Negotiation
Never Negotiate By Email
- by Holly Burton
Picture this: You’ve got a new job offer in hand and you’re gearing yourself up to ask them to increase the salary by a substantial amount. You’ve got your negotiation all planned out (with the help of your incredibly charming and very smart negotiation coach), and you’re ready to verbally joust your way into signing up for a new job and some fatter paycheques.
You pick up the phone and…immediately start browsing Instagram instead of dialing your new manager’s number.
*gulp*
You break into a cold sweat and come up with a new, genius plan to get the pay you want without having to break out the Ativan: Just email them.
You fall in love with the idea instantly. It’s perfect:
- You get to pre-think and pre-vet your initial offer so you seem like a super-smart professional
- You don’t have to listen to your nervous voice quiver on the phone, so they’ll never guess that you’re anything less than supremely confident
- You’ll have time to think through your counter offers and arguments (and frantically text your friends for advice!) since email doesn’t require instantaneous responses
And the cherry on the cake? You don’t even have to feel like a relic of a bygone era using outmoded telephone technology that has long been replaced by texting in the eyes of the trendsetting youths.
Ok WIMDIs, time to ruin the fantasy. Because email negotiating is almost never the right move.
Never Negotiate by Email
Look, I get it. Negotiating is terrifying for most of us, and email lets you sit at a comfy distance from the scary conversation. But exactly the thing we love about it – the distance from the scary conversation – is what sabotages your chances for success.
I never advise my negotiating consulting clients negotiate over email, and here’s why:
Most of us think that negotiation is about making offers, positioning our asks well, and having great counter arguments. All of that is about us – what we want, and how we’re communicating.
But that’s only half of the equation. Negotiation is about finding win-win solutions that both you and the other side can feel great saying an enthusiastic yes to. And to do that, we need to put just as much attention over there as we do over here.
Great negotiators are excellent at understanding the other party – what they want, what they don’t want, what their constraints are, and how they’re feeling. Building that understanding of the other side allows them to create compelling arguments that are tailor made to resonate and make counter offers the other side actually wants to say yes to.
Negotiating over email means that you lose access to some crucial tools that help you understand your negotiating counterpart. Yikes!
Here’s what you lose over email:
#1 - You Can’t Hear Tone
Over email, you lose the ability to gauge the emotional state of the person you’re negotiating with – and that’s a huge liability.
There’s a big difference between
yeah, I think we could do that [grumpy, resentful tone] and
yeah, I think we could do that [cheerful, excited tone]
One of those is a done deal…and the other one is the deal blowing up on you!
Tone – which you can only get face-to-face or over the phone – gives you clues about how your arguments are landing, how far you can push it, and how close the other party is to a yes (or a no!).
With that extra dimension of information, you can adjust your tactics moment-to-moment to give your counterpart what they need to sign on the dotted line.
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#2 - You Can’t Ask Questions
One of the most powerful tools in your understanding the other party arsenal is asking questions.
Great negotiators know that they can use questions to figure out what their counterpart wants, uncover objections, and build themselves a map of the zone of possible agreement. Then they use that information to collaborate with the other party to build potential solutions.
Really productive negotiations often have a lot of back and forth where both parties are asking and answering questions in quick succession to identify proposals that work.
Imagine a phone call negotiation that went like this:
You: I’d like to make $230k as the Director of RevOps
Them: I can offer you $200k.
You: Is that base salary or total compensation?
Them: Base Salary. There’s a bonus structure as well of 10%.
You: Ok, so my OTE would be $220k. What has to happen for the bonus to pay out?
Them: For the bonus to pay out, the whole company needs to hit its revenue goals and you need to hit your personal goals.
You: How often has that happened historically?
Them: Oh, we almost always get a full bonus payout. It’s not guaranteed, obviously, but our budgets have normally been quite achievable.
You: Ok, so $220 OTE is realistic. Would you be open to modifying the bonus structure to 15% instead? That way I can get the salary I’m looking for, but if we don’t hit targets you’re not on the hook for a larger base salary.
Over the phone, this type of conversation is an easy, 3-minute chat. But over email, this would be at least three back-and-forth messages over several hours or – even worse! – days. So this can slow your negotiation down substantially.
But there’s another risk: Email is where back and forth goes to die. It’s not really designed for these quick, dynamic discussions. Usually, if there was this much to discuss, you’d use text, a zoom call, or a real-time messaging platform like Slack or Teams. Extensive conversation over email kind of violates this communication norm we all abide by, so each subsequent question you ask has a weird pressure attached to wrap it up and agree already. You’ll be less likely to ask the questions you need to ask and more hesitant to explore the potential areas of agreement – and that means you’re more likely to leave something on the table.
#3 - They Can’t Hear Tone
Remember how negotiating over email means that you can hear their tone and gauge their emotional state? It works in reverse too!
Them being able to hear your tone of voice is a huge advantage because it allows you to ask questions and pose counteroffers that you might not get away with in a text-based medium.
Can you imagine yourself emailing that to your future boss? If you’re anything like me, you had a heart attack just thinking about it. It's a great question in a negotiation, but it’s the kind of thing folks will tend to read a negative tone into by default. There’s a high risk that it comes across as impatient, arrogant, angry, and more interested in ending the relationship than preserving it.
Over the phone, you can ask the same question, but fill your voice with excitement and optimism – like a game show host asking Are you ready to be a millionaire?
Now, no matter how you slice it, this is a question that asks the other party to declare a position and put their cards on the table. But when you have control over the tone, you can make it into an exciting invitation and build the relationship in the process. That makes them more likely to want to say yes to the offer you have on the table.
The phone lets you use your own tone and emotion as another tool in your negotiation toolkit so you can get where you want to go.
In Conclusion: Get On the Phone
So, WIMDIs, it’s time to put on your most professional looking dinosaur costume and embrace the paleolithic telephone communication arts. You’ll be able to use your dual secret weapons of tone & tone detection, plus you’ll be able to back-and-forth to your heart’s content to nail down exactly the deal terms you want. Win-win-win-win!
Still worried about how you’ll come across?
Don’t underestimate the value of even a little bit of advanced prep. Spend 20 minutes brainstorming potential objections to your offers and your responses. Then call a friend – or your negotiation coach – and spend half an hour role-playing the conversations a few times to get the nervous jitters out and work on your wording. A little less than an hour later you’ll be ready to put your email-writing fingers to rest and pick up the phone to make your big ask.
You’ve got this!
