And the way you do that is by finding variables – other factors you can bring into the negotiation. For example:

•    If your boss simply doesn’t have the funds at the moment, you could suggest that if they can give you a written undertaking to increase your salary by an agreed amount in six months’ time, you’ll settle for a smaller increase in the interim.
•    Maybe they will agree a standard rise of 2 per cent above inflation for the next three years, instead of giving it all to you now.
•    Perhaps you could agree a rise in six months conditional on your meeting performance targets.
•    How about making part of your salary performance-related?

All of these are good examples of the factors that can help to bring the two sides closer together in a negotiation.

The more variables you have, the more room for manoeuvre there is in the overall negotiation. So think through all the possible variables you could introduce, both when you’re preparing for the negotiation and during the course of it. Never stop looking for variables until you’ve reached an agreement you’re both happy with.

Get All the Cards on the Table
If your boss is a tricky kind of negotiator, there’s one ace they’ll be holding up their sleeve. They may well have concessions they want from you before they will agree to a rise. They might want you to agree to delay the pay rise, or to take on extra responsibilities. And if they are an underhand dealer, they will wait until the last minute to spring this on you. In other words, they will wait until you’ve pretty well agreed on the value of the rise and, for example, that it won’t take effect for another six months.

And then out of the blue: ‘Oh, and I’d like you to take over dealing with Philippa’s accounts while she’s on maternity leave.’ Now, it’s not that you necessarily don’t want to take over Philippa’s accounts. It’s just that if you do, that will increase your value even more, and with it the size of pay rise you deserve. But hang on, you’d almost finished negotiating, and your boss knows that you were about to accept a 3 per cent rise deferred for six months. It’s much harder now for you to backtrack and insist that you won’t take less than 4 per cent, and you want it from the date Philippa goes on leave. And your boss knows it.

The way to prevent this is very simple: ask your boss to put all their cards on the table, and do the same thing yourself. That way, you can balance all the issues against each other. All you have to do is to say, for example: ‘I want to talk to you about my salary, and I’d also like to discuss my performance targets. Are there any other issues we need to discuss at the same time?’ You’ve made it extremely difficult for your boss to keep back the fact that they want to talk to you about covering for Philippa while she’s away. If they don’t mention it, and then spring it on you later, you have the moral high ground and will find it much easier to insist that it be excluded from the discussion, or that you go back over the other points you’ve agreed and revise them in the light of the new information.

What if the Boss Keeps Something Back Until Afterwards?
It’s one thing getting all the cards on the table while you’re negotiating. But what if your boss raises an ostensibly new issue just after your pay rise is agreed? Your boss may deliberately wait until the whole pay rise is settled and then tell you, minutes or maybe days later, that they’d like you to take on new responsibilities. They’re banking on the fact that you won’t have the nerve to ask for another rise when you’ve only just agreed the last one. Well, tough on them. Don’t fall for it. If they can save a whole topic for later, so can you. Respond positively and enthusiastically, and as though butter wouldn’t melt in your mouth, in the same way you would if you hadn’t just been awarded a pay rise. Say something like, ‘That sounds like a terrific challenge; I’d enjoy it. I take it my salary would be adjusted to reflect the increased value I’d be bringing to the company?’

Never Give Free Concessions
This is a simple but critical rule for negotiating. All it means is that if your boss asks you to lower the amount you’re asking for, or concede that you will wait six months before it takes effect, you don’t simply say yes; you trade the concession for a matching concession on their part:

•    If they say, ‘I can offer you a pay rise effective from next January’, you don’t simply say, ‘OK, then.’ You say, ‘So long as the pay rise doesn’t drop below 3 per cent.’
•    When they say, ‘You can’t have a pay rise, but I can give you a commission bonus’, you say, ‘If we do it that way, the commission would need to be at least 5 per cent of gross.’
•    When they say, ‘The best I can do is 2 per cent’, you say, ‘I’d need an undertaking that you would raise that if I take on any significant new responsibilities.’

You’ve got the idea. This principle is crucial simply because it means that you end up with a better deal. Every time you lose something, you also gain something. Just make sure the concessions you gain roughly match the value of those you are giving.

Tough Cookie
When you don’t give free concessions, your boss will soon learn that you are a tough negotiator. They’ll think twice about asking concessions from you when they realize that every time they do, they have to give up something themselves. And In the long term, too, it’s a good thing if your boss knows you are no pushover when it comes to negotiating.

Agree to All or Nothing
The way you reach a final settlement in your negotiation is by moving all the variables around until they balance. So, for example, if the salary is going up by less than you wanted, you won’t agree to defer it by much. Of course you could defer it by more, but then you’d want a larger or smaller proportion of it to be performance related. Or maybe you’re happy to agree to a larger proportion being performance linked, but only so long as the return on good performance is higher. It’s as though all these factors are on sliding scales, and you are sliding one up as another goes down, keeping them all in a balance that produces a settlement you’re happy with.

The one thing you mustn’t do is to agree to any one variable before you agree to the rest of them. It would mean one of your sliders was stuck fast, and you couldn’t adjust it to bring the whole thing into balance. This makes it far harder to agree on a final deal, and you may have to give more ground than you wanted on one of your other sliding scales to get a balance.

So you want to outlaw from the negotiation any comment such as: ‘Right, we’ve agreed to defer the pay rise for six months. Now let’s talk about how big the rise will be.’ Don’t agree any such thing, and if your boss tries to railroad you with a comment like this just say, ‘We haven’t finalized the deferment yet; I’m still considering it. But I’m happy to go on and discuss the rise itself.’

Rounding Off
Once it is clear that you have found a balance that you are both happy with, that’s the time to sum up (or your boss may do so), outlining all the key points clearly: ‘So we’re agreed then. You’ll give me a 4 per cent rise to take effect from 1 May, and I’ll take on Philippa’s accounts during her six-month leave which starts in May.’ The simplest thing now is to ask your boss which one of the two of you should record the outcome of the meeting in writing, just so you can be sure that it gets put down in black and white, for future reference.

Don’t be surprised if your boss doesn’t give you a conclusive yes or no on the spot. Even if they negotiate the best deal they think they can get to keep you motivated and well rewarded – within their budget – they may still need to get their decision approved by senior management before they can go ahead. If you’ve given them the salient facts and presented your case well, you should have set them up nicely to argue your case on your behalf. If they tell you they have to refer the decision upwards, ask if you can supply any other information to help them.

There are also other responses you might get which aren’t the ‘yes’ you want to hear. These range from ‘It isn’t in the budget’ to ‘No one else at your level earns that much’.