Here is the complete transcript of the podcast
Welcome back. On the podcast today, I’m answering a question that has come in, asking me about salary negotiation. The specific question here is, I’m almost close to accepting an offer. And do you have any tips for me for negotiating the salary? Okay, so if you’re close to accepting an offer, I don’t know what to say. That means you already made a decision to take the offer, there is not much I can tell you think it is some kind of hesitation you have, I think you’re stepping into a compromised position. You’re stepping in with some degree of unhappiness. And that’s why you asked this question. But my suggestion is, it’s too late. It’s too late to restart a sales process. I say, why don’t you take the job, go in and see what happens there. That’s my recommendation. I don’t think you can do anything.
Now you’re so close to accepting an offer. But let’s talk about negotiation in general. Let’s talk about that. I think anything and everything about negotiation is already there on muse.com. Harvard review has some suggestions on how to negotiate a salary and all that. So I don’t think I can add anything here, in addition to what you already find on all these websites. But then I can tell you, one thing for sure, you cannot ask for a salary hike unless you have stacked up the process. So from the point, from the initial point of contact to all the way through the different stages of the interview all the way to the end, if that stacking has not happened properly, it’s very difficult to ask or command a price. That is true in any form of selling. If you have not marketed the product, right, it’s very hard to demand. An ask that’s much bigger than what they’re willing to pay. Just that’s a bit less than their mind.
My suggestion is that, let’s say and hoping everybody who’s listening to this podcast, let’s say you are listening to this podcast. In my opinion, the first person who quotes a price is a loser in a transaction, you are guaranteed to lose, it’s very difficult to raise beyond the price that you say. So let’s say the position offers you a $200,000 salary, I’m just making it up. And you said 150. And they say yes, it’s hard for you to move up from that point later on you discover it was 200,000. Now you missed out on a $50,000 spread. Now let’s say you say 250, let’s say right, and they decided 200 was the highest from their side, and it’s hard for them to even match up. So you come across as if you are too much for what they can afford. And they can move on to the second or the third person on the list and ignore you completely, they will never come back and even talk to you, you run that risk. So the ideal position to take is you never ever ask and let them offer you let them start with the number. So one of the ways to really open up the conversation on money is to ask what’s the range when you ask for a range, you know, the bottom, you know the top now, when you ask for a range, they also know that you know the range because you are in the market. So, there are enough websites that provide you a range for the role that you want to take up every role has a range. So they know you know this you are asking for range, you are not offending, you are not saying something from where you cannot recover. That’s how I would approach I would approach with a range and that’s the start point. But here’s the key part to all this you should postpone any negotiation to the very end. And at any point in time during this conversation. Every point is nothing but negotiation. At every point in time. Your job is to assess whether they can every interaction, every interview, let’s say you have five in-person interviews. Now every interview has to be incrementally becoming stronger Making Your Case stronger. And the stronger the case becomes, the stronger the Ask will become at the end.
Now here is another strategy. always sell the next thing don’t sell the overall thing don’t tell them that you are the best in the industry and you could do things that nobody else can do all you know are these things are all The mute the listener or the will make the people in the hiring process who whoever there are, who are is listening to you, they will disengage. So I would always sell the next step. So first, if at any point in time, in the middle of an interview, or at the beginning of the interview, the question of salary comes, usually comes to the chart at the very beginning. So, let me go through the process, and we’ll talk about it. We have a range, every role has a range, we’ll talk about it. So you keep on postponing. And the idea of postponement is that every subsequent step of the process, every interaction is building your case for a bigger ask. That’s why you’re postponing to the end. You always speak in ranges, you never specifically mentioned a figure if you mentioned a figure, get ready to lose. Now, why this process is going on, you keep on researching the market as much as you can. I’ll tell you, money is tricky. Asking for money is hard. And it needs a certain kind of preparation. If your preparation is right, then automatically, there comes a point where you don’t have to think about it. So you’ve done this jobs, you’ve done the practice or you’ve done you’ve gone through the process so well in your mind that you automatically when you position, the price, the price is accepted. So price positioning is very hard in sales in marketing and sales in every aspect of business hard, but it’s also extremely hard in a salary negotiation also. Okay, I hope this gives you an idea. I could run a whole negotiation class. In fact, I used to, and I do this in career breakthrough coaching. But then there are so many elements to it. But again, as I said, there is enough information online, and there are some golden nuggets, you go to muse or you go to Harvard review, you’ll find golden nuggets on negotiation. I’m not saying that I have the best, but I used to just to check that out also.
Okay, so that’s all for now. Loved these questions coming in. So thank you for the question. And hopefully, I lived up to the answer. And that’s all for now. Maybe tomorrow. I’ll come back and talk a little bit more about some other career aspects. We’ll continue, this process of career development for a few more days. Okay. That’s all. Bye now.