March 11, 2025 • 17 mins
Bad assumptions.
Change that.
Assumptions of any kind.
They simply ruin your negotiation process.
Any time you speak first, you’re making an assumption.
Anytime you’re thinking, you’re making an assumption.
I know this sounds ridiculous, but unless you actually have a job offer in hand, you don’t know what the employer is thinking.
This is public enemy #1—assumptions—when it comes to negotiating an offer.
Public enemy #2 is not knowing what success looks like and how to argue your value in relation to it.
Let’s have a chat on that today.
Enjoy Negotiating Salary | The Information You Need Before You Counteroffer and please think of me with every automatic deposit of your paycheck!
If you'd like to build a great career and lead a rewarding life, check out some of these other places where I share my teachings:
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2. I have hundreds of educational and inspirational videos on my YouTube Channel.
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--Andy
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Money! Let's talk money one of the things that I want to cover with you on compensation one
of the biggest mistakes that I see people make I see them make a lot but one of the biggest ones
is you make assumptions about what the job is going to entail you make assumptions about what
(00:24):
the company can afford you make assumptions about the job description has to be the job description
meaning whatever you're interviewing for has to be whatever's on their silly piece of paper and
not none of that is true there's no such thing as Market pay because your pay is determined on a day
that you transact when you sign the employment agreement based on what that company was willing
(00:48):
to pay for you on that day it doesn't matter what they pay their team it doesn't matter what they
pay paid last year it doesn't matter what they think the market pay is or how much they think
your actual skills are worth none of that matters it there's a whole host of things that matter I'm
about to tell you what the five biggest ones are okay and so I want you to realize when you go into
(01:12):
an interviewing process if any of you ask me well the job is above me the job is below me should I
interview the answer is yes the answer is always yes because I'm about the art of the possible the
exceptions to the rule are but Andy I absolutely love my job and I'm working 12 hours a day
so I don't really have time to kick the tires then fine then go off and be happy and just be
(01:34):
too busy being happy in your 12-hour a day job so so I want you to just I want you to think about
these five things the first one is they have goals what are they trying to accomplish remember when I
said obsess about them and when when I said obsess about them and don't worry about stupid stuff like
what's your greatest weakness and tell me about a time you overcame a challenge forget all that
(01:57):
nonsense I want you to think about what is it that they are trying to accomplish and if you don't
know what that is then my first remark is going to be then why are you even interviewing for the
job because you obviously don't know what that job does or if you're a new you know new professional
that's different you might not truly understand but you've got Andy AI if you're in my program and
(02:20):
you can ask Andy AI but generally speaking what are the goals of the unit what are the goals of
the team what are the goals of the individual position that I'm trying to interview for
these are drivers that determine whether you get hired and whether you get paid what is it
that they're trying to achieve uh I I I always use this example because it's always so true but I'm
(02:43):
a small business career coaching services that I provide to individuals who want to find jobs and
thrive in them I'm always interested in having more people come to my Thursday live show or get
on my newsletter right I want people to discover me so that they can learn about my teaching see
if it resonates with them see if my my shtick and my style and my direct approach with it's
(03:07):
so jovial and entertaining and expiring inspiring resonates with them as if it would not resonate
with every person on the planet you know what I mean right so I always want I so that to me is
marketing right there's a level of attraction well I always want more leads every marketing
department generates the leads and I want to do that without advertising so I want zero expense
(03:28):
and I want all the people that come to my Thursday live shows to buy something wouldn't that be great
right that's what I want well that's my goal well in my mind when I hire somebody to help
me with marketing I have a metric in mind what are my goals if I if you said to me Andy I'm
a marketing genius and uh I'd love to know what your what Your metrics are for Success around your
(03:53):
your goals and I say well gez if if I don't do anything and I don't show up and I just hide in my
my my office all day and no one sees me and I don't do anything or send an email we get 10
and some odd leads a day thanks to YouTube and Linked In And whatever I'd love to 10x that a
day that's my goal can you get me 1,000 instead of 100 or whatever it is right that's a goal now what
(04:20):
if you can get me 10,000 leads a day would I not want to pay more for that of course I would but
you have to know that in order to know if you can provide more value to me you need to know what my
goal is so why are you quitting a job before you even know what that is specifically then what are
(04:40):
the problems well Andy what problems do you have in getting the thousand a day I don't know how to
run a Facebook ad I don't I don't know how to to I don't know where to go to find the right
kind of people that will buy my products that's my problem it isn't that I wouldn't spend the
money I'm happy to spend the money if we get the results right so I don't I I have a I don't know
(05:03):
what I'm doing problem that could be somebody else might have a their videos stinks problem
or they just don't have a lot of content right but you don't know that until you talk to me
but you could speculate because you're a marketer and you know there's a finite number of issues in
marketing Andy what do you think your solution is well I think if I hire a market my solution
(05:30):
is to get them to evaluate my content chop it up circulate it run an ad and just ask me to tell me
what the budget needs to be and that's my solution and so for that I have a job description that says
you need to be a marketer with five years of experience um advertising on Facebook and blah
blah blah right that's what companies do they have a solution in mind and they have a profile in mind
(05:54):
of what the person's going to be and what else they have an estimated cost that's the salary
range okay all of these are at play and all of these affect whether you get hired and what you
get paid how many of you are guilty of looking at a job description and thinking well that's too
(06:18):
low for me but I want to interview there but I'm not going to do it or that's too Out Of Reach but
what if you came to me and you said well Andy um I could get you 10,000 leads a day not a th000 leads
a day it's a matter of budget because I know how to do this and here's your solution and it will
only cost you half of what you think and I'll be able to do it twice as fast would I not want to
(06:43):
pay more would I would I not reshape the profile of the individual and so now it's not a 5-year
person it's a 10-year person or what if you come to me and you say Andy I see it's you're looking
for somebody with 5 years of experience but I'm telling you I I did this exact thing for the last
year for this other career coach here's what she had here's what she was getting here's what she
(07:04):
was doing here's what I changed and in two months I was able to tune all the ads to get her this and
what is that person going to do they're going to take me through my car technique and tell me
exactly how they did that do you see what I mean you're you're you're you're trying to increase or
decrease maybe I have problems so badly that I don't even know it and you're going to tell me
(07:30):
what those are and you're going to say there's no way a five-year person is going to know how
to do that because you just don't they don't have enough experience and this is this is a very very
sophisticated problem that entails these kind of ingredients and these kind of solutions and this
is what you need to do to overcome it okay well I didn't even know how bad off I was all of these
(07:52):
things can be manipulated how long do you get to do that the entire interviewing process follow me
okay so what you need to do is you need to figure out throughout the entire interviewing process
what is success look like and what does success look like has factors well what areas are you
(08:13):
going to be covering what are your specific responsibilities what are those goals okay so
you're going to come in and you're going to run my marketing and your goal is going to be lead
generation then we're also going to look at the expense of the lead generation then we're going to
look at the conversion rate of the lead generation it does me no good if you're generating me tons of
(08:35):
leads if none of them buy anything it just costs me money so I need to know what that is and I need
to know how we're going to measure it by day by week by month I need to know what matters to you
more what the priorities are do do you want me to help you Market your job search coaching programs
(08:55):
or your leadership coaching programs whatever it is you have to know these things things and
then Andy what resources are you going to kick in is Cara going to help me is do you have the
budget to do this all of these things need to be evaluated in what success looks like it's not
just number four you follow me and because if you don't have these things you there is absolutely
(09:18):
no way that you can make a counter offer to show me that you're worth more does this make sense
how many of you try to make up a counter offer and say well that company over there is paying
more for somebody with my skills I'd say good go ahead and go work over there but to me you
haven't convinced me that you're actually going to produce the results I need to be for me to raise
(09:42):
what I'm going to pay you uh to be commensurate with the value you're going to contribute what
you need to be able to to show me how you're going to take me into a place that's better
than I even thought of and by the way you could say something like Andy I can help you achieve
your 10,000 day or 1,000 a day uh leads but it'll only cost you a fraction of what you
(10:04):
think so that's that's that's what I want I want you to make sure you understand what success looks
like and somebody saying what's this I disagree with some of this sometimes the delay the is it
delay between what you are looking for and what the present is way too I don't even know what
(10:26):
that means so I'm telling you all of these are at play all of the time and what you're experiencing
when you go in could be a random function of one company but it doesn't even matter if I
if I say no I'm dead set on this is my rate or this is what I'm willing to pay that could be
(10:47):
a function of that's how much I value it and much of the time people who say these aren't at play I
would simply say to you no they're not at play for you because you didn't convince the employer that
you were worth it you didn't make the argument enough so if if if you're going to tell me that
you're going to create more value you going need to show me how you do that and then you're going
(11:07):
to need to show me explicitly what that's going to be worth to me in order to convince me to open
up the pocketbook I may or may not be willing to alter the responsibilities but that doesn't
matter to me even if the responsibilities are the same but the profile of who can do those
responsibilities I could completely change your opinion on that right if I want it doesn't matter
(11:28):
to me how many years of experience you have if you explain to me what you can do and how you
can do it I'm willing to give you a chance don't don't don't think in terms of those limits they're
all at play all right next thing is all right so I want you to think about it this way if you're
actually going to make a counter offer if you're actually going to make a counter offer you've got
(11:51):
to be able to know what the goal is and whether you can increase the goal or accelerate the goal
meaning I could get that up and running faster for you which means it costs less I can actually
get you more of you want three Partners I can get you 10 okay can I increase it or can I accelerate
(12:11):
it you're always thinking in terms of profit next thing what are the problems have you solved those
problems or do you know exactly how to solve those problems if you cannot convince me that you've
either seen it before or if you're talking about the future and in my environment what you would do
exactly when you get here that makes complete sense to me I'm not going to I'm not going to
(12:36):
favor that so you need to be clear on not only what you're going to achieve but how you're going
to achieve it and why it's going to work which you to ask yourself this before you're asking for
more money the next thing is have you implemented that solution we've tried to hire people to run
Facebook ads for us and they say how successful they are with helping coaches except they were not
(13:03):
successful in helping us why because we're selling a more complicated product but I was willing to
give them a shot and it was clear they were not equipped to do it because they hadn't experienced
something like us before even though they had 169 references so have they implemented the exact
solution or do they know what to do or do you have a new creative way for me to actually do something
(13:30):
so I used to pay somebody actually two people to take my video each week somebody watched
it they sliced it up notated what the topic was of either the the teaching portion the
question you asked me or whatever to create a video that video that video that had to be
(13:50):
watched by somebody at a slower rate evaluated by somebody at a slower rate segmented by somebody
at a slower rate and then turned over to a videographer to actually cosmetically
cut and do whatever that he was going to do something that cost me almost a 100 Grand a
year we now have a system that I spend $300 on and Cara runs it so we there's some of her time
(14:16):
that's an expense and it automates it and I get a better product than the two human bodies could
do for me all right well that's an Innovative solution well I have now have almost a 100,000
of free cash that can be reallocated I could give some of that to you I'd be willing to pay more
(14:38):
if you saved me a whole bunch so is the solution different than what I think it is no no you don't
want to do that because even though you think you want to build that platform you don't because of
this can you convince me of that what else have you substantiated irrespective of how many years
of experience you have what your experience is what your troubleshooting skills are what whatever
(15:04):
skills are that you have have you substantiated for me that you can actually do this job achieving
these goals overcoming these problems if you can't do that then I might not be willing to change the
profile for you this is only if you need to change the profile or I coached a guy um a while back and
(15:25):
they were going to hire him to be the director of it and and we were looking at getting him a
salary increase in the negotiation and he was able to take on a whole another person's job without
them having to hire that person for the entire year and that other person probably was $120,000
(15:47):
and he could handle it as a side job in his in under his purview so we were able to negotiate
more money because we saved them money because his profile included experience with those functions
and this was this was a person who when he got on the initial phone call the hiring official said
(16:11):
here's our top salary if it's not good enough for you we can end the call right now and their first
offer was 30 grand higher than their top off than what she said in the first phone call and the out
the door offer was 50 Grand more so what what happened between the time she said she couldn't
(16:31):
pay anymore until the time he actually was hired he changed all these things because he gave her
a reason so you've got to look at this stuff before you do the counter offer now I wanted
to just get your mind right here there is more because I have a free salary negotiation Workshop
you could check this out I would strongly recommend you you watch it there's more in
(16:55):
there there's there's more prescription in the salary negotiation Workshop and I gave you today
Money! Let's talk money one of the things that I want to cover with you on compensation one
of the biggest mistakes that I see people make I see them make a lot but one of the biggest ones
is you make assumptions about what the job is going to entail you make assumptions about what
(00:24):
the company can afford you make assumptions about the job description has to be the job description
meaning whatever you're interviewing for has to be whatever's on their silly piece of paper and
not none of that is true there's no such thing as Market pay because your pay is determined on a day
that you transact when you sign the employment agreement based on what that company was willing
(00:48):
to pay for you on that day it doesn't matter what they pay their team it doesn't matter what they
pay paid last year it doesn't matter what they think the market pay is or how much they think
your actual skills are worth none of that matters it there's a whole host of things that matter I'm
about to tell you what the five biggest ones are okay and so I want you to realize when you go into
(01:12):
an interviewing process if any of you ask me well the job is above me the job is below me should I
interview the answer is yes the answer is always yes because I'm about the art of the possible the
exceptions to the rule are but Andy I absolutely love my job and I'm working 12 hours a day
so I don't really have time to kick the tires then fine then go off and be happy and just be
(01:34):
too busy being happy in your 12-hour a day job so so I want you to just I want you to think about
these five things the first one is they have goals what are they trying to accomplish remember when I
said obsess about them and when when I said obsess about them and don't worry about stupid stuff like
what's your greatest weakness and tell me about a time you overcame a challenge forget all that
(01:57):
nonsense I want you to think about what is it that they are trying to accomplish and if you don't
know what that is then my first remark is going to be then why are you even interviewing for the
job because you obviously don't know what that job does or if you're a new you know new professional
that's different you might not truly understand but you've got Andy AI if you're in my program and
(02:20):
you can ask Andy AI but generally speaking what are the goals of the unit what are the goals of
the team what are the goals of the individual position that I'm trying to interview for
these are drivers that determine whether you get hired and whether you get paid what is it
that they're trying to achieve uh I I I always use this example because it's always so true but I'm
(02:43):
a small business career coaching services that I provide to individuals who want to find jobs and
thrive in them I'm always interested in having more people come to my Thursday live show or get
on my newsletter right I want people to discover me so that they can learn about my teaching see
if it resonates with them see if my my shtick and my style and my direct approach with it's
(03:07):
so jovial and entertaining and expiring inspiring resonates with them as if it would not resonate
with every person on the planet you know what I mean right so I always want I so that to me is
marketing right there's a level of attraction well I always want more leads every marketing
department generates the leads and I want to do that without advertising so I want zero expense
(03:28):
and I want all the people that come to my Thursday live shows to buy something wouldn't that be great
right that's what I want well that's my goal well in my mind when I hire somebody to help
me with marketing I have a metric in mind what are my goals if I if you said to me Andy I'm
a marketing genius and uh I'd love to know what your what Your metrics are for Success around your
(03:53):
your goals and I say well gez if if I don't do anything and I don't show up and I just hide in my
my my office all day and no one sees me and I don't do anything or send an email we get 10
and some odd leads a day thanks to YouTube and Linked In And whatever I'd love to 10x that a
day that's my goal can you get me 1,000 instead of 100 or whatever it is right that's a goal now what
(04:20):
if you can get me 10,000 leads a day would I not want to pay more for that of course I would but
you have to know that in order to know if you can provide more value to me you need to know what my
goal is so why are you quitting a job before you even know what that is specifically then what are
(04:40):
the problems well Andy what problems do you have in getting the thousand a day I don't know how to
run a Facebook ad I don't I don't know how to to I don't know where to go to find the right
kind of people that will buy my products that's my problem it isn't that I wouldn't spend the
money I'm happy to spend the money if we get the results right so I don't I I have a I don't know
(05:03):
what I'm doing problem that could be somebody else might have a their videos stinks problem
or they just don't have a lot of content right but you don't know that until you talk to me
but you could speculate because you're a marketer and you know there's a finite number of issues in
marketing Andy what do you think your solution is well I think if I hire a market my solution
(05:30):
is to get them to evaluate my content chop it up circulate it run an ad and just ask me to tell me
what the budget needs to be and that's my solution and so for that I have a job description that says
you need to be a marketer with five years of experience um advertising on Facebook and blah
blah blah right that's what companies do they have a solution in mind and they have a profile in mind
(05:54):
of what the person's going to be and what else they have an estimated cost that's the salary
range okay all of these are at play and all of these affect whether you get hired and what you
get paid how many of you are guilty of looking at a job description and thinking well that's too
(06:18):
low for me but I want to interview there but I'm not going to do it or that's too Out Of Reach but
what if you came to me and you said well Andy um I could get you 10,000 leads a day not a th000 leads
a day it's a matter of budget because I know how to do this and here's your solution and it will
only cost you half of what you think and I'll be able to do it twice as fast would I not want to
(06:43):
pay more would I would I not reshape the profile of the individual and so now it's not a 5-year
person it's a 10-year person or what if you come to me and you say Andy I see it's you're looking
for somebody with 5 years of experience but I'm telling you I I did this exact thing for the last
year for this other career coach here's what she had here's what she was getting here's what she
(07:04):
was doing here's what I changed and in two months I was able to tune all the ads to get her this and
what is that person going to do they're going to take me through my car technique and tell me
exactly how they did that do you see what I mean you're you're you're you're trying to increase or
decrease maybe I have problems so badly that I don't even know it and you're going to tell me
(07:30):
what those are and you're going to say there's no way a five-year person is going to know how
to do that because you just don't they don't have enough experience and this is this is a very very
sophisticated problem that entails these kind of ingredients and these kind of solutions and this
is what you need to do to overcome it okay well I didn't even know how bad off I was all of these
(07:52):
things can be manipulated how long do you get to do that the entire interviewing process follow me
okay so what you need to do is you need to figure out throughout the entire interviewing process
what is success look like and what does success look like has factors well what areas are you
(08:13):
going to be covering what are your specific responsibilities what are those goals okay so
you're going to come in and you're going to run my marketing and your goal is going to be lead
generation then we're also going to look at the expense of the lead generation then we're going to
look at the conversion rate of the lead generation it does me no good if you're generating me tons of
(08:35):
leads if none of them buy anything it just costs me money so I need to know what that is and I need
to know how we're going to measure it by day by week by month I need to know what matters to you
more what the priorities are do do you want me to help you Market your job search coaching programs
(08:55):
or your leadership coaching programs whatever it is you have to know these things things and
then Andy what resources are you going to kick in is Cara going to help me is do you have the
budget to do this all of these things need to be evaluated in what success looks like it's not
just number four you follow me and because if you don't have these things you there is absolutely
(09:18):
no way that you can make a counter offer to show me that you're worth more does this make sense
how many of you try to make up a counter offer and say well that company over there is paying
more for somebody with my skills I'd say good go ahead and go work over there but to me you
haven't convinced me that you're actually going to produce the results I need to be for me to raise
(09:42):
what I'm going to pay you uh to be commensurate with the value you're going to contribute what
you need to be able to to show me how you're going to take me into a place that's better
than I even thought of and by the way you could say something like Andy I can help you achieve
your 10,000 day or 1,000 a day uh leads but it'll only cost you a fraction of what you
(10:04):
think so that's that's that's what I want I want you to make sure you understand what success looks
like and somebody saying what's this I disagree with some of this sometimes the delay the is it
delay between what you are looking for and what the present is way too I don't even know what
(10:26):
that means so I'm telling you all of these are at play all of the time and what you're experiencing
when you go in could be a random function of one company but it doesn't even matter if I
if I say no I'm dead set on this is my rate or this is what I'm willing to pay that could be
(10:47):
a function of that's how much I value it and much of the time people who say these aren't at play I
would simply say to you no they're not at play for you because you didn't convince the employer that
you were worth it you didn't make the argument enough so if if if you're going to tell me that
you're going to create more value you going need to show me how you do that and then you're going
(11:07):
to need to show me explicitly what that's going to be worth to me in order to convince me to open
up the pocketbook I may or may not be willing to alter the responsibilities but that doesn't
matter to me even if the responsibilities are the same but the profile of who can do those
responsibilities I could completely change your opinion on that right if I want it doesn't matter
(11:28):
to me how many years of experience you have if you explain to me what you can do and how you
can do it I'm willing to give you a chance don't don't don't think in terms of those limits they're
all at play all right next thing is all right so I want you to think about it this way if you're
actually going to make a counter offer if you're actually going to make a counter offer you've got
(11:51):
to be able to know what the goal is and whether you can increase the goal or accelerate the goal
meaning I could get that up and running faster for you which means it costs less I can actually
get you more of you want three Partners I can get you 10 okay can I increase it or can I accelerate
(12:11):
it you're always thinking in terms of profit next thing what are the problems have you solved those
problems or do you know exactly how to solve those problems if you cannot convince me that you've
either seen it before or if you're talking about the future and in my environment what you would do
exactly when you get here that makes complete sense to me I'm not going to I'm not going to
(12:36):
favor that so you need to be clear on not only what you're going to achieve but how you're going
to achieve it and why it's going to work which you to ask yourself this before you're asking for
more money the next thing is have you implemented that solution we've tried to hire people to run
Facebook ads for us and they say how successful they are with helping coaches except they were not
(13:03):
successful in helping us why because we're selling a more complicated product but I was willing to
give them a shot and it was clear they were not equipped to do it because they hadn't experienced
something like us before even though they had 169 references so have they implemented the exact
solution or do they know what to do or do you have a new creative way for me to actually do something
(13:30):
so I used to pay somebody actually two people to take my video each week somebody watched
it they sliced it up notated what the topic was of either the the teaching portion the
question you asked me or whatever to create a video that video that video that had to be
(13:50):
watched by somebody at a slower rate evaluated by somebody at a slower rate segmented by somebody
at a slower rate and then turned over to a videographer to actually cosmetically
cut and do whatever that he was going to do something that cost me almost a 100 Grand a
year we now have a system that I spend $300 on and Cara runs it so we there's some of her time
(14:16):
that's an expense and it automates it and I get a better product than the two human bodies could
do for me all right well that's an Innovative solution well I have now have almost a 100,000
of free cash that can be reallocated I could give some of that to you I'd be willing to pay more
(14:38):
if you saved me a whole bunch so is the solution different than what I think it is no no you don't
want to do that because even though you think you want to build that platform you don't because of
this can you convince me of that what else have you substantiated irrespective of how many years
of experience you have what your experience is what your troubleshooting skills are what whatever
(15:04):
skills are that you have have you substantiated for me that you can actually do this job achieving
these goals overcoming these problems if you can't do that then I might not be willing to change the
profile for you this is only if you need to change the profile or I coached a guy um a while back and
(15:25):
they were going to hire him to be the director of it and and we were looking at getting him a
salary increase in the negotiation and he was able to take on a whole another person's job without
them having to hire that person for the entire year and that other person probably was $120,000
(15:47):
and he could handle it as a side job in his in under his purview so we were able to negotiate
more money because we saved them money because his profile included experience with those functions
and this was this was a person who when he got on the initial phone call the hiring official said
(16:11):
here's our top salary if it's not good enough for you we can end the call right now and their first
offer was 30 grand higher than their top off than what she said in the first phone call and the out
the door offer was 50 Grand more so what what happened between the time she said she couldn't
(16:31):
pay anymore until the time he actually was hired he changed all these things because he gave her
a reason so you've got to look at this stuff before you do the counter offer now I wanted
to just get your mind right here there is more because I have a free salary negotiation Workshop
you could check this out I would strongly recommend you you watch it there's more in
(16:55):
there there's there's more prescription in the salary negotiation Workshop and I gave you today
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