Always Be Negotiatin’
You always want to keep yourself on your toes and practice the skill of negotiation. There’s always room for improvement. For instance, if you’re on a call and their first offer surpasses your asking price, it’s likely they have an even higher figure in-store – it doesn’t hurt to pretend your asking price is higher to see if they’ll offer more. The worst that can happen is they’ll say no, in which case you can simply accept the first offer.
And even if they don’t offer you more, you can always qualify it: is that figure “portal to portal”? Does it include mileage? You get the picture. Dollar figures aren’t the only thing that’s subject to negotiation. There’s always something you can haggle over.
Basically, though, whatever figure they give you, it’s merely an initial offer. They always leave themselves some room, in case there’s a counteroffer.
Look at it as a game you’re playing with yourself – to see what you can get away with this time. The worst thing that can happen is that they say they can’t accommodate you. You won’t lose the job because of it.
And, even if you lose that job because your asking price was too high, they will remember you – and they will very likely call on you when they have a higher budget.
