Terry Hird is a professional negotiator in Silicon Valley who enjoys teaching others the craft. Arranging a time to interview him by phone didn’t involve a lot of back and forth. It was a take it or leave it proposition.
Well, not really, I suppose I could have held out for an in-person meeting and then I would have been obliged to accept his location. That’s the thing about negotiations – you have to know when to press for what matters to you and be very selective about it. We agreed I would call him, but I’m no pushover.
A lack of good negotiation skills can hold back career advancement – and worse – says Hird who in addition to running his own firm also teaches an extension course at UC-Berkeley. “The most popular topics for [my students] are how to get a raise, and how to deal with a bad boss,” he says.
Pardon the generalization, but it turns out that two groups in particular are most in need of his instruction: women and immigrants. “Anyone who enters a negotiation with individuals from another culture needs to understand how they process information and come to decisions,” he says. “It has been quantified and proven that women are at a self-inflicted disadvantage when they negotiate for themselves. They [typically] don’t ask and don’t take care of themselves.”
This is an axiom shared by Deepika Bajaj, the force behind Invincibelle, a site that “empowers” women in the world. “In a corporate setting you need to be very clear about what you want,” says Bajaj. “If you get what you ask for you will be more productive in your job.”
Don’t Ask, Don’t Receive
“In this particular market most people would agree it’s a pretty good time to assert yourself – there’s pretty low unemployment,” says Hird. “You don’t ever threaten to walk because you have to be prepared for them to say ‘Don’t let the door hit you on the way out’. If you get a ‘no’ to a raise … ask ‘What do I need to do and by when?’ And you negotiate those terms so they’re aggressive – and make sure that you can clear the bar.”
And yes, he adds, “You have to be willing to walk. A lot of students look like deer in the headlights when you say that to them.”
Here are five bullet points about negotiations that Hird would like you to know:
- Be prepared. You have to do your homework. It doesn’t do any good to ask for raise if the company can’t pay it. If you’re going to go in and shoot from the hip and you haven’t armed yourself, you get caught up in the heat of the negotiation.
- You have to be willing to walk away.
- You’re trying to create value not divide it. Even if it’s 60-40 both sides should get more. A big mistake is people walk in and negotiate the interests of the asset. But before they divide it they should try to expand it.
- Rationality and fairness are relative. What’s rational and fair to you might be unfair to someone else.
- You have to practice asking for raises and promotions. By the third time Hird’s students get it down.
Is there that much of a discrepancy in unemployment from East Coast to West Coast?
When I read “In this particular market most people would agree it’s a pretty good time to assert yourself – there’s pretty low unemployment,” I thought I was reading a quote taken from an interview published several years ago.