March 2011
Q:
Hi Prudence,
I’ve got one for you; I had a job offer last week for one of my company’s biggest competitors, the catch is they’re only offering me $2,000 more than I’m making now. Is that normal? I want the job but after they wooed me for a month, it’s almost offensive to me that they’d not ‘sweeten the pot’ a little bit to get me over there. Any advice on how to counter the offer?
Jimmy W.
A:
Hi Jimmy,
Normal is a tough question to answer because there is no consistency from market to market or distributor to distributor on what type of formula they use to put together an offer, but I’d say yes, that does seem low UNLESS there are other things that sweeten the pot you may not be taking into consideration. Here’s my advice, take out a piece of paper and list your current company
on the left and the new company on the right and define the following: annual sales of the company, number of locations, strength of line card, strength of inventory and internal support, upward mobility, industry ranking, relationship with the manager you’re reporting to now and if you take the position, salary, bonus potential, average payout over the last two years for each company, benefits including premiums and coverage, car and expense accounts/allowances, you get the picture. It should become clear fairly quickly that one of those companies is offering a stronger package. If you find that there is strength in the new company, you can always go back and ask for more money but stay realistic. They’re not likely going to counter a counter so whatever the number, it’s likely ‘the number’ and you’ll have to make your decision based on that. Best of luck, let me know how it turns out.
Prudence
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