Frank Jeffries teaches people how to negotiate. When interviewing for a job, buying a car, or even shopping for a dress at Nordstrom, most of the world sees the deal as a win-lose scenario, a seller's market, a price tag set in stone.
Not Jeffries, a professor of business administration at University of Alaska Anchorage's College of Business and Public Policy. He sees a rainbow with a pot of gold at both ends: one for the seller/employer and one for the buyer/job-seeker. And he's got stats to back up that rosy picture.
"There is a ton of research out there that shows if you exchange information and you trust each other," Jeffries said, "you find solutions that increase value for both sides."
He wrote his own dissertation on how trust affects negotiations. And he points to specific work by Leigh Thompson at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. She tested three negotiation scenarios that involved sharing information. In one, a person asks for information and gets it from the other party. In the second, one party volunteers information to the other party but doesn't ask for any information. The third was a control group with no specific directions on sharing information.
"The most interesting result was that the two groups that shared information created more joint value than the control group that didn't," Jeffries said. "You didn't put yourself at any disadvantage by volunteering information. " Instead, he says, those discussions become the basis for discovering a better mutual outcome.
"If I really understand what you want, and you really understand what I want," Jeffries said, "then we can find ways to make mutually beneficial trade-offs, increase the joint value of the negotiation and both walk away with more in our pockets."
That all sounds well and good, but what if the negotiation is a tough job market and five people are after the same slot. Isn't that a classic seller's market? How can a job-seeker get any advantage?
This scenario is dear to Jeffries' heart. Faced with his first serious job offer, Jeffries failed to negotiate.
After a few years selling software and working his way up to being a sales manager, he quit. "I didn't like pulling door knobs all day. It just wasn't that much fun. I wanted inside the corporation."
So he got his master's, and then stalked the company he wanted to work for. "I called the VP for finance every week for six or eight weeks. Finally I got a call from the company president who asked me, " Why are you bugging this guy?" Jeffries explained he wanted a job and what his qualifications were. Lo and behold, the president arranged a job interview and Jeffries got in.
"But the driver was I accepted the position without making a counter offer. ... Later I found out I'd accepted a job $5,000 below the bottom of the rank I was hired in to. They would have negotiated; I could have earned more. It took me two years to work my way to the middle of where I could have started. I never accepted a first offer again."
So, back to that tough job market. Even then, Jeffries argues, there is always something to negotiate. As long as there is a "positive bargaining zone," meaning a range between the highest the boss is willing to go and the lowest the job-seeker is willing to accept, there's room for discussion.
"You've got salary, working conditions, health benefits -- are they a la carte or fixed? Are you willing to support my education? What will you do for my career advancement? When's my next review and chance for a merit increase? There's five or six things right there," he said. "Employers don't have to pay top-of-market salaries to attract the best in the business if they know what their employees really want."
He learned his own lesson so well that he's developed a talk specifically aimed at job offers. Called "So You Want To Negotiate Salary, Do You?" it's become the most in-demand presentation he offers.
But Jeffries is the first to tell you negotiations aren't limited to salaries. Life is a constant series of opportunities: Can you get your 3-year-old in bed by 8? Will your husband wash the dishes? Will the clerk take 20 percent off that dress today, knowing it hits the sales rack on Saturday? It's a day-long dance.
The good news: If you aren't good at it, you can learn. Jeffries recommends "Mastering Business Negotiations" by Lewicki and Hiam: "It's really approachable, not academic." Another good one is Fisher's "Getting to Yes: How to Negotiate Agreement Without Giving In." But the best way to advance is a structured environment where you practice negotiating both sides. That's how he teaches his undergraduate and graduate classes, and a three-day workshop at UAA's Business Enterprise Institute.
So here are Jeffries' five best tips:
• Negotiate everything.
• Know what you want and why you want it. Share that information.
• Know your limit and stick with it.
• Never make a deal that is worse than your best alternative.
• Ask. You never know what the other person is willing to accept.
That last one is how Jeffries became the accidental owner of a used motor home.
But that's another story.
Kathleen McCoy works at UAA, where she highlights campus life through social and online media.