Negotiating by E-mail and Phone

From: Jack Chapman

E-mail is 100% verbal; communication is 90% or more nonverbal (inflection, pauses, facial expressions, etc.).  You’ll be entrusting thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars to a medium that employs only 10% of your communication abilities.  Does  “Yeah, right,” mean “yes, indeed!” or “you can’t be serious!”?  Without non-verbals, you can’t tell.

I coached Fred, who had a received an offer by email of $55,000 and benefits.  He had replied by email to the president that he was not interested at that price, and to “take his hat out of the ring.”  Questioning him, I uncovered that “at that price” meant Fred had felt insulted by the president’s “low” offer.

While it was true that the offer was a bit low, it was not true that the employer intended in any way to insult Fred.  Upon deeper examination, we found misplaced anger: it was really Fred’s frustration in the job search and upset at his previous employer’s insults that got triggered and vented here.  All because email can be interpreted as insulting when voice would be heard as acknowledging.  Once these two “egos” got together face to face, it became clear how valuable each considered the other to be.  Fred was able to negotiate a wonderful deal.

FWIW, IMHO (that’s “e-mail speak” for “For What It’s Worth, In My Humble Opinion”), it’s tough enough to do this stuff real-space, real-time.  Crippling the communications by subtracting all the non-verbals cannot do any good, and will probably do harm.

Voice to voice will do; face to face is better.

Final acceptance of an offer can be handled by phone, but whenever possible avoid doing the initial negotiating that way.  If you are given an offer over the phone, tell the individual that it sounds very workable and, since it is important that the agreement be clear and good for both parties, you’d like to stop in and talk it over in detail.  You will have a better opportunity to get a fully negotiated deal when you and your potential employer are giving it your full attention, which you can’t do on the phone.

When it’s not possible to stop in, you can make sure you and the employer are undisturbed and able to negotiate as you would face to face by simply setting a time to call back to handle it.  Otherwise, you’re off guard or likely to be caught in the middle of something.  Call back at a time when you can concentrate on negotiating.

Another special area to note is delayed salary discussions.  You know from Salary-Making Rule 1 to wait for a job offer before discussing salary, but don’t wait longer than that.  If you get a hiring signal from an employer who doesn’t bring up salary, you bring it up.

You could say, “Well, I guess that means we’d better make a deal.  What did you have in mind?”

Letting it go beyond offer time could mean your employer plans to hire you without negotiating and assumes you’ll take what you get.  Or else the employer’s embarrassed.

I had a client who had every indication that the director of engineering wanted to hire him.  The director had said, “You are just the person we’re looking for.”

“What was their offer?” I asked.

“Oh, we haven’t talked money yet.”

Uh-oh!

He quickly followed my instructions to get right back on the phone, ask how firm the decision was, and suggest that they talk about salary.  He was told, “Well, we’d love to have you, but you wouldn’t take $58,000, would you?”

“Well, I’d consider it,” he replied.  “When can we talk, and who makes those decisions?”

He was hired two weeks later at a grade higher than the opening was originally rated at.  He made an extra $7,500 a year because he’d negotiated for his market value and fuller responsibilities.  If he had waited, the employer would have been too shy to tell him the company couldn’t afford him, and he’d have lost the offer.  He’d had to educate someone inside the company about the flexibility of salaries.

Remember, a company may not know what you know—that money can be fudged to fit the person.

Jack Chapman is a nationally know job coach and seminar speaker specializing for the last 20 years in salary negotiations and job interviews.

For more information on Salary Negotiations, please visit: http://www.breakthrough-salaries.com/

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