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Overcome Your Fear Of Negotiating, Part 1: Three Key Mantras To Remember

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A former colleague (let’s call her Amy) recently contacted me with a new job offer from a top company in her field. I asked her if she planned to negotiate the offer. No, she did not. Since she was happy with the offer and had been unhappy for some time at her current job, she was just planning to accept the offer as is. When I pressed Amy on why she wouldn’t counter the original job offer, she admitted that she was afraid to ask for more. Can you relate to Amy’s concerns?

  • She felt the offer was already fair and didn’t want to seem greedy.
  • She was concerned that if she negotiated, the company would rescind the offer.
  • She wanted to get out of her current situation anyway, so the new job was already an improvement.
  • Even if she wanted to negotiate, she wouldn’t know what to say.
  • She did not want to jeopardize the relationship with her future boss.

After 20+ years dealing with HR issues, of course I will be more comfortable dissecting offers, probing about compensation and asking for more. But just because you might not have as much experience  around offers, it doesn’t mean you can’t develop negotiating skills and the confidence to advocate for what you deserve. Asking for more doesn’t necessarily mean asking for too much. Negotiating a job offer isn’t at all about fighting your future employer. If you are afraid to ask for more, repeat these three mantras to help overcome your fear of negotiating:

1 – My employer expects me to negotiate

If you’re in a job search now, put this reminder as a screen saver or visible wherever you might receive that initial job offer: Never take the first offer. Employers expect you to negotiate and leave wiggle room somewhere in the offer. (Notice that I wrote “somewhere” because it’s not always base salary that they can change—it might be a sign-on bonus, performance bonus, time off or one of the many items you can negotiate.)

What employers do expect is for you to be excited about getting an offer. So don’t negotiate on the spot—you want to step back anyway and build your case. Instead, thank the employer profusely, show genuine enthusiasm (you should be happy you were selected) and tell them you want to gather your thoughts and questions and speak later. Your first response should always be to push off your full response till later.

2 – I will not negotiate with myself!

When Amy pushed back at me, saying she didn’t want to seem greedy and that it was a good enough offer already, this was a good example of negotiating with yourself—something I see very often and that always results in getting less than you deserve. Don’t talk yourself out of negotiating before you even start!

Ideally, you have researched what the market-rate compensation is before you get to the offer stage. But often or you learn more about the job when you interview, so early compensation research is almost always incomplete. Don’t assume an offer is a good one because it matches the general salary you had in mind when you started your job search. Look with fresh eyes (and remembering point 1 that there is always room to negotiate). Once Amy was willing to reflect on the salary in light of what she learned about the position, she realized that the role was bigger than what she pegged her ideal salary to.

3 – No one has ever lost a job offer because they negotiated

Even though Amy admitted that the salary could be higher, she was afraid to broach the subject in case the offer got rescinded. In my 20+ years of making and negotiating offers, I have only seen one offer get rescinded over a negotiation. The offer wasn’t pulled because the candidate negotiated—we actually went up on the initial offer when he did. The offer was rescinded because he accepted the renegotiated offer and then turned around and tried to negotiate again! His acceptance was clearly meaningless, and the employer feared there would be no end to the back and forth.

No one loses a job offer because they negotiate. It is only when you negotiate in bad faith—e.g., you already accepted some other offer and the company finds out, or you accept and then renege like the above candidate I mentioned. Employers respect you when you negotiate because they see that you advocate for yourself and are excited at the prospect that you will work just as hard for them.


Mantras are helpful, but not enough

I convinced Amy to negotiate, but I didn’t let her off the hook just yet. Instead, I asked her what she planned to say. Mantras can give you momentum and motivation, but you still have to negotiate. In my next blog, Overcoming Your Fear Of Negotiating, Part 2, I will share seven tips on how to prepare your negotiation, when you are afraid to do it.

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