Zach Selch walks through making offers to international Relationship Managers. Start with external salary data to avoid underpaying, use country-specific allowances to supplement base pay, give candidates 7-10 days to decide, and limit negotiations to one or two rounds before moving to your second choice.
Chapters
So we've talked a fair amount about the whole concept of hiring an international RM, and I have to say, some of the people I know who are in sales say that the most important job of a sales manager is to be in the recruiting and onboarding business, right? So of course, dealing with this is a very important part. It's one of the 3 main parts of your job is recruiting, so I'm talking about it a lot. But let's say we've gotten to the point we've met with our We've interviewed our candidates, we've talked to them, we've judged them, we know who we want. Now we know the person we want, what do we do? We're gonna make them an offer. First thing that I always do is I reach out, there are a couple of companies that'll give me a competitive analysis of what the right level of pricing, the right level of salary is for somebody of that experience and that kind of job, and I like to follow those guidelines. Okay. Because what you don't wanna do is lowball somebody and have it develop either into an unpleasant situation or they outright say no, or you get into an extended negotiation. I want to make a solid offer at the beginning. Now, I'm also going to keep track of what other people in my organization are earning. I don't want somebody who's suddenly going to be making so much more, so much less than anybody else, because that's going to create an uncomfortable situation. Even though you could say, well, somebody in Japan is going to make somebody more, a lot more than somebody in Nigeria, you still have to balance these things out at the end of the day, especially when they're all doing the same type of job and they're working just as hard and they have the same amount of experience and so on. I'm going to add to that all the different things. Now in the US, typically you have salary and healthcare, and that's about it, maybe vacation. Internationally, you might have a lot of different benefits that are paid out, and they're different in different countries. So you can ask around. I remember in India, when I lived in India, I used to give people a book allowance of $100 a month. You have car allowance. You might have a variety of other different types of allowances. And these are essentially forms of nontaxable salary, bottom line is. Right. Right, so you put together all of that, you make the offer, you give them a week to 10 days. I never give any more than that. I think that's a perfectly fair amount of time to make a decision. And then you wait for them to get back to you. That's basically what you can— I try and keep it down. I've really only had one guy negotiate with me. I never want to negotiate more than once or twice. If the offer is unacceptable to them and we can't change it by adding 5 to 10%, probably isn't going to work out, and I'm going to go to my number 2 candidate, I guess. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help.
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