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Three ways to keep salary issues out of your negotiations

If you are like other A/E firm leaders, you are finding that your management salaries are coming under more client scrutiny than ever. That last issue you want to deal with in a negotiation is defending your management teams’ salaries to clients — you need to keep the dialogue focused on how your service provides unequaled benefits to your client and delivers them maximum value.

How do you deal with clients who insist on raising the issue of management salary? Bear in mind that as a service provider, your relationship with your clients doesn’t end when they sign the contract — it continues throughout the project. Your firm doesn’t deliver a product and walk away — you deliver service that transforms concepts into valuable design parameters. So you need to have a strategy in place to process through — not blow through — your clients’ compensation concerns. Here are three things you can do:

Listen fully to their concern (do not interrupt or anticipate).

Take a proactive role in making sure that your response addresses the complexities of multi-stakeholder scenarios. The person with whom you are negotiating is usually just one of several client stakeholders involved with a project. Make sure your client sees you as their advocate and a problem solver.

Show them where you stand using your 2007 PSMJ Management Salary Benchmark Tool.

Cheers,

Frank A. Stasiowski, FAIA
President and Founder
PSMJ Resources, Inc.