Negotiating Salary Quotes

No wonder women don't negotiate as often as men. It's like trying to cross a minefield backward in high heels.

I’d prefer not to say what my current salary is because if it’s higher than what you expect to pay for this job, I wouldn’t want that to eliminate me from being considered for this job—because I might be willing to accept less for the right position—and, if it’s lower than what this job would pay, I wouldn’t want to sell myself short either— I’m sure you can understand.

While we don’t select friends because they might help us advance our careers, here’s the dirty capitalist truth: friendship has been the source of some of our biggest professional leaps. We are women for whom work is a huge part of our identity, in a way that wasn’t true for either of our mothers. Friends are how we’ve figured out the salary we deserve and how to negotiate for it. They’ve been a source of solace when our bosses shortchanged us, and they’ve been the inspiration to keep going when, having moved up, we become the bosses and feel like imposters.

The fact is that most women accept whatever salary they are offered, without saying a peep. Sixty percent of women never negotiate for higher pay, never ever, not even once in their entire career.1 If you are serious about building wealth, you must stop leaving money on the table.

By not negotiating a first salary, an individual stands to lose more than $500,000 by age sixty—and men are more than four times more likely than women to negotiate a first salary.

Women scored a salary that was 18 percent higher when they negotiated the salary for someone else. Men pretty much negotiated the same salaries whether it was for themselves or for someone else, and the levels were pretty consistent with what the women negotiated when they represented someone else. It appears that the women executives were particularly energized when they felt a sense o responsibility to represent another person's interests.

The second negotiation concerns how you will negotiate the substantive question: by soft positional bargaining, by hard positional bargaining, or by some other method. This second negotiation is a game about a game—a “meta-game.” Each move you make within a negotiation is not only a move that deals with rent, salary, or other substantive questions; it also helps structure the rules of the game you are playing. Your move may serve to keep the negotiations within an ongoing mode, or it may constitute a game-changing move.

It was the discomfort of knowing two people doing the same work at the same level were being paid differently that led us to reform how we set salaries. That’s how we ended up throwing out individual negotiations and differences in pay, and going with a simpler system.

In a recent study,4 Columbia Business School psychologists found that job applicants who named a range received significantly higher overall salaries than those who offered a number, especially if their range was a “bolstering range,” in which the low number in the range was what they actually wanted.

So you open your mouth and listen to yourself say, “I want eight thousand a day. Plus expenses.” This is the polite, industry-standard way of saying “piss off, I’m not interested.” You did the math over your morning coffee: You want to earn 100K a year, what with those bonuses you’ve been pulling on top of your salary. (Besides, a euro doesn’t buy what it used to.) There are 250 working days in a year, and a contractor works for roughly 40 per cent of the time, so you need to charge yourself out at 2.5 times your payroll rate, or 1000 a day in order to meet your target. Not interested in the job? Pitch unrealistically high. You never know… “Done,” says Mr. Pin-Stripe, staring at you expressionlessly. And it is at that point that you realize you are well and truly fucked.

Here are four more strategies to help you stack the deck in your favor when seeking a raise or a promotion: ✓ DO YOUR RESEARCH: Understand your market value and, more important, your value to the company. Be prepared to explain, candidly and concretely, what you feel you’re doing that you’re not being compensated for. Have confidence in your own worth. ✓ ASK TO BE PAID FOR THE JOB YOU’RE ACTUALLY DOING: If your responsibilities have increased but you haven’t been recognized since, say, you’ve taken over for the manager who left several months earlier, approach your new boss and say, “I’ve been effectively doing this person’s job since she departed and I’d like to formally assume her position.” Have a conversation. Express that you feel confident you can grow in this role and create value for the organization. ✓ PROVE YOUR WORTH: To earn an increase in salary, you need to be increasing your responsibilities and performing at a higher level than when you were hired. ✓ DON’T NEGOTIATE IF YOUR BOSS SAYS NO: Typically no means no when it comes to this type of discussion. If your boss says no, you have two choices: you either accept the rationale, think about it, and grow based on the feedback, or you leave. This is a good time to be reflective. Ask why you haven’t earned the increase. You may not walk away with a new title or more money, but hopefully you’ll learn something that will help you correct your course moving forward.

You will only speak of your salary expectations, not your salary history.

Since time immemorial, the issue of money has been an uncomfortable one. Notice that your friends would rather talk about what they do for a living instead of how much money they make for a living, or that during family reunions and social get-togethers, your relatives — and you yourself — avoid the topic of job salaries like the plague.

There are cases when the company can’t compensate you monetarily, so be prepared with a plan B: You may want to opt for additional vacation leave days, a bigger medical allowance, shares of the company’s stock, and other perks and benefits instead. When you approach the negotiating table, do so with an open mind and don’t focus solely on money.

What YOU Can Bring to the Company Career experts advise that on top of presenting your list of achievements, you should also lay down your future plans and goals — how you can help the company move forward and ideas that will be beneficial to the company as a whole. Don’t just dwell on what you’ve accomplished; you should also emphasize how much more you’ll deliver in the future. Remember that when you’re angling for a raise, the company will expect you to work harder and perform better.

Keep in mind that you are making a pitch, so the focus should not be on you, but on the company. Your battle plan should not be “me-centric” but should be “you-centric” — the company cares about the bottom line, and your task is to help it achieve such. And if you’re speaking to one specific boss or supervisor, you should consider how you can make his or her life easier and how you can make them look better too.  The more specific you are with your plans, the better your chances are of getting that much-coveted raise!

Have an actual numerical figure in mind, and try to name the number before your supervisor has a chance to suggest how much the raise should be.  This way, you are setting the anchor-point from which your supervisor will negotiate down.  It’s much better than allowing him or her to low-ball you, and then have to struggle your way back up, especially if their number is far off from what you have in mind.

The first thing to say about money is that if the salary range is stated in the job ad, and is not enough for you, then don’t apply. You should not plan to get an offer and then start negotiating. As the hiring firm sees it, those negotiations were concluded when you applied for the job. You’d be livid if they dropped the salary offer after putting it into the ad, so why do the same thing to them in reverse?

Asking for a better salary is not a crime.

It is not illegal to negotiate effectively.

They must constantly negotiate among their own moral and spiritual instincts, the interests of their institutions, their personal concerns about their own salaries and retirement accounts, and professional and social status. In short, they must master the art of ethical compromise as a matter of vocational survival

Remember that there is no such thing as a salary negotiation. You should never open a negotiation with only Contentious Issues on the table. You want to make certain that you have lots of Storytelling Issues included because this will help you secure more on the Contentious and Tradeoff Issues.

The engine is never your salary; the engine is the employer's pressing business needs. The next car back has your responsibilities that will address the company's needs and goals. The next car back is filled with your differentiators that address the employer's pressing business needs. The next car back might be a bet on how your unique capabilities will address the company's needs and the performance that you will achieve. The next car back is filled with other differentiators and additional Storytelling Issues. The caboose is your salary and annual bonus. The caboose is always attached to the train and rides along, but it comes at the end of the discussion, not the beginning of the conversation.

Imagine the future of work when brain monitoring becomes more ubiquitous if these laws and norms are not in place. After a banner year at the company, division manager Sue calls employee Pat to offer her a contract renewal with a 2 percent pay raise. Sue knows the company could easily afford and would be willing to pay up to 10 percent to retain her but hopes Pat will take less. Pat takes Sue’s call using her company-issued in-ear EEG earbuds. Pat keeps her voice even throughout the call so as not to give away her emotions and promises to follow up with Sue the next day. All the while, Sue has been watching Pat’s brain activity and decoding her emotional reaction to the news. Pat’s brain activity revealed joyfulness upon learning of the 2 percent pay raise and remained joyful throughout the day.97 The next day, Pat calls Sue and says that she was hoping for a bigger raise. But Sue can’t be bluffed; she knows that Pat was happy with the 2 percent raise; moreover, she now sees that Pat is fearful as she makes her request for a bigger one. Sue responds that 2 percent is the best the company can do, and Pat accepts the offer. Pat’s attempt to negotiate a better salary was over before it began. Even the staunchest freedom-of-contract libertarian would question the fairness of this negotiation.

More than half of the men—57 percent—tried to negotiate their starting salaries, compared with only 7 percent of the women. The men were more than eight times as likely to negotiate as the women.

More than half of the men—57 percent—tried to negotiate their starting salaries, compared with only 7 percent of the women. The men were more than eight times as likely to negotiate as the women. The students who did negotiate (mostly men) improved their salaries by an average of 7.4 percent, enough to account for the gender gap. The

If you repeated what you did today 365 more times will you be where you want to be next year? The best time to negotiate your salary

Avoid discussing salary—he who gives a number first loses negotiating power. If backed into a corner, give a salary range rather than a finite number. Base your range on competitive data.

Negotiation is known as one of the most effective ways to create the life you want to live.