Tips for Negotiating Your True Salary
Your rate is $10,000 a day or $500 an hour. You ask for a 20% raise or increase in your “total compensation package.”
You take a 25% commission or 50% off the back end of the deal.
Your rate, your fee, your “take,” your commission, your share of the profits is what it is.
Maybe your prospective client or customer or employer will attempt to negotiate you down. There’s a better than 50% chance he or she will not.
What Will You Do If They Actually Negotiate With You?
If they don’t want to negotiate with you, you earn your full, true market value. If they do, where will you go if you’ve already cut your rate, your price or your commission in half.
Will you go to $2500?
Your negotiation partner believes you’ve got room to move if you’re so insecure about the value of your services that you cut it in half before you’re even asked to give the guy a break.
But What If I Lose the Deal?
Here’s the thing about negotiation. It’s not a multiple choice or True/False test. It’s a conversation.
If you say your rate is 10 and your bargaining partner blanches, you have the opportunity to ask whether 10 is a problem and why.
We don’t have enough funds to pay you 10, they might say.
Let’s find a way for you to get the funds you need, you will respond, before asking about the budget line item they’ve been told will pay for your services.
Perhaps your pay could come from another area of the budget.
Maybe your customer can provide non-monetary benefits to you – buy your book, steer new customers or clients in your direction, advertise your products on their website, offer you their distribution channels, introduce you to people who would be beneficial to your business.