From Chris Voss’ “Never Split the Difference”
How to Negotiate Your Salary:
Be Pleasantly Persistent On Nonsalary Terms.
- “the more you talk about nonsalary terms, the more likely you are to hear the full range of their options. If they can’t meet your nonsalary requests, they may even counter with more money, like they did with a French-born American former student of mine. She kept asking—with a big smile—for an extra week of vacation beyond what the company normally gave. She was “French,” she said, and that’s what French people did. The hiring company was completely handcuffed on the vacation issue, but because she was so darned delightful, and because she introduced a nonmonetary variable into the notion of her value, they countered by increasing her salary offer.” (p. 135)
Salary Terms Without Success Terms is Russian Roulette
- “Once you’ve negotiated a salary, make sure to define success for your position—as well as metrics for your next raise. That’s meaningful for you and free for your boss, much like giving me a magazine cover story was for the bar association. It gets you a planned raise and, by defining your success in relation to your boss’s supervision, it leads into the next step . . .” (p. 135)
Spark Their Interest in Your Success and Gain an Unofficial Mentor.
- Ask, “What does it take be successful here?”
- “Remember the idea of figuring what the other side is really buying? Well, when you are selling yourself to a manager, sell yourself as more than a body for a job; sell yourself, and your success, as a way they can validate their own intelligence and broadcast it to the rest of the company.” (p. 136)
- “The key issue here is if someone gives you guidance, they will watch to see if you follow their advice. They will have a personal stake in seeing you succeed. You’ve just recruited your first unofficial mentor.” (p. 136)
Example of Angel negotiating his Salary.
“At that point, Angel and his manager defined what his roles and responsibilities would be in his new role, thereby setting success metrics. Then Angel took a breath and paused so that his boss would be the first to throw out a number.
At last, he did. Curiously enough, the number showed that Angel’s earlier efforts at anchoring had worked: he proposed to add $31,000 to Angel’s base salary, almost a 50 percent raise.
But Angel was no rookie negotiator, not after taking my class. So instead of countering and getting stuck in “How much?” he kept talking, labeling the boss’s emotions and empathizing with his situation (at the time the company was going through difficult negotiations with its investors). And then Angel courteously asked for a moment to step away and print up the agreed-upon job description.
This pause created a dynamic of pre-deadline urgency in his boss, which Angel exploited when he returned with the printout. On the bottom, he’d added his desired compensation: “$134.5k—$143k.”
In that one little move, Angel weaved together a bunch of the lessons from this chapter. The odd numbers gave them the weight of thoughtful calculation. The numbers were high too, which exploited his boss’s natural tendency to go directly to his price limit when faced by an extreme anchor. And they were a range, which made Angel seem less aggressive and the lower end more reasonable in comparison.
From his boss’s body language—raised eyebrows—it was clear that he was surprised by the compensation request. But it had the desired effect: after some comments about the description, he countered with $120,000.
Angel didn’t say “No” or “Yes,” but kept talking and creating empathy. Then, in the middle of a sentence, seemingly out of the blue, his boss threw out $127,000. With his boss obviously negotiating with himself, Angel kept him going. Finally his boss said he agreed with the $134,500 and would pay that salary starting in three months, contingent on the board of directors’ approval.
As the icing on the cake, Angel worked in a positive use of the word “Fair” (“That’s fair,” he said), and then sold the raise to his boss as a marriage in which his boss would be the mentor. “I’m asking you, not the board, for the promotion, and all I need is for you to agree with it,” he said. And how did Angel’s boss reply to his new ambassador? “I’ll fight to get you this salary.” So follow Angel’s lead and make it rain!