negotiations

so i just finished a negotiations for class. i thought i totally got away with murder by negotiating a less than minimum salary. I based the salary off of commission rather than base. even if he hit his sales, he would still be below the min salary of 10K for the summer. (I had the ability to offer 10 - 15K) however there were other things that sweetened the deal. 1K moving expense and preferred location which cost me 4K. In the end i made a huge mistake since i overlooked how important which division meant. I got the second best division. I was just so excited I got him at below the min salary. However, since i overlooked the cost of the division, that meant i lost 2K.

In the end, the class lesson was that you have to look at the deal as a whole and work out what is best for both parties. It turned out he wanted to compare overall value. meaning that the most value for the company AND the most value for the employee. that meant that agreeing at a median salary and a median location was ideal. I was making 6 times more money than my opponent, so i didn't do so bad. but if i had caught the division thing then i woulda made an extra 3K. darn it!!!

that shows me to be so greedy. :-p i'm still kicking myself for totally forgetting to factor in my costs for location and division. I thought that we were going to be graded on negotiated salary. pooop.

what made it worse was that i kinda talked up how my opponent made some big negotiations mistakes. i shoulda kept my mouth shut!

i really like this class. i'm learning a lot!