Category: Negotiation

Negotiating Job Offers: An Outline for Getting What You are Worth.

Negotiating Job Offers: An Outline for Getting What You are Worth. The increase you get when you start a job compounds into thousands of dollars over time.

Negotiating Job Offers: Begin with the Facts

Employers are more open to negotiating a job offer when they can see that there is a real shortfall between what they have offered you and what you have in your current job.

The way to approach the matter is to make a straightforward presentation of the facts involved.

Employers do not want to go back and forth over negotiations. Before going to the hiring company with counter offers, you need to make sure that you understand the offer and that you understand how it compares with what you want.  List the offer items in a column.  Then create a second column to list the details of your current or desired offer.  Create a third column to list the details of the job offer.  Create a fourth column of the things you would like to change.

Items	Current Job	New Job	Desired Change
Vacation
Job title
Start date
Salary
Bonus
Unpaid bonuses at your current employer
Reimbursement for business expenses
Benefits: deductibles, costs, coverage, start of coverage
Cost of commute
Retirement plan
Profit sharing
Stock options or grants
Other Items

Now that you have everything on paper so that you can understand how the offer compares with what you want, simply create a list of things that you want changed and present your list to the hiring company.

Ask yourself whether you will accept the offer if the hiring company changes the offer to fit your needs.   If the answer is that you will accept the offer, present your list to the hiring company and state that you will enthusiastically accept their offer if they can adjust the offer.

Salary Increases: Some people recommend changing jobs every few years solely for an increase in base pay. The benefits could make a difference of tens of thousands of dollars.

Most companies give pay raises of three percent. On the other hand, in changing jobs, you could see salary increases of 10 to 15 percent. Additionally, when you change jobs and move into a job with greater responsible, you could see even greater increases in your salary.

Immediate Gains of Salary Increases

Increases in salary have a compounding impact in your income. At 12% for each job change, your salary increases look like this example.

Current Salary: $50,000
First Job Change: $50,000 + 12% = $56,000
Second Job Change: $56,000 + 12% = $62,720
Third Job Change: $62,720 + 12% = $70,246

Longer-term Gains of Salary Increases

Another powerful reason for changing jobs for salary is that, as your salary grows, the amount of your pay raises increase. In other words, changing jobs for more money not only gives you a short-term boost in income; the change affects your long-term increases. Here are two examples for comparison. In both cases, I used 3% increases you might expect at your current employer.

Base Salary: $50,000 plus 3% pay raises

• Starting Salary: $50,000
• First Raise: $51,500
• Second Raise: $53,045
• Third Raise: $54,636
• Fourth Raise: $56,275
• ($50,000 + $51,500 + $53,045 + $54,636 + $56,275 = $265, 456)

However, with a salary of $70,246, your 3% annual increases would look like these examples.

• Starting Salary: $70,246
• First Raise: $72,353
• Second Raise: $74,524
• Third Raise: $76,760
• Fourth Raise: $79,063
• ($70,246 + $72,353 + $74,524 + $76,760 + $79,063 = $372,946 )

Negotiating higher starting salaries can also have a huge impact on your earnings.

Job counteroffers are ways companies avoid losing employees at the wrong time. ~ www.jaywren.com

Counteroffers

When you resign, should you consider a counteroffer? You have packed your bags. You are ready to walk out the door. Then, your boss tries to convince stay.

Before you resign, prepare to deal with a counteroffer. You may never know when one is coming. Anticipating a counteroffer is smart. Preparing for a counteroffer even smarter. Like buying a car, dealing with a counteroffer can be a negotiation. The car salesman may try to close the sale on the features of the car. On the other hand, the salesman may be willing to sweeten the deal. More money, better working conditions, greater responsibility, or promising other changes to keep you with the company.

Pressure

Additionally, you may find the negotiations stressful. The easiest thing might be to say “I quit!” Then just walk out the door. On the other hand, as I discuss later, you may want to make a graceful exit and not destroy relationships. In this case, you will need to hear your boss out and ask for time to give a response.

During this time, you can get advice on how to handle to counteroffer. You can compare the counteroffer to the reasons you want to leave in the first place. You can consider how comfortable you will be staying at a company where you just resigned.

Risky Negotiations

There are risks in negotiating a better deal. There can be greater risks in staying with a company. You have shown yourself disloyal. Moreover, if you negotiate a better deal for yourself, remember that your boss will have to live with that deal. Maybe you will be happy, but your boss may find that the newly negotiated deal doesn’t look and feel so great as time passes. Did you get more money in the deal? Did you get a promotion? Did you get shorter hours? Your boss will have to live with these concessions.

Needs of the Company

Company hire people to fill work needs. When those needs decline, there is no reason to keep employees who aren’t needed.  At that point, well run companies fire people.

This issue goes to the heart of a counteroffer. Companies make counteroffers the company cannot afford to lose at that time. As you go through you a counteroffer, you may begin to think of making a decision with a company for the rest of your career. You see yourself as a member of a team or a family. Your boss may even frame the counteroffer as a personal matter. Your absence will be a personal loss to the company.

However, remember that people work at the pleasure and need of the employer. You may have friends at that company. Your boss may be your friend. But the issue of your employment is more than personal. It is financial and has lifetime impacts on your career and your security.

Summary

A company prefers to lose people based on the company’s timing. This concept is easy enough to understand if you follow sports. Some players are valuable in the middle of the season. They are trained and they know the playbook. When the season ends, the value of players value declines. The best teams evaluate even the greatest players on the value they will bring the team for the next week or next season. After all, perhaps much to their regret, the Red Sox sold the contract of Babe Ruth to the Yankees.

Therefore, when you are considering a counteroffer, be selfish. Act in your best interest. Companies can always find other employees, but you only have one career.

Negotiation begins with the ability to see solutions for the people across the table. Whether you are offering a service or a product, your success will depend on solving problems.

The purpose of a negotiation is to reach an agreement that benefits both sides. How do successful companies see, create, present, and deliver solutions?
~ www.jaywren.com

Step 1. Products and Services

When I worked at Polaroid, my orientation included a history of the company.  Edwin Land (Dr. Land) got the idea for the instant camera from his daughter.

While on vacation in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Dr. Land’s 3-year-old daughter asked why she could not see the pictures as he took them.

The idea led to Dr. Land envisioning a camera that contained a photo finishing system.

The camera satisfied the needs, wants, and fancies for consumers, law enforcement, military, businesses, and perhaps others who wanted to record visual record of the things they saw.

The success sale for these cameras was to negotiate with resellers who had to take the risks of buying camera in hopes that they would resell the camera to their customers.  The negotiation began with a presentation that in some show the buyers how the camera fit the needs of their consumers.

Step 2. Awareness and Demand

Negotiation needs awareness and demand. For manufacturers of consumer products, the persuasion happens at two levels.

Here’s how it works.

The Push. Edwin Land hired a sales team to sell the cameras into retail stores.  He sent product demonstrators into the stores to train clerks and consumers on how the camera worked and how it solved problems for them.

At this level, the manufacturer sells or “pushes” the product into the stores and onto the retailers’ shelves.

The Pull.  Next, Dr. Land hired marketers.  With print and television advertising, the Polaroid marketing teams created consumer awareness and consumer demand.  From what consumers saw in the media, they wanted Polaroid cameras before they went to a store.

The marketing-driven consumer demand pulled the products through the retailers and into the hands of the consumer.

Negotiation

In closing, most people have a sense of what they want.  If they are sales people, they want to sell their product.  If they are resellers, they want to sell their products to the end users.  The negotiation process must show how all these steps will work.

Giving successful persuasive presentations takes more than showing up. ~ www.jaywren.com

Persuasive Presentations

What are the things that make persuasive presentations successful? How can you persuade your audience to accept your proposal?

Here are 10 powerful steps for giving a persuasive presentation.  Whether you are in an salary negotiation, business meeting, or sales call, these steps will make your presentations more powerful.

Do Your Homework

Before you go to a meeting, do your homework on the people in your meeting.  Persuasive presentations must show audience recognition.

In live performances, entertainers give a shout out to the audience.  Something like, “Hello, Cleveland!”

However, there is nothing more annoying than presenters not knowing their audience.

Picture the rock star who says “Hello, Cleveland!” when they are in fact in Cincinnati.

Know the Information that Will Rock Your Audience

Know what types of information will interest the people you are meeting. If they hate dealing with a lot of data, don’t burden them with graphs and charts that will turn them off.

Persuasive presentations don’t reflect your interests.  They reflect the audience’s interests.

If the customers only want beef, don’t give them mashed potatoes.

Know the Goals of Your Audience

Know the goals of the people you are meeting. For example, do they want to increase sales, even at the expense of low margins? Then create a presentation that will show how your product has large consumer appeal to low price shoppers.

Do they want a sales campaign that shows how their store sells quality products? Then show how your product or service excels in consumer satisfaction.

Know the Decision-Making Process

Can your audience give you a decision on the spot?  If so, prepare to answer questions and handle objections to close the sale.

On the other hand, if you are selling to buyers who will need to present your information to a committee for a decision, you must not only prepare a presentation that is simple, compelling, and easy to understand.  You must ask your buyers what else the buying committee needs to know.  Furthermore, you must ensure that your buyers can give a persuasive presentation of your material to their buying committee.

Plan for the Size of Your Audience

Prepare your presentation for the size of your meeting. If your audience is small, you must hand everyone a copy of your information. If your meeting is in a large room with a large audience, a screen presentation may work better to show the key points of your presentation.

Also, the larger the audience, the larger your gestures must be. Large expansive gestures to a large audience signal that you are including everyone in the room.

Know What, When, and Where

Your presentation must show that you understand who does what, when and where on your side and on the buyer’s side.

Before leaving the presentation, you must know that you and the buyer both know who does what, when, and where.  Deals fall apart and future relationships fall apart when mistakes happen for a lack of understanding on either side of how the process works.

Keep It Simple

Keep your presentation simple. Have a key phrase that will deliver the benefits of your message. In presenting the iPod presentation, Steve Jobs focused on the ease and convenience of the iPod by saying, “A thousand tunes in your pocket.”

Be Positive

Going negative doesn’t increase the power of your persuasive presentations.

Keep it positive.  Don’t trash your competitor.  Handle objections in a way that shows you understand the buyer’s concerns.  Focus on the benefits of your idea. You audience will want to buy when they see what they gain from accepting your proposal.

Rehearse

If you don’t have experience with your material, rehearse with another person.  If you don’t have anyone to help you, rehearse your presentation in front of a mirror.

Persuasive presentations don’t always come easy.

The most successful presenters go over their presentation before stepping in front of the audience. Just as performers rehearse before a paid audience, give your audience, no matter the size of the audience, the presentation that will engage and convince them of the value of what you are offering.

I recently saw a famous entertainer perform in person. During his presentation, he said how hard he rehearsed every minute to prepare for his performances every performance before each show.

Persuasive Presentations:  The Close

End with a call to action.  For example, ask this type of question. “Should we begin on the first or second week of the month?”

In some cases, the buyer may buy before you get through your material.

If not, use trial closes to know where your buyer stands.