I recently advised a client on a salary negotiation and he ended up with an offer that was more than double what he was willing to accept.

He had originally called me feeling pretty stressed-out. The salary negotiation was a few days away. In his last conversation with his prospective “new boss”, he had been asked a question that he felt indicated they were going to offer him an amount much lower than what he was hoping for. He said to me “If they offer me that, in this economy, I’ve got to take it. I’ve got no choice. Heck, I’d even take less.”

The make things more difficult, my client is also a person that avoids conflict. He doesn’t like to negotiate on his own behalf. He prefers to work things out in advance and bring solutions to the table rather than fight it out at the table. He is representative of an extremely significant percentage of highly successful people, including CEO’s.

We talked through all of the other issues besides salary that were involved in the job, the responsibilities, the plans for the future and why the job even existed in the first place. We discussed what he brought to the table that was unique and what his commitment to his employer would for the future.

Then we talked about the possible responses from his prospective employer and how to prepare. My client, like many people was only preparing for one eventuality, which was one part of what I call the hope/fear axis. And he didn’t even realize that the thought process he was going through was in fact preparation.

What he was doing was envisioning what he was afraid they would say and how he was afraid he would respond as a result. This is not uncommon. If this is the extent of someone’s preparation they are only prepared for failure.

If you’ve only thought things through envisioning one type of response, as soon as the person you are negotiating with responds differently, you are caught off guard. The reality is, no one can predict another person’s responses accurately all the time.

I worked with him on what his best (hope side of the axis) answers would be. What were the best things he could say if they said what he was concerned they would say? What were the best things he could say if they said what he hoped they would say? In this way, a person tends to prepare themselves for the spectrum of responses.

The result: he told me that the preparation I did with him put him in a “zone”. He was relaxed and it didn’t feel like a negotiation, it felt like a conversation. His prospective employer was impressed with how well he had thought through the issues of the future and could see his commitment to the job. The employer put a salary range on the table that both sides were happy with.