Negotiating for a new job, salary increase, or business deal can be a daunting experience. Just ask Judy Bornstein, who had an intense, four-hour bargaining session with a potential employer. One of the issues was a 15% salary differential. "I was intimidated, but I didn't want to misstep or undersell myself," Bornstein remembers.
She ended up getting everything she wanted and took the job. "It felt wonderful to have such a great victory," says Bornstein, who worked in operations management at a startup technology firm in Cambridge, Mass., for three years and is now at a private equity firm in Menlo Park, Calif.
Bornstein credits her success at bargaining, in part, to a negotiation class she took while getting her master's in business administration at Simmons Graduate School of Management in Boston in the mid-1990s. "I learned the tools of negotiation, as well as the context in which to understand the world of negotiation," she says. "I needed both to be successful."
The teacher of that class, Deborah Kolb, a professor of management at Simmons and co-director of its Center for Gender in Organization, has put that information in a new book written with business consultant Judith Williams: The Shadow Negotiation: How Women can Master the Hidden Agendas that Determine Bargaining Success (Simon & Schuster, $26).
The book outlines a nine-step plan that can be the foundation of any successful negotiation. Here's how Bornstein used it:
1. Know what you want. While she was getting her MBA, Bornstein had done an internship and had worked as a consultant at the tech company where she was negotiating for a job. "I knew the company well, and I knew I wanted to work there full-time after graduation," she says. She told the company she wanted a permanent position. After a month, an offer still wasn't forthcoming.
The problem was that while the company had what it wanted from Bornstein, she wasn't getting her needs met. She was working close to full-time, but not in a permanent position. She wanted to change that.
2. Learn as much as you can about the job and the salary. Bornstein had been working at the company for close to a year before she sat down at the bargaining table. "I had an inside track," she says. "I knew what they needed and was able to provide it."
As for salary, Bornstein had paid attention to what others at the company were making but had no basis for a direct comparison. She took into consideration that this was an emerging company, in an emerging field, and that she had a unique background. She had spent several years as an elementary-school math teacher before obtaining her MBA. After factoring in all these variables, "I came up with a salary figure that felt reasonable to me," she says.
3. Evaluate and develop your alternatives, and consider what-if scenarios. When Bornstein realized a job offer wasn't imminent at her company, she decided to get an offer elsewhere to use as leverage. With the help of an executive recruiter, Bornstein did just that. To her surprise, she liked both the other company and the proposed position.
"But all things being equal, I still wanted to stay with the company where I was already working," she says. However, if the negotiations fell through, Bornstein felt she could be happy at the other company.
4. Open negotiations with a reasonable salary request. Bornstein took a real risk: She told the company where she worked the exact terms of the outside offer she had received. If the company couldn't meet her request, she would have to take the other job. "It was a huge gamble, but I had to give them a concrete number of what they had to match, or else they would have continued to stay focused on their salary figure [which was 15% lower]," Bornstein says.
She cited the dollar figure she wanted -- exactly what the other company had already offered her. Since that offer had given her an idea of her worth, she knew the figure she was asking for was fair.
5. Focus on your strengths. Bornstein believed her strengths were knowing the company, the job that needed to be done, and how to do it -- and having her employers' trust.
6. Show concrete examples of your value. Bornstein knew the company liked her work but was just dragging its feet in extending a full-time position to her. The other offer made her value even clearer to the company. And since she had been the only employee working in operations management, she knew the company would be hard-pressed to replace her with someone who could get up to speed quickly.
7. Be firm about your needs but flexible about how to fill them. Bornstein didn't care how the company paid her -- whether in straight salary or a combination of salary plus bonus or options -- but she knew she wanted a certain figure. "I wasn't married to the structure of how they paid me, but I was married to the bottom-line dollar figure," she says. "I was clear that I needed the firm that I was interested in to match certain criteria in order for me to work there and not feel like I left too much on the table."
8. Know how to turn negative statements to your advantage. "The tenor of the negotiation was tense because I had a history with the firm," Bornstein says of her session with the company president and executive vice-president. "They didn't want to lose me, and I didn't want to walk away. It was a little like high-stakes poker."
Before the negotiating started, Bornstein told the two executives that regardless of their final offer, she wouldn't give them an answer until the next day. At one point, the exasperated executive vice-president asked, "What do you want?" The parties had been negotiating for some time, and Bornstein had told them more than once what she wanted. The question implied that if only she could clarify her needs, then the company would meet them. Instead of being intimidated by that tactic and backing down, Bornstein took the opportunity to spell out her needs again -- and make it clear that her terms hadn't changed. "That way the ball was back in their court," she says.
9. Stay with it: "No" may be only the beginning. Bornstein stuck to her demands. After four hours of white-knuckle negotiations, she walked away victorious. "Negotiating requires practice, and the more you do it, the better you are," she says. No kidding. Bornstein got what she wanted, and at this point, I'd hate to be on other side of the bargaining table from her.
Gutner is Women & Investing columnist for Business Week. She offers advice twice a month for BW Online Edited by Patricia O'Connell
Copyright 2000, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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