Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

HOW TO NEGOTIATE A BETTER SALARY
One of the critical factors in business school rankings is how
well their graduates are compensated. So I tell every MBA
class I lecture that my first objective is to single-handedly
raise the ranking of their school by teaching them how to

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negotiate a better salary.
I break down the process into three parts that blend this
chapter’s dynamics in a way that not only brings you better
money, but convinces your boss to fight to get it for you.
BE PLEASANTLY PERSISTENT ON NONSALARY
TERMS
Pleasant persistence is a kind of emotional anchoring that
creates empathy with the boss and builds the right
psychological environment for constructive discussion. And
the more you talk about nonsalary terms, the more likely
you are to hear the full range of their options. If they can’t
meet your nonsalary requests, they may even counter with
more money, like they did with a French-born American
former student of mine. She kept asking—with a big smile—
for an extra week of vacation beyond what the company
normally gave. She was “French,” she said, and that’s what
French people did. The hiring company was completely
handcuffed on the vacation issue, but because she was so
darned delightful, and because she introduced a
nonmonetary variable into the notion of her value, they
countered by increasing her salary offer.
SALARY TERMS WITHOUT SUCCESS TERMS IS
RUSSIAN ROULETTE
Once you’ve negotiated a salary, make sure to define
success for your position—as well as metrics for your next
raise. That’s meaningful for you and free for your boss,
much like giving me a magazine cover story was for the bar

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association. It gets you a planned raise and, by defining
your success in relation to your boss’s supervision, it leads
into the next step . . .