's also finding ways to make you more money through my work.

Absolutely. And I think one thing that some people do that is a mistake is they believe that their passion is value. And in business, passion does not equal value. Results equal value. The only exception to this is if you're a recent graduate. So that's something that's really important to take into consideration. Not that you can't bring up that you're passionate about it, but you can't quantify passion in that way. Does that make sense?

Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense. And a lot of people come with that level of excitement. But it's like, hey, I can't take excitement to the bank. I need you to be very results oriented. Makes a lot of sense.

Yeah.

And of course, you want to have passion in your conversations. You want to show that you care. Absolutely. But passion does not equal value, and passion does not equal revenue. And for the most part, most people are interviewing with for profit companies.

Absolutely. It makes so much sense. And I think the last one that we wanted to talk about was failing to know your value. And I think again, that ties in really nicely with what we were just discussing results and being very clear on what benefit to the company it is for it to have you when it comes to the results you can deliver. So when it comes to knowing your value, what are the mistakes people often make when it comes to understanding themselves.

So I think, especially if they're in a role where they're currently undervalued, it can be very difficult to know your value because you're saying, well, other people don't see me as this valuable currently, so why would I expect somebody in my future to see me as X dollar amount of value as well? And before I go into how you can overcome that, I want to share with the audience an anecdote that I alluded to a little bit earlier about not being able to understand your true value. So when you're going through and you're doing your research on all of these companies, you're probably doing it along the same time frame that you're writing your resume. When you're writing your resume, don't go through and make it a list of bullet points that read like a job description. What you want to do is you want to describe the challenges that you faced, the actions that you took to overcome those challenges, and the results of those actions. That's how you're going to describe and market your true value. Because what it comes down to is 80% of what you do is the exact same as what other people in your field do. The other 20% is why people hire you. That's what your true value is. It's the reason that you were offered your first job before you had any anything to put on your resume. It's because you approach a problem differently than anybody else does, because we are all unique individuals. And so when you know that about yourself now, you don't have to figure out, oh, do I have to embellish here? Do I need to leave things out there? No, these are facts. These are challenges, actions, results, and you know them. And now you've got your resume that you can leverage as a tool to create conversations during the interview process that you're both interested in talking about and then set yourself up for successful negotiations at the end. And so I was. I've been in talent acquisition for almost a decade now, but I'd been in it for about four years and I was at like the $56,000 mark. And I knew I was a little undervalued and I knew that part of it was because of my industry and I needed to make a big change in my life because I wanted to pay a huge chunk of debt. So I did a lot of research to figure out what the highest paying industry for recruiters was. And by and far it was technology. So that became my target. I'm going to Make a change from my current industry to the tech industry, but I'm going to keep my same role. And I did a lot of research on the tech industry, and I said, okay, I think given my years of experience, I should target $80,000 as the top of my compensation range. But then as I was going through these conversations with the companies that I was interviewing with and talking about the value that I would add to them, I realized that my value is probably actually more than $80,000, and I might have undervalued myself a little bit. Even though $80,000 was a lot more than the 56 I'd been making before, in the end, the company ended up offering me $90,000, which was above my target compensation range. And here's the thing. If your offer meets your target comp range or exceeds your target comp range, that does not mean that you should not negotiate. You should always negotiate. No company is going to rescind your offer because they negotiate because you negotiate. The worst case scenario is that they will come back and they'll say, we're so sorry, we can't meet that request. Would you still like the job at the original offer?

Where should we start? What would you say is the number one mistake that you see people make in these conversations about compensation?

Well, it's hard to pick a top one. I know we're going to talk about more than one, so. But if I had to pick the first one, I would say, don't take things personally. When people take things personally, that's one of the biggest mistakes. And you really have to look at it as a business problem that you're trying to solve collaboratively. Right. I mean, this is not. It's not about you. And the way that companies pay people really isn't about the person at all. It's how much they value the work that you'll be doing for them. And so it's normal that different kinds of companies might value that work differently. And so you just have to remember that it's really a statement on the work and not a statement on you as a person. And it's really hard to get that emotional distance. But when you can, you can be.

A lot more effective 100%. Because if you start taking things personally, then you're losing that perspective. And then you'll probably respond emotionally. And oftentimes our emotional responses are not the appropriate responses for the negotiation. They might feel good in the moment. Don't get me wrong, they feel great. But. But then you have that, or it might feel terrible.

I Mean, that's the thing.

That's the thing. You're kind of. It's random in that situation. Right. Because you. Sometimes the emotional response can. Can feel good. It could be cathartic in the moment, and then the ramifications are down road. Or maybe it feels bad in the moment too, or maybe you get lucky. And so I think it's really important to recognize the difference between an emotional thought and a rational thought in the moment. And so it's easy for us to just say, okay, good, next one. We won't take things personally. On to the next idea. But it's easier said than done, right? So what advice do you have for people who say, well, okay, thank you, but it's hard for me not to take things personally. How do I actually do that?

Well, and it is hard for everybody, but if you can really recognize the fact that this is. It's a business problem that you're trying to solve, that's one way. You know, I also advise my clients to think about negotiating on behalf of somebody that they like, but maybe not their super best friend, but somebody that they think is great. You know, so if I were negotiating on behalf of you, you know, I would advocate for you, I would be firm, but. And I would want a great outcome for you, but it's not. It doesn't impact me in quite as personal a way. And I think that's the mindset that if you can get into that, it can be really generative, 100%.

And so I think about it, for me as a lawyer, I think about the times when I was representing clients. It's an interesting phenomenon because they can say things that are offensive about the situation. But since I have that distance, I can handle myself. I can think about several times in negotiations where I was with my client and they said something that I knew that they would take personally and I was just texting them. Don't say anything. Don't say anything. Just let me handle this. Because I have that objectivity, I have that distance. And it is a really powerful mental trick you can play on yourself to say, all right, I'm not Kwame, but I'm going to negotiate on behalf of Kwame, right. Or Whitney, my wife, or my brother Kobe, or whoever it happens to be. When I put that other person, I kind of other myself in that situation. Gives a lot of perspective. Exactly. And one of the things that you brought up, let's flow into this one, is how do you handle it when they ask for your compensation requirements or what you hope to make or what you made at your last job, those type of things. I want to get your thoughts on how to handle that. And I think before you say exactly what to do, if you could kind of set the stage and tell what's at stake in this very moment, I think that would be a great way to start.

Yeah. Well, you know, what's fascinating is that more and more states and local governments are prohibiting the salary history question, which I think is really good, because what we know is that it advantages people who have had advantages in the system, and it disadvantages people who have had disadvantages in the system. So it tends to perpetuate some of the things, you know, the inequalities around pay. So, you know, don't tell people what your salary history is, you know, unless it was, like, gigantic and you're trying to match it at the new one. I don't know. I still wouldn't say what your salary history is unless you can not avoid it. But. But what. What I do like to have people do is kind of shift that. Even if it's not illegal to ask in your state, just say, you know, hey, I'd love to share with you my expectations. And one of the ways that you can do that is by basing it in research, which you need to do. You need to go out. There's tons of sources on the. On the web. You know, just put in a search engine, you know, project management, salaries, you know, and salary.com has great information. Glassdoor has information about the company that you're going to be interviewing with. There's just tons and tons of places that you can get good salary information.

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