Negotiating During COVID / Crisis

There’s no denying that negotiating a salary or benefits can be tough, and given the climate of the current Coronavirus crisis, it can even become more difficult.

Negotiation expert Alexandra Carter, has provided some negotiation tactics to help navigate these kinds of discussions during this time.

“I’m counseling people to make the argument about how they would be the wisest investment of a company’s funds at this particular moment. For example, by hiring or promoting you might save cash flow in the short term or help promote earnings in the long term,” says Carter.

Carter mentions that negotiating other benefits might be your best bet when you know the company is maxed out on salary, but has other resources it can pull from. It’s important to consider what might make a new role better for you, beyond money.

Once you start thinking of negotiating as conversation, the possibility of not getting what you want—yet—isn’t as intimidating. In fact, Carter doesn’t believe it’s ever black-and-white.

If you end up feeling like your negotiations are going nowhere fast, Carter suggests asking your negotiation partner if they’d consider having an unbiased third-party join the conversation as well.

“Having an objective party is not only helpful for all participants to locate a win-win, but the facilitator can guide the negotiation with activities that consider all the parts of the deal.”
The fact is that, in negotiation, the more we can see, the more we trust. And so it really, really helps not do it over the phone, but to do it in a place where it feels as close to a face-to-face as possible.