Q&A with Linda and Sara

Q:  There are a lot of negotiation books on the market. What makes yours different?
A:  Two big things stand out. First, most negotiation books focus solely on the tactics that work well during a negotiation. Ask For It starts much earlier. We help readers identify a whole host of situations that contain opportunities to negotiate—opportunities they may have missed. We also devote much of the book to explaining what to do before you even open the discussion—what affects your power in a negotiation, what information to gather, and how to develop an appropriate negotiation target, for example. The book is also specifically targeted at issues women face when negotiating. Although men and women share many of the same concerns when they negotiate, certain issues stand out for women, such as: How can I become more comfortable with negotiating? How does the other side’s impression of me affect their willingness to give me what I want? How do I keep from selling myself short? Ask For It helps women shows women ways to make the most of their personal strengths, understand the larger context in which they’ll be making their request, and gives them the tools to put together a workable negotiation plan and follow through.

Q:  How does your book go about teaching women to negotiate?
A:  We’ve actually developed a four-phase program to walk women through the process. The first phase, Everything Is Negotiable,helps women take a fresh look at their lives. We help identify what’s missing, or what could be better, or where they’re treading water and ready to move forward. This phase helps women consider a wide range of possibilities in their lives life that are ripe for negotiation—for improvement.

Lay the Groundwork, the second phase, shows women how to get ready. We introduce some key skills and explain how women can assemble the information they’ll need to make a persuasive argument. We introduce the basic concepts of negotiation strategy, and show women how to assess the power of their bargaining position—and take steps to improve it if they can.
In the third phase of the book, Get Ready, we focus on fundamentals: How to set the right target, decide what to ask for, make the first offer (or avoid doing so if you can), and identify the best time to ask. We describe the advantages of taking a cooperative approach to bargaining—working with the other side to find solutions that work for both parties—rather than steeling yourself for battle and going in determined to “win.” We suggest ways to manage the pace of the conversation and resist feeling railroaded or cut off too soon. The pros and cons of bluffing, how much to concede on each “round” of a negotiation, and ways to get the process back on track if it feels as though it’s headed in the wrong direction: It’s all here.

We end this phase with a “negotiation challenge” program—what we call our “Negotiation Gym.” The gym exercises help women practice their skills in a variety of situations, working up from easy, no-brainer requests to things that matter a lot more. By the time a woman has finished her gym “workout,” she will have attempted a lot of negotiations, large and small, in different areas of her life. She’ll understand what she does well, know her danger zones, and—perhaps most important—she’ll gotten used to hearing ‘no.’ Getting used to hearing ‘no’ is so important because a lot of women decide not to negotiate at all because they’re afraid of getting turned down. Feeling more comfortable with rejection makes women less cautious. They’re ready to forge ahead even when they’re not certain of the outcome.

The final phase, Put It All Together, helps women refine their strategy. In this section, we stress the benefits of getting together with a colleague or a friend to role-play—practice—in advance. We also include advice to help alleviate the anxiety many women feel about negotiating. This not only makes the process is more pleasant, it helps women resist conceding too soon because an unexpected reaction has shaken their confidence. We also talk about ways for women to create the best impression and avoid being branded “difficult,” “high maintenance,” “overbearing,” “pushy,” “not a team player”—all those great terms used to rebuff women who come on “too strong.” In the final chapter, we describe effective “endgame” tactics—how to avoid impasses and close the deal.

Q: Isn’t it just older women who need to bolster their negotiation skills and learn to ask?
A: It's funny that so many people assume this. A lot of the younger women we talked to even said as much in their interviews. They believe that they're just as assertive about what they want as their male peers. Unfortunately, this is not true. Younger women may assume that things have changed far more than they have, but our research shows that even among men and women in their 20s and early 30s, men are much more likely to initiate negotiations than women.

Q: Why is learning to negotiate effectively so important?
A:  The consequences of not negotiating in the workplace are pretty extreme.  First and foremost, women earn much less money than men over the course of their careers. We calculated that just by not negotiating her first job offer—simply accepting what she's offered rather than negotiating for more—a woman sacrifices anywhere from half a million dollars to one and a half million dollars in lost income over the course of her career. This is a massive loss for a one-time negotiation—for avoiding what is usually no more than five minutes of discomfort—and it's an unnecessary loss, because most employers expect people to negotiate and therefore offer less than they're prepared to pay. And far more men than women negotiate their first offers. Since men also negotiate more than women throughout their careers—or negotiate more aggressively—the financial losses to women can be truly staggering.

In addition to the financial consequences, women often advance more slowly than equally qualified men because men are more likely than women to ask for prestigious assignments, volunteer for opportunities that will give them more visibility, and pursue raises and promotions that they think they deserve. Women, in contrast, often expect that hard work and high quality work will be recognized and rewarded without their asking. And this is frequently not true. Because they don't ask to be considered for the opportunities and advantages for which men ask, they often aren't recognized for the good work they do and don't progress as fast or as far in their careers as their talents should take them.

Q: Is your book only focused on negotiating in the workplace?
A: Not at all. We focus on all areas of a woman’s life. Day-to-day, women encounter situations in which they can—or must—negotiate with their significant others, their children, parents, other relatives, friends, contractors, airline ticket agents, physicians, gardeners, landlords, pretty much anybody. The ideas and tools in Ask For It can help women with all of these negotiations, the big ones and the little ones.

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