Secrets of Back End Negotiating: How to Ask for More after ...

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Secrets of Back End Negotiating:
How to Ask for More after You’ve Already

Accepted the Job…
(Without Upsetting Your New Employer.)

How to use the “Golden Hour” in negotiations to make your compensation
package bigger without coming across as greedy.

Lucrative Careers, Inc.
Jack Chapman

Wilmette, IL 60091
511 Maple Avenue

(847) 251-4727
[email protected]
www.SalaryNegotiations.com
www.LucrativeCareersInc.com

Using the Golden Hour to Negotiate Bigger Compensation

NEGOTIATING BEFORE YOU START THE JOB

Using the “Golden Hour” to lock in more money
BEFORE you start the job

Use the “Golden Hour” in negotiations to lock in your raise before your first day
on the job. What’s the Golden Hour? I’ll explain in just a bit.

But first, know that the best time to negotiate for a raise is not after you’ve done a
good job – but before.

What’s at risk if you wait? Sometimes lots! Here’s an example: Lin took a
marketing job. She opened the doors to a market in China that was an “above and beyond
the call of duty” type of accomplishment.

She didn’t have exact financial numbers but estimates it brought in $1 million or
more in sales.

When her review came up, she got a pat on the back and an 8% raise. Her
employer thought she did a good job but that’s what I pay her a salary for, he reasoned.

Think what would have happened if, when she was hired, she had said “Mr.
Employer, let’s set goals for the next six months and if I can meet or exceed them, would
you consider a bonus?”

What if, before she opened China she had said, “Mr. Employer, I’m on track to
meet the goals we have and I think if I work extra hard, I might open a whole brand new
market. If I can produce say, $500,000 in sales beyond what we planned for – how about
sharing some percentage of that with me?”

One of two things would have happened:
1. She’d make 3% of $1MM = $30,000 bonus
- OR –
2. They’d say “No” and she’d wise up and quit working overtime
when she’ll never get paid.

Good outcomes, eh?

If you wait until after your successes, your boss is motivated to give you just
enough to keep you there.

If you set up your raise first you’ve got a deal!

So use that Golden Hour to lock in a raise. Here’s when it happens.

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Using the Golden Hour to Negotiate Bigger Compensation

There is a very narrow window of opportunity during salary discussions to
negotiate future perks and possibilities: it happens after the “meat and potatoes”
negotiating is done and before finalizing the deal. You have a better chance of getting
what you want down the road if you ask for it within that window.

I call this window the Golden Hour, even though the actual time span will
probably be much less. Here’s where I first got the image. According to fire department
training, there is a ”golden hour” after you suffer a trauma such as a car accident. The
person goes into shock which blocks the overwhelming pain and pours all the body’s
resources into survival. But the body can only sustain itself in that mode for about an
hour. Thus, when EMTs arrive at an accident, they want to know the accident happened
since they only have an hour to get the victim stabilized.

My salary version of the Golden Hour is the window of time you have to get your
financial and personal rewards for that job “stabilized,” or at least committed to further
discussion. It’s the time during negotiations when Ms. Employer has donned rose-colored
glasses about you. She needs you, she wants you, and she’ll do almost anything
reasonable to get you.

That’s the Golden Hour – it begins when you clinch a deal and Mr. Employer is
feeling good about the bargain.

It ends the first day on the job when he finds out you’re human! So it’s really a
golden 24 hours or so, but I like the image of a Golden Hour anyway.

Here are the items particularly suited to the Golden Hour.

Item 1: Pre-set Raise Conditions
Item 2: Bonuses (Including Signing Bonus)
Item 3: Wellness and Comp Time
Item 4: Training, Development and Tools for the Job
Item 5: Severance

Plus I’ll show you how to lock it in before the Golden Hour is up.

Remember Rule 5 in my book: Clinch the deal and deal some more. [If you
haven’t read Negotiating your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute, available at
www.salarynegotiations.com, stop reading here and get it! This “Golden Hour
Diplomacy” is advanced negotiations techniques. You must apply the basics first.]

“Clinch the deal…” means you dig in once negotiations are done, and give
yourself one more shot to negotiate further. So, at the end of your first negotiating
session, you should have most everything ironed out. You say something like “This looks
pretty good. Let me take it home, check it over, and make sure nothing has been left out.
I’m giving you a conditional yes right now and will give you a final yes when we meet

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Using the Golden Hour to Negotiate Bigger Compensation

tomorrow, and if there are any loose ends, we can tie them up at that time.” That's the end
of the first period of negotiations, the “meat and potatoes” part.

Item 1: Pre-Set Raise Conditions

First move: You’ve completed negotiations and you’re back. You say something
like, “I’m very pleased with the opportunity to join the company and the compensation
package we put together, but there are a couple of things we didn't cover. I'm really
going to do my best to be a star around here. I intend to succeed and make everything run
well. So, in the first couple of weeks, could we set some achievable but challenging
goals? And then agree that in six months, if you like what you see, there’s the possibility
of a raise at that time?”

Contrast that approach with this: “I don't want to wait a year to get a raise; how
about giving me a raise in six months?” That is definitely self-centered, not other-
centered. Another expert suggests you say: “Now, in six months when we review my
progress, will that be a standard pro-forma event or are we looking at my
accomplishments for the company in determining a raise?”

Notice, the employers are not committing to actually determining a raise. In all
likelihood it wasn’t something they were even thinking about. But because this doesn’t
require any more money right now, and they have such high expectations of you, they’re
almost always amenable to your suggestion.

Here’s how that worked out for one young man. Bill worked at a Blockbuster
video store. Part of his job was to take each day’s deposits to a small branch bank in the
inner city. He was a friendly, knowledgeable guy and always chatted for a few minutes
with the staff there.

One day a bank supervisor there asked if Bill would like a job since they needed a
new branch manager. With my coaching, Bill researched the job and asked for $30,000
but the best they could offer was $25K. Bill was willing to accept that but also added to
the negotiations the request that the employer would look at his performance in six
months.

In less than three months he'd brought in several new accounts by visiting
neighborhood businesses, negotiated a deal for the bank to offer a Visa card, and found a
little program on the Internet for Y2K compliance. Remember Y2K apprehension? He
reported this to the boss. “If you want,” he said, “While I can't guarantee what will
happen on January 1, 2000, I'll can certainly run the program at the main bank on a
Sunday if you’d like.” Doing that saved the bank thousands of dollars in consulting fees.

After just two-and-one-half months they raised him to $30,000. He got that raise
because he'd set it up in advance. Normally employers wouldn't have thought to give a
20% raise if left to it on their own.

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Using the Golden Hour to Negotiate Bigger Compensation

If performance is calculated easily enough, you can name tentative terms for the
bonus or raise. If the performance metrics are not readily apparent, just agree in principle
and when you have a better handle on the job specs, then come up with a formula.

You can “lock in” this raise if you offer to compose an acceptance letter. In a
section below -- How to Get All You Want and Insure It in an Acceptance Letter --
you’ll see how to make sure what you’ve agreed upon happens.

It’s Six Months from Now and Time for your Raise. Now What?

Making the raise happen (whether or not you negotiated a special review or
performance bonus)

Take responsibility for your review. If you don’t track your victories and
accomplishments, nobody will.

Don’t assume that your boss knows what a good job you’ve done to keep things
running so smoothly. Bosses who allow efficient workers the freedom to do a good job
are less likely to be aware of workers’ accomplishments! Such bosses are so trusting of
your work that they naturally pay attention to their problems instead of your performance.
They aren’t motivated to delve into your accomplishments. You’ll have to delve for
them.

The best way to do that is to keep a job journal. Start by purchasing a spiral
notebook big enough to hold large entries and small enough to tuck into a very accessible
place. It’s too easy to forget everything you’ve accomplished six months later.

What do you write in your job journal? There are four kinds of observations.

1) Your achievements. As you work you are solving certain problems,
learning new techniques, creating new approaches. Record these small
triumphs in your journal, with enough factual information to describe
exactly what happened and what the results were. Include quantifiable
data such as approximate percentages, rounded dollar figures, or units of
time.

2) Other people’s strengths. What do you observe about your superiors,
colleagues, subordinates, or customers? A positive observation of what
their skills are can help you respect them and lay a firm foundation for
building good human relations. Also, you will know more precisely how
to approach them effectively to get their support for your projects,
promotions, or raises. Your notebook forces you to be aware of them.

3) Your ideas for progress. How often have you had the experience of
getting a brilliant insight into how to do your job better or to create
something more efficient, and then two weeks later find that you’re unable

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to recall the idea that had excited you so much? Since they may be lost
due to the frailty of human memory, insights of genius should be recorded.
4) News items, information, or sources of information about your chosen
career field, such as newspaper and magazine articles. You want to be
professional and keep up with what’s going on. Your reading in your field
should be documented for future use.

How do you use your job journal?

A few weeks before a salary review, look through your journal for your
achievements since your last raise. Especially note the differences between what you’re
doing now and what you did when you started at your current salary. Measure your
achievements with respect to dollars, people, productivity, exposure, or anything else
countable or measurable.

Analyzing your work with respect to measurable results gives you a concrete
success agenda to share with your reviewer and shows you how you’ve actually been
spending the time that, in effect, the employer buys from you.

In analyzing your results, take the raise-givers’ viewpoint. A powerful concept in
doing a job is to realize that you're not there just to do the job, you're there to do the job
the way your boss wants you to do it. But you have to please him if you want to get
ahead. What matters to them? What puts more money in their paychecks or bonuses?
What will they be able to parlay into their own raises or promotions? What do they care
deeply about?

Think about the things that matter to your boss. These aren’t always related to
money. Bosses can also care about neatness, safety, morale, confidentiality, corporate
visibility, efficiency, creativity, good press, or even fancy titles and time for golf.
Knowing what your boss values will help you measure your results in language he or she
will understand and appreciate.

But long before this, there’s a critical question to ask your boss. It will alert him to
what a great employee you are, and it’ll almost always result in a lucrative reward for
you. During the first month on the job, ask your boss your own variation of this: “What
especially do you want to make sure I do so that when your boss gives you a performance
review, you get top rating?”.

The Prereview Memo

Just as you go prepared into a negotiating session with well-researched, written
documentation, do the same prior to a performance/raise review.

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Section 1: Your Past Performance. List your accomplishments since the last
review, highlighting especially the ones you know your boss particularly appreciates and
helps make him a star..

Section 2: Your Plans for the Future. Since every new solution creates new
problems, new projects come on line or you envision doing more and/or better work --
what are your goals for the future?

Bring this memo with you to the review or send it ahead, depending on your
company’s procedures and preferences.

If you made sure in earlier negotiating to agree to look at your performance in a
certain number of months, use a job analysis sheet which I’ll describe later. It is designed
to raise your boss’s awareness of what you do and how you do it. And that you're heading
in the direction she wants.

When people think of making more money and locking in a raise, that’s generally all
that happens – a raise. There’s other possibilities too, so let’s look at those now.

Item 2: Bonuses

I’ve found there are lots of benefits you’ve heard of but that most people leave on
the table. They may be things the employers never thought of or offered before, but
would be willing to provide if you bring them up. Especially if you can show how they
will not be a big expense on the company’s bottom line, but are invaluable to you and
will enhance your work. Some examples: tuition reimbursement, wellness days, bonuses,
professional/trade association dues and conferences, working from home, a computer and
cell phone. If you haven't yet discussed them, bring them up now in this Golden Hour.
One very lucrative benefit involves bonuses.

Performance bonuses
Remember Lin’s story earlier? She opened up a huge new market in China but got

only a small percentage raise instead of a pre-determined bonus because she failed to
negotiate such a deal.

If you've had time between the first and second negotiating sessions, look at what
your job description is and where your results are measurable. If you can find that, you
can find opportunities for bonuses. Some jobs naturally have measurable aspects built in.
A quality control engineer’s bonus is based on reducing the number of rejects, a
salesperson has a sales quota to meet, a purchasing agent has a budget to meet. But what
if your job does not come with tidy, quantifiable data?

Let’s suppose you are a receptionist at a medical or legal practice. You want a
bonus if patients and clients feel welcomed and taken care of. You are the first
impression of the company or practice. If impressions are consistently positive, the

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business will grow. That’s good for the company. How can you make it also a reward due
you, because so far there’s no way to measure your contribution?

You might decide to take it upon yourself to call patients ahead of time to warn
them if they might have up to a 45-minute wait because of an emergency that put
everyone behind schedule. You could advise them to bring reading material, or when
they arrive tell them where the nearest Starbucks is. That’s building a lot of good will but
still is not yet measurable.

So you can ask your boss if it would be OK to give patients an informal
questionnaire on their second or third visit. It would ask how they feel treated, what they
think about the practice, how they like getting a warning about appointment times, etc.
Ask: “If I get a consistent A or A+ on the surveys, could I get a bonus? We don't need to
settle it right now, but could we have an agreement in principle that we will work it out
over the next couple of weeks?”

Signing Bonus (a.k.a. “Sign-On” Bonus)

In flush times or when demand is high in your particular specialty, employers may
entice you to take their offer by adding a signing bonus. This is a one-time multi-
thousand dollar payment and its purpose can be to:

 Compensate you for bonuses, options vesting, etc., you would lose with your
present company if you accept the offer from the new one (they “make you
whole.”);

 Recognize the IV$ value As I explained in Chapter 5 in my book Negotiate
Your Salary How to Make $1000 a Minute, something extra you bring to the
table, such as already knowing Peachtree software, could save the company
$5,000 tuition and training.

 Reward you for bringing over your “book” of business or your loyal-to-you
clients.

As you look forward to the Golden Hour session, if you notice any one of the
following, ask for a signing bonus.

 It’s customary in your field.
 If you are leaving any amount of money behind such as losing a bonus at

your old job.
 If you’re giving up benefits at your old job like car allowance, food, or

travel expenses that were part of your compensation but are not
automatically offered at the new job.
 Anything where there's a one time payment of some kind. Could be for
housing, differential in transportation costs, or extra day care costs, for
example. You’re simply asking to be made whole. If you asked for a
higher salary, the employer could see and probably resist that as an
increase. But you can suggest that since these things were offset at your
last job, could they be offset here too.

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Item 3: Wellness and Comp Time

Most companies have a sick leave policy: employees can take a certain amount of
sick days with pay and beyond that without pay. Ask to negotiate “wellness” pay. If the
sick day allowance is three days every six months, for example, ask if you take good care
of yourself and stay healthy, could you use that number of days to call in “well”?

Vacation days are usually negotiated in the first session. In the second Golden
Hour session, ask about comp time. Here’s how you can present it. “I see my hours are
this to this, and occasionally I’ll have to stay late or come in early or come in on a
weekend with your approval. If that happens on a consistent basis, what's the policy for
comp time?” If you've added five days of comp time over several months, you've gotten
three instead of two weeks of vacation. But that won't get noticed or happen unless
you've cleared it up ahead of time in negotiations.

Most things you negotiate you’ll want to have written down. (See “Acceptance
Letter” below.) But this little quickie should NOT be written down. It’s just an up-to-
$1000 informal arrangement. Watch.

There’s a little-asked-for benefit that a new boss will usually grant because it
costs the company practically nothing. Remember the movie, Ferris Buehler’s Day Off?
Ask for one. Of those!

Step one: find a real occasion that you would like to have the day off to
celebrate. Your dad’s 95th birthday with all his children; a wedding; an already pre-
planned trip – airline tickets already bought. Anything that can engender an emotional
response from your new boss like, “Gosh, that seems important.”

Step 2: Explain that you’ve already put that into your calendar – you didn’t know
you’d be hired at a new job when you made the plans. Ask, “If I make sure my work is
covered, could I have the day off without using a vacation or personal day? 90% will say
yes – even if it’s a big firm with strict policies, the boss can look the other way for that
one-time occurrence. That’s the equivalent of $250 - $1000 raise that costs the company
nothing.

Item 4: Training, Development and Tools for the Job.

Usually, attending annual trade association conferences doesn't come out in
negotiations. If the company has a stated reimbursement policy, that's cut and dried. But
if you can see what professional training and development you would like, negotiate for it
in the Golden Hour.

Put it in principle, rather than specifics. Point out that you want to be as valuable
as you can to the company so that might mean taking a course in communications or

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leadership training. If you justify how that would benefit the company, ask the employer
if she would be open to funding that. Once you’ve got that agreement you can reopen that
discussion in later weeks.

Negotiate both time and money. Additional benefits that are not a huge financial
drain on a company can at the same time be extremely valuable to you. So, for example,
you might ask for a laptop computers, a cell phone plan, or help with a high speed
internet connection. Negotiate some work-from-home time, which saves you hours of
commuting.

Item 5: Severance

Another item that's important to negotiate upfront is severance. Most people don't
even think of it. But companies are bought and sold; layoffs and outsourcing are rampant
in our current economy. There are many factors way beyond your control that can alter
your work circumstances.

No one can guarantee you employment any more. They can, however, fund your
job search time if layoffs happen. If you have a special risk factor here, use it when you
ask for severance. For example, people who are independent consultants and are being
hired by a client: it will take them 6-9 months or longer to re-establish their business if
they’re let go.

If there are few players in your industry, and leaving to join a competitor would
burn bridges behind you – you have another rationale for severance.

You’ll recall from Negotiating your Salary: How to Make $1000 a Minute that the
way to negotiate this is to express confidence in the people you’re talking to. It’s the
“unknown” that worries you. Ask them: ”Do you foresee any changes in management
coming up?” (You’ll no doubt get a reply that there’s not.) You continue, “Good, well, if
there is a change and I'm let go, I'm going to need some continued salary (severance) to
have some breathing space to look for another job.”

Negotiate 3-12 months severance depending on the level you're at. Higher-up
executives are most at risk and should ask for at least 12 months, plus additional services
and benefits. (See the extensive section on severance in the Workbook, page XX) As long
as there isn't any problem in that arena, your agreement won't cost the company anything.
Like an insurance policy, it will only have to pay if an event happens.

How to Get All You Want and Insure It In an Acceptance Letter

After all your hard work preparing for and successfully maneuvering through
your sessions, you want to guarantee all the perks you negotiated without going back on
what they agreed to. An acceptance letter can insure there are no misunderstandings.

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One lady I worked with, heard the employer say “60” which she thought meant
$60 an hour. In fact, they meant $60,000/year -- half of what she thought. The acceptance
letter cleared it up before it became a problem.

Even if they say you’ll get a letter from their personnel department, see if you can
write one anyway. Call it another name: “Confirmation of Terms in Anticipation of an
Offer Letter.” Write an enthusiastic letter noting how “pleased you are to accept working
with the company, and here's my understanding of the details of our deal.”

This acceptance letter will clearly identify what will happen, almost like a
contract, without all the formalities and legalities. Bring it to your second session and
handwrite in any extras you negotiate. Very often things get forgotten or happen
differently than what was indicated verbally

I encourage people to do something a bit less threatening than asking: “Would
you sign this?” at the end of the session. You’ll get the same benefit if you've simply
initialed it, and ask the employer to initial it too before putting it in your personnel file,
and sending a copy to you.

Post Script: SPECIAL get-a-raise ammunition:

Sometimes when your review is coming up, you’re all set with the information
from your job journal and the pre-review memo. Other times you’ll want to really
reinforce your worth – and make it concrete -- by doing a job and performance analysis
sheet

Evaluation/ Boss’s Eval Boss’s Eval Your Eval Your Eval
task Importance Performance Importance Performance
Train new hires
Lead project team
meeting
Quarterly review of
team members
File govt. reports
Review IT data for
accuracy

By the time you've been on the job a month or so, you should know what your
duties and responsibilities are: Make two copies of a form with five columns. The first
one on the left could extend to the center of the page, followed by four narrow columns

In the wide left column, list each job function you have on a separate line. For
example:

 Train new hires.

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 Lead weekly meeting with project team to review last week’s
accomplishments and review this week’s goals.

 Do quarterly review of team members.
 Worked out new system of reporting to supervisor that reprioritized

critical information for quicker follow up.
 And so forth.

Now, you’re going to assess: how well you do these things, and how important
they are to the company.

In the first column to the right, use your own assessment of A, B, C, D, or F on
how well you performed this particular function. In the next column, use numbering 1-5
(1 = vital down to 5 = least importance), of how important that particular function is to
your job and the company as a whole. The next two columns are for the boss to fill in.

Give your supervisor a copy without your answers. Ask her to fill out the first two
columns with her assessment scores.

Use this during the review session to compare your copy and hers. You’ll both
quickly see where there are congruencies and incongruencies. For example, if she thinks
a particular duty is a lower priority, you can shift your energy and work on things that she
thinks you're not doing as well as she’d like.

This is a very rigorous review form and should put you in synch with your boss –
which is what you’ll want when looking for a raise.

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION

By now, you’ve seen how much more money, benefits, and perks can be yours if
you negotiate properly. Some may kick in immediately; in other cases you’ve at least
planted a seed which will blossom to your benefit down the road.

So do your homework, work hard, think big. Success will be yours in ways you’ll
never have thought possible until you’ve tried. And enjoy those bonuses, wellness days,
raises and perks. You deserve it all.

Sincerely,

Jack Chapman
847-853-1046
[email protected]

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