Negotiating Salary Without Checkmating Yourself

by David Larson

In chess, it's possible to get checkmated in just two short moves. It’s called “Fool’s Mate,” and to fall for it you need to be…well…a little bit foolish.

In salary negotiations, you can get checkmated even faster—in just 1 move. And to fall for that, you don’t have to be foolish at all. In fact, if you’re like most people you’ve probably already fallen for it and you don’t even know it.

When you lose at chess, you know it just by looking at the board. And if that’s not obvious enough, it’s actually a rule that the winner has to announce it to you that you’ve been checkmated.

There is no such rule in salary negotiations.
If you’re dealing with a professional salary negotiator, they will actually go out of their way to make sure you NEVER know you lost. And if they’re good, they can even make you feel like you won.

Forget What You Think You Know About Negotiating Salary

If you’ve read anything about negotiating salary you’ve probably heard the usual advice:

1. Do your homework
2. Get an offer first before talking salary
3. Get them to make the first offer
4. Flinch at whatever number they say and then go silent
5. Ask if their offer is negotiable

Dozens of articles rehash this same old-timey wisdom online every week. That’s unfortunate, because while some of this information is merely misleading, some of it is completely wrong.

Consider this common rule: “Ask if their offer is negotiable.”

“Is the Salary Negotiable?”

At first glance this sounds like a perfectly legitimate question, right?

You probably hear some variation of it all the time in your daily life:

• Is the deposit amount negotiable?
• Do you have any flexibility on the timing?
• Can we talk about it?

These basic opening questions are the classic “tell” of the amateur negotiator.

When a trained negotiator hears one of these, they know that the entire balance of power has now shifted completely in their direction. The asker of these questions has set themselves up perfectly to be checkmated before the game even gets underway.

Watch Your Blindside

If you don’t immediately recognize the problem with these questions, you’re not alone. While more than 85% of men recently rated themselves as “above average” at negotiating salary, less than 9% of these men were actually able to negotiate a higher salary on their last job.

Just like driving a car, negotiating salary is something everyone thinks they excel at, but few actually do.

The average person leaving college today will face 14 distinct salary negotiations during his lifetime. On 12 of these 14 occasions, he will fail to negotiate a higher salary.

He will never prepare by reading a book on negotiating salary. He will never practice the necessary skills. He will never do any research on how to master either the techniques or the mental game.

Yet miraculously he will somehow maintain his core belief that he’s a better than average negotiator.

And he will make excuses like “My employer is different,” “The salary wasn’t negotiable,” or “I didn’t have any leverage.”

These are the 3 big excuses I hear most frequently, and they are generally wrong. Employers all over the world love these excuses, because they add up to truckloads of savings in personnel costs. But they are still completely false most of the time.

The Truth About Negotiating Salary

According to a recent survey, more than 80% of HR professionals are willing to negotiate salary with new hires as long as the candidate negotiates in a courteous and competent way.

Excuses might play a useful role in helping us maintain self-esteem, but they do not change the facts.

When it comes to negotiating salary, the average successful negotiation will provide you an increase of just over 4.5% (slightly less if you’re a female). That 4.5% is extra money you get just by asking for it in the right way.

And if you’re good enough to get that 4.5% bump all 14 times you negotiate your salary over your lifetime, by job 14 you will be earning 85% more than the guy who never negotiated more money.

So What's Wrong with Asking "Is the Salary Negotiable?" Anyway??