Responding to an Offer that is Too LowFrom: Jack Chapman When the offer is too low, don’t give up! There are many ways to increase it. Your first response should be to acknowledge it. “Thirty-five thousand dollars. I appreciate your offer, Mr. Employer.” Then refocus on your interest in the job: “And I’d love to work here.” Then put out a statement you can both agree on: “I’m sure you want to pay me a compensation that is fair and will keep me committed and productive, isn’t that right?” (What can he say?) “Well,” you continue, “from my research I estimate that positions like this for someone with my qualifications are paying in the range of X to Y thousand dollars. What can you do in that range?” The range you give will bracket the high end of your research. If your research uncovered a range of $45,000 to $48,000, bracket the high range by saying, “In the range of $47,000 to $50,000.” Typically, your interviewer will respond by telling you what the company can do in that range: something, nothing, whatever. You’re ready to continue an honest discussion in order to reach a common ground. Do your best here. Hold on to your researched worth and keep talking to find a way to work it out so you both win. Keep a mutuality about the negotiations. Look for a compensation that is both fair and will keep you committed and productive. Notice how this negotiation compares with the You go first—too-high/too-low scenarios. In either of those cases you could lose the job. Here you have a firm job offer at X thousand dollars. If all further negotiating comes to nothing, you can’t lose the job offer. You can always in the end say, “Well, let’s go with X dollars” or “No thanks.” But it’s your decision. Sincere negotiations, in my experience, end up with a satisfying common ground 90 percent of the time. Many people, though, think they’ll lose an employer’s respect if they talk very long about money. That’s true before an offer, as we learned from Salary-Making Rule 1, but after an offer it can actually increase respect. Leaving negotiations when the offer is too low puts you in jeopardy of losing the offer altogether. Employers may want to just scrap the whole thing rather than risk hiring you today, only to wave good-bye in a few months when you leave for more money. Make sure they’ll honor their current offer while you consider it. You don’t want any interlopers to push their way into consideration. If they’ll hold to their offer during the negotiations, you’ve got nothing to lose! However, you’ll need to make a deal: If they’ll keep it open, on their part, then on your part, you need to reassure them that you’ll give them an honest-to-goodness yes or no the next time you meet. And if it’s a yes, you mean it. Say something like this, “Well, we seem far apart at the moment. I don’t want to decline the offer because I still think the fit is good. Why don’t we do this… Let’s talk again soon [means 24 hours or less, BTW]. I’ll make you this promise: I’ll look over the compensation to see if I can accept it; meanwhile, you can take some time to see if there’s anything we’ve overlooked to make it better. Then, if I can accept that offer, I’ll say yes, and I’ll mean yes. If I can’t feel right about the deal, I’ll say no, and suggest you look for another candidate who will fill the bill for you at that price. How does that sound?” If you don’t offer this type of reassurance, they might rescind the offer even if they said they’d hold it for a day. 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/ |