Ready to excel in your career and negotiations? Join us as we share our latest career triumphs, the secrets to effective networking, and the influential power of artificial intelligence in Salesforce solutions. Our special guest, Fred Cadena, a Salesforce veteran, provides enlightening insights from his time at the Florida Dreaming conference, adding depth to our exploration of AI's role in creating efficient Salesforce solutions.
But that's not all. Ever struggled with salary negotiations? We've got you covered. Together with Fred and Steven Greger, we dive into the nuances of salary negotiation, understanding power dynamics and developing effective strategies. You'll learn how to research, ask the right questions, and know your worth through a real-world role-play negotiation between Fred and Vanessa. We also explore the importance of building relationships in negotiations, emphasizing the power of practice and understanding emotions.
In the final stretch of this episode, we delve deeper into the role of micro wins in negotiations. It's the little victories that accumulate to significant savings or gains over time. Whether you're new to the Salesforce ecosystem or a seasoned pro, grab a cup of coffee and tune in. You'll walk away with a wealth of knowledge that can only come from years of experience and practice. From understanding emotions in negotiations to wrapping your head around the power of AI in Salesforce, this episode is packed with valuable insights and advice. So, sit back, relax, and let's get started!
Ready to excel in your career and negotiations? Join us as we share our latest career triumphs, the secrets to effective networking, and the influential power of artificial intelligence in Salesforce solutions. Our special guest, Fred Cadena, a Salesforce veteran, provides enlightening insights from his time at the Florida Dreaming conference, adding depth to our exploration of AI's role in creating efficient Salesforce solutions.
But that's not all. Ever struggled with salary negotiations? We've got you covered. Together with Fred and Steven Greger, we dive into the nuances of salary negotiation, understanding power dynamics and developing effective strategies. You'll learn how to research, ask the right questions, and know your worth through a real-world role-play negotiation between Fred and Vanessa. We also explore the importance of building relationships in negotiations, emphasizing the power of practice and understanding emotions.
In the final stretch of this episode, we delve deeper into the role of micro wins in negotiations. It's the little victories that accumulate to significant savings or gains over time. Whether you're new to the Salesforce ecosystem or a seasoned pro, grab a cup of coffee and tune in. You'll walk away with a wealth of knowledge that can only come from years of experience and practice. From understanding emotions in negotiations to wrapping your head around the power of AI in Salesforce, this episode is packed with valuable insights and advice. So, sit back, relax, and let's get started!
And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce career show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.
Josh Matthews:All right, welcome everybody. You've got a nice little crew here today. I love my panel, my panel, my panel, my panel. All right, my name is Josh Matthews. I'm here with my amazing co-host, vanessa Grant. Go ahead and give us a little holler there, vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:Hi, I'm Vanessa Grant.
Josh Matthews:All right, what an amazing intro. We're keeping it short, like if you've never heard us before, we'll, we'll, you'll figure it out. Oh, okay, tell them what you do. You've got a new gig. What's your job? What do you do, vanessa?
Vanessa Grant:I do, I do, you know. Actually, I don't think I've talked about the new gig very much on the on the show yet either. I have accepted a role in the last month as a product owner for a fintech company called Mosaic.
Josh Matthews:Mosaic. Yeah, that's a neat company by the way. And we've got some friends. You and I both have some friends that were already working there. So neat, neat company.
Vanessa Grant:Oh my gosh, you know the. It's that power of networking. You know, I didn't realize that. You know, speaking at Tahoe Dreaming for three years in a row and then connecting with Bill Greenhall, All of a sudden we'd be on the same team three years later. Tahoe Dreaming was my first speaking engagement in person. That's right, and so just again, a testament to the power of networking and really keeping up with those connections over the years. You never know.
Josh Matthews:You never know. Well, congrats on the new job. You're worth every penny of it and I know you're going to do amazing things. And Mosaic, by the way, does some pretty neat stuff with technology and they're very eco-friendly. They help support green energy. So they're a neat group and they hire very, very smart people. We've got more people. Yes, they do, yes, they do. Let's also introduce Fred Kedena. Fred, who are you?
Fred Cadena:I am Fred Kedena, a man of mystery. No, I have been in and around the sales for a single system for 16 years, as a customer first, and accidental admin and consultant for 10 years. Most of my experience has been in financial services. So if you want to talk financial services or you want to talk Salesforce, I am always happy to connect.
Josh Matthews:Well, it's always great to have you here on the show, Fred, and if you haven't checked it out, do check out Banking on Disruption. I'm Fred's podcast. I'm on Once in a while towards the back end and it's a super fun show, very informative. We also have with us our friend, Mr Peter Ganza. Hey, Peter, let's hear the intro.
Peter Ganza:I am the AppExchange Whisperer, the artist formerly known as Peter Ganza, a Salesforce alumni and then the ecosystem, ever since I worked at Salesforce in a marketing product marketing capacity and avid listener. Speaker on the Vanessa and.
Josh Matthews:Josh show. Yep, you are one smart tomato buddy and we're glad that you're here Again. My name is Josh Matthews, I run the Salesforce recruitercom and host this fun show, and recently both Fred and I had a chance to connect and hang out at Florida Dreaming, which took place in beautiful clear water Florida, at the Sheraton, right on the water, and it was beautiful like truly those sunsets, man, you cannot beat them. We even had a chance to go out on a boat or my old boat club, and so we took off from clear water all the way across Tampa Bay and with Casey, and we saw some amazing dolphins jumping out of the water. The weather couldn't have been better, the company couldn't have been better, it just could have been more people, more awesome people that we love like those here on the panel, you've spent 80% of the time in the boat.
Josh Matthews:You don't. Come on, fred, really live, you're going to go there. You're going to go there, buddy. Yeah, we hit some shallows. I had to drag it across some seagrass. Yeah, it's whatever. Any location that happens, it was awesome. Not my boat, not my problem. That's what I always say. And we're also joined by Steven Gregor. Steven has been absolutely crushing it. I'm going to invite him to speak.
Josh Matthews:Steven is the director of recruiting for the Salesforce recruiter. We have a number of openings right now, so we'll just go ahead and plug those very quickly. We have a business analyst, remote business analyst role, ideally East Coast. And are you raising your hand or are you waving high? I don't even know what that symbol is. It looked like the letter L or something on sign language. He's not a speaker yet, so we don't know. So we've got a BA role. We've got an account executive role for a nonprofit Salesforce partner. We have an advanced admin with, hopefully, some very good niche experience in field service, and also a middle of the road Salesforce administrator 80 to 100K kind of person for an opportunity too. So if you are interested in these roles, don't reach out to me, just reach out to Steven Gregor. That's G-R-E-G-E-R. As Steven has reminded me multiple times this week, so be sure to connect with him on LinkedIn.
Josh Matthews:Let's go ahead and start the program first by talking about Dreamforce and then just a quick little tease. We're going to be talking about one of the very last slides of the session that I presented there, which is around salary negotiating. How do you do it? How do you get a leg up? How do you succeed? How do you know you did the right thing, like all that good stuff? So let's talk about Florida Dreaming Now. Fred, you did a fan. Oh, actually, you know. I gotta say one other thing I've been a little bit late getting the most recent podcast out, so I am very sorry Janet, who's a wonderful guest, I think two or three weeks ago and that's going to be released in the morning. So if you're listening live, you can check that out. All right, fred Kedena, tell us real quick a little bit about your Florida Dreaming session and how you felt overall the event went.
Fred Cadena:Sure, I will certainly say the. Overall, I think the event was awesome. I wish I had had the ability to stay longer. I literally was the first slot right after the keynote. So, like Jennifer Lee left the stage, they turned everything into breakout rooms and then I was on, and after I left or after I finished my presentation, I grabbed my sunglasses and got in a car and went to the airport because I had to be in San Diego for the rest of the week. So I'm very remiss to have missed the rest of it, but I have already registered for Florida Dreaming next year. I've already got my room and the room blocks. So if you haven't been, I highly encourage you to go.
Josh Matthews:Man, you're going to do her, but you just get it done, don't you? You're like I'm coming back. This was awesome.
Fred Cadena:Where? Do they want me or not? Which it might be not, but they're going to get me.
Josh Matthews:Well, I got to see you next year from Mike Martin, so I think I'm going back. I think that's the plan.
Fred Cadena:I love it. Well, the session was good. We had a good turnout in the room. I had a good level of engagement. I was really pleased, especially that early in the morning Not sure if the coffee kicked in but the session was about AI and specifically how to use some of the AI tools that are generally available, not so much to make your users experience better, but if you are an architect or an admin and you're trying to build scalable best practices, elegant Salesforce solutions, how can you use AI to help you with that? And I think it was a good session. Of course, I'm the one that delivered it. So, josh, you were in the audience.
Josh Matthews:It was a success, fred. I thought you did a fantastic job. Your slide deck skills are awesome, by the way and that you even have enough time in your life to figure all of this stuff out is beyond me, because I learned a ton. By the way, guys, it's been a year since GPT came out about October, november last year, I think and in that year, I've learned how to do some prompts, but I didn't know how it was working. I didn't know how it worked. Why would I?
Josh Matthews:I'm your common user, and Fred broke it down and he shared massive insights on some very simple things that you can do to get massive results like really good results, better than most results, better than most people results by doing a few different things with the AI technology. And I think one of the things that I thought was really fantastic because this is a guy who does his homework, he does his research and one of the things that I really liked was breaking that you graded three different ways of running AI. Go ahead and share those three different ways real quick if you can, fred.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, absolutely so. I wanted to keep it super accessible so that really anybody in the room, no matter your level of admin skill or technical skill, could take it and try it.
Josh Matthews:So he just thought of me, he geared it towards me, he dumbed it down. This is good.
Fred Cadena:No, it's not dumbing it down, but just made it in excess. So the first level was basically sign up for a Chatspity account, do a little bit of prompt engineering on the front end and just ask you questions. Number two was to sign up for a commercially available chat bot that has an AI engine and download a series of user guides from Salesforce. So the Salesforce still puts out believe it or not PDF user guides for a lot of its products in just those user guides into that chat bot to train it and then use that. And then the third level, which was a little technical, involved going to a repository, downloading a model directly onto your computer, using those same PDF documents for training and then inquiring on your personal trained model on your computer. What kind of solutions you would get.
Josh Matthews:Fred, you had me at repository. That was probably the moment I really got hooked on the speech.
Fred Cadena:Well, you know, it sounds more complicated than it really is. So if anybody is interested, feel free reach out. I'm happy to share the deck, happy to share the instructions. There's instructions and all of it. But if you want to know how AI might help or at least adjust and change your job as a Salesforce admin, as a Salesforce developer architect, I encourage you to dig into AI, whether you do it with my presentation or if you do it on your own, because it's coming.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it's coming and it's here and it's going to be a distinguishing advantage, or I guess I should say, if you don't have it, it's going to be a severe disadvantage. Right? You remember when they made the internet Suddenly? There was a day when, if you didn't know how to navigate on a browser like you, weren't going to get the job. Well, that's not going to be any different here. I mean, I can't see how it would be any different.
Fred Cadena:Absolutely. What's the cliche? Ai is not going to take your job, but somebody that knows how to use AI well is going to take your job.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, there you go. Yeah, I like that. That makes a lot of sense. And we got to see Gil Martin, who's a live listener right now. Great to see you, gil.
Josh Matthews:Got to meet some really wonderful people. I mean, I don't want to. This is going to sound kind of weird coming from me. When I go to conferences, I'm actually, a fair amount of the time, kind of shy, believe it or not. Right Like, I like to go make a quick round on the exhibition floor and say hi to people. I love catching up with the people that I know. Do I make a massive effort to go shake hands with tons of strangers? I guess they're like an hour here and an hour there. Otherwise, I tend to keep to myself and, gosh, if I'm doing a speech, I'm usually just thinking about that or working on that or trying to get some work done. But this was a terrific event. Probably about 500 people there and I was introduced to some really wonderful people and a lot of listeners. That's one of the things I love about this show.
Josh Matthews:I know some of you folks who are at Florida Dreaming or maybe this might even be the first podcast that you're listening to and you attended, possibly, fred's session. Maybe you attended mine, and so welcome if you're a first-time listener. We appreciate you coming here. I'll also say you know, we just put these things on for free because it's a lot of fun. We want to help a lot of people, but you can help us too, and the way that you can help us is by giving us a little bit of a thumbs up or if the platform you're on like Apple I think allows you to provide a little review, so you can type a few words in, let us know what you think about the show, maybe what you would change or what you would add.
Josh Matthews:We'd love to hear from you and we'd love to get those thumbs up. So make sure that you subscribe. So what about overall? What did you think about the? I know that you had to leave a little bit early, so I had about another 24 hours in the program than you did, but overall, how did you feel about the event?
Fred Cadena:No, I think it was really great. You know from, from even the day before the official kickoff, a lot of people had already made it down there. You know, great networking, great opportunities to connect with people in the community. And then from the official kickoff on Sunday, at the opening reception, you know, all the way through the time that I was there I got to spend a little bit of time on the floor, some great sponsors and really, you know to. You know the event is going to be what you, what you make of it. So I definitely encourage, if you haven't been to one of the community events you know, pick the one that you can get to. You know geographically, pick the one you can get to based on your calendar, their, their phenomenal events. And I'm the first one to admit I have been remiss in in the the 10 years Plus I've I've been in the ecosystem that they've had these events. I've probably been to three or four and but two of them were this year and I'm I'm a convert, so you'll find me around next year.
Josh Matthews:And I think you make a really good point here too, which is, you know, attend the event where people from your region are going to go, and you can go to others, but I would prioritize the one that's near you, because you're going to find that community right and make friends. I mean, gosh I don't see him on here right now, but I got to see a bunch of people from Florida and people who you know, some some folks like who've been on the boat, like Vanessa you weren't able to come, but Gabby was there and she came to my my session, so it was great to see her and a bunch of other friends, people that you've seen in Tahoe or seen a dream force and so on. So pick a region that's close to you and you'll make some local friends, and I think it's a really good idea. And if you like sunshine and sand between your toes while hanging out with a bunch of Salesforce pros, then Florida dreamer next year should definitely be on your bucket list. All right, let's go ahead and dive into the main topic.
Josh Matthews:So I'm the guest today, right, and what that means is I'm just going to talk a little bit about negotiating. So the presentation that I gave was called, or is called, was called negotiating skills for Salesforce professionals, and I got it. I'll tell you this was. This was easily the most fun presentation I've given. I've been giving presentations for I don't even know how long maybe 18 years, 19 years, something like that but this was clearly the most fun, and I think part of why it was so fun for me is because I'm so passionate about it.
Josh Matthews:Right, I don't think. I don't think that people are as open to learning about negotiating as they should be. There's a lot of. There are numerous reasons why you want to get better at negotiating. One of them is just reducing friction with the people that you love and the people that you care about, the people that you work with, because good look oftentimes and guys you know, feel free to unmute and just pipe up here. But I'm kind of curious, just from our little group here when you think of negotiating or when you think of people that you know that don't like negotiating, what do you think they think about that topic? I'm kind of curious what you guys think.
Vanessa Grant:I mean, I hate negotiating but I always find it interesting to hear how other people tackle it. But I think for me it's more of a like yeah, that sounds great, but the nerves is always going to be kind of a blocker for. And also, I think understanding my own value has always been a challenge.
Peter Ganza:Okay.
Josh Matthews:So that's a big thing. So when you talk about nerves, are we talking about fear?
Vanessa Grant:Yes.
Josh Matthews:And are we thinking fear of not getting what we want or fear of offending someone?
Vanessa Grant:Fear of offending somebody. It's actually it's more about like oh my God, I'm asking for something like how dare me.
Josh Matthews:Right, right. And so let me ask you this. So when someone enters into a negotiating, a negotiation with you, it could be about anything. It could be like what movie are you going to go watch that night? Right, and they are crystal clear and asked specifically for the thing that they want Is that offend you?
Vanessa Grant:No, not at all, but I think it's also my personality type is kind of a people pleaser and so if they tell me what they want, then that helps me understand how to please them, whereas I feel like the biggest kind of like hard negotiation types like are trying to win against me.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, yeah, and that it can definitely feel that way, and a lot of times, people get real icky feelings when it comes to negotiations, don't they?
Jonathan Fox:It's so icky.
Josh Matthews:It's so icky. So I'll just highlight a couple of things. I mean, these are things that were covered in the session, but there are only 80 people here. We usually get about 300 or 400 listens on this show, right? So you might as well share the knowledge, and I'm not going to go into everything, but I began the session really talking about some of the folks that we run into that are trying to sell us stuff, right?
Josh Matthews:So a telemarketer calls you at dinner time. You're walking in the mall because you got to go buy a Lego set for your nephew or something like that, and you get accosted by someone who wants to rub lotion all over your face, and so you're a $200 quarter ounce bottle, right. Or you go into a car lot and let's just say it's a used car lot or it's a you know it's not BMW right, we're going to be treated pretty smoothly. But what are these like? Guys who's walking up to you in the plaid sport coat rubbing their hands together. So you know, if I share those images with you, vanessa, because you're a really great candidate for some of this information what kind of feeling does that develop inside of you?
Vanessa Grant:I don't know. I think everything just gives me fear.
Josh Matthews:So Okay, all right. Well, what the audience shared with me was that it's you just want to say no, you just want to be like leave me alone, right, go away. Ooh, gap girl coming at me, I just want to. You know like, I know what, I know what size my jeans are and I don't buy my jeans a gap, but whatever, I'm just a silly example.
Josh Matthews:But you know, we all have this sort of feeling of and I don't mean we all, but often and it does happen and once, once that system, that defense system in our brains, is activated. I mean, you know, changes our chemistry, that changes our, you know, our hormone level levels change, the parts of our brain that we're using, certain parts get activated, more primal activations are occurring. Our prefrontal cortex, which is our executive functioning, can go offline when we're under stress, we're under pressure, we're under fear and we're just kind of in that no phase, right. So I think the first thing that we really need to understand about negotiating is that it's our job to mitigate that fear, mitigate those sensations in us, and the way to do it is to reduce the fear in the other person. What do you guys think about that? Does that make sense? Hopefully, okay, because you know I've been in sales since I was 18 years old and I'm, you know, more than double that now, and I got to tell you it's like, you know, when you're doing sales, you can still get the jitters. Even if you've done it for 30 years, you can still get the jitters when you're selling it does happen. It doesn't really happen that much anymore, but like it can still happen.
Josh Matthews:But for the people who are unfamiliar, the people who you know, it's like oh God, I got to make this sale or I can't pay rent, like that kind of stuff. You know you've got an or a manager, you're coming to a manager, you're asking for a $20,000 raise, like all you're saying is I want to take you something from you, and it's going to hurt. You're going to hurt If you give me what I want. Right, expect it to be a no, or at least the emotions that they feel are going to be screaming at them, no, Right. And so what we need to do is we need to calm their fears down, and that means we need to talk to them in a certain way, we need to be listening in a certain way and, again, I'm not going to go into all this detail, but I think that without this kind of a baseline understanding of what we're missing out by having a lack of understanding of negotiations, we are really putting ourselves at a disadvantage, and more than that, for those people pleasers in the world, like the wonderful Vanessa Grant. You are not going to necessarily please so many people when you can't negotiate Right, because what happens when we under negotiate is we are prime candidates for resentment.
Josh Matthews:So I'm looking at the audience here. I'd love to see you know everyone throw up like a little purple heart or something, if you feel like you have ever had resentment towards a company or towards a manager or a boss, simply because you said yes to something that you didn't want to say yes to. But for whatever reason, whether you know internally, you felt compelled to say yes or you felt like it was in your position to push back. So I'm seeing yeah, heart, heart. Okay, a few liars out there. Okay, some real people? Okay, all right. So this is a. Oh, we've got a big green heart from Ty. Thanks, buddy, all right.
Josh Matthews:So what's it like when we resent someone? How fun is that for them, how pleased are they, right? And then you got to have the talk. Jordan Peterson talks about this in I think it's his second book or third book and it's I think the chapter is titled have the Damn Fight. You just got to have the damn fight, but you got to get it out. But you can prevent having to have those fights by being really clear about what your intentions are, what your motivations are, and making someone feel like it's really safe. We talk about safe, feeling safe in this world all the time. Now, right In this fragile, fragile, you know world that we've been in the last five years and it's. I mean, I don't know about you guys, but I think it sucks. I don't like the fragility of the average person or the average college student or the average you know Gen X or what not Gen X or what is it? Z? What do they even call that? Help me here.
Josh Matthews:No, no, no after them.
Peter Ganza:I think it's.
Josh Matthews:Gen Z? Yeah, gen Z, there you go, is it Z? Yeah? So there's a lot of fragility out there, and so do we want to negotiate with fragile people? No, not really. But can we? We can if we make them feel safe. Right? I'm not calling all Gen Zers fragile, by the way, guys, so don't get all weird. But just having been on this planet for over half a century, I could tell you that, you know, attitudes change. It happens regionally, but it happens, you know, in time as well, and so we see a lot more of it nowadays.
Josh Matthews:So this is all sort of this long buildup. We've been talking for 20 minutes, not 25 minutes, about this stuff. It's like okay, josh, you did this last time, can we just talk about how to negotiate salary? And I'll tell you right now we are, that's exactly what we're talking about. Right One, you must get experience with negotiation.
Josh Matthews:So I'm going to just give you a real shortcut here, and that is go get the book by Chris Voss called Never Split the Difference, and there's a few things in my presentation that I shared that are directly from him, because to date, given all the books on sales and negotiations that I've read, I haven't read a more compelling, succinct book on the subject with true modern knowledge that truly debunks a lot of classical tactics in negotiation, like getting you got to get five yeses. You know, like you know, if I could show you how to do this, would you be interested in that? Is that something you'd be interested in? What if I could do this? What if I could do that? You'd like that, wouldn't you? Yes, you know, thinking that that's going to lead to a yes through some sort of weird trick.
Josh Matthews:And he talks a lot about trying to get to know. You know, if you get to know now, you know where the wall is so you can pull it down, and I'm a big fan of that. I think that makes sense. So let's go ahead and dive in with just some very basic, simple things that you can do If you want to renegotiate your salary or if you are in a negotiation for a job offer. Who wants to talk about what first? Let me see Vanessa, fred, peter. What do you guys think? What do you want to cover first? Wow, it's like. It's like everyone went to the bathroom or something.
Vanessa Grant:Okay, okay, so no, no, no, sorry.
Peter Ganza:I mean, on one hand, I'm definitely with Vanessa in that I don't like it. It's, you know, I'm not good at everything and that's something that I've been able to say recently, right after many years. But when we talk about, you know, negotiating salary, it just brings anxiety because I think, you know, when I was in high school and not learning any of these things, you know not any of the basics it basically set me up to fail for, you know, the first decade, because I just expected, you know, more money, whereas you know, when I worked at Salesforce, we were doing classes at my own actually it's my old elementary school and did a course that was all about financial planning. I mean some of the basics, right, mortgages and guess what, you know, a salary negotiation, and you know I kind of shed a tear. So, anyway it's, it's just an interesting topic. I'm not sure. I'm not sure where to start.
Josh Matthews:No, no, that's good, peter, and thanks for the background. I mean it is. We all have a different feeling around negotiations, and people who've listened to this show or went to the session, they already know a little bit about how I came up. I mean, my dad was a businessman. He was in sales. I'd go around with him, I watched how he worked, right. He sent me to a negotiating seminar when I was 18. That was my birthday present. I learned a lot in those two days and saved me literally hundreds of thousands of dollars since then, just from two days down.
Josh Matthews:We don't have this time here right now. So we're just this is really just about salary, but without covering some of these real basics, it's it's going to be a loss. So let's talk about tone. Okay, so what's the general tone that we think we should have when we're in a negotiation? And I'm just going to like uh, doggie or that for a second and just say most people, when they think of negotiations, think of price haggling. Who here thinks of haggling when they think of negotiations? You know, by a show of hands you do. Okay, yes, cause haggling is like well, I'll give you two fifths. Well, I want 125, you know, no, I'll give you 125. I was like, well, I'll do 200. I'll do 150. It's like this is nonsense.
Josh Matthews:Okay, we're not talking about price haggling. We're trying to get someone to be calm. We're trying to get them to get to a place where they can actually understand some of our logic but truly actually appeal to their emotions. You know, most people are making decisions based on wiring, right? They're wired to feel a certain way when certain things happen. That's how we work, right, fred? Earlier you were talking about a little bit about um, ai and machine learning, right? How it can learn. Well, that's what we do. And what does it do, fred? It picks up patterns.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, it's a pattern, a pattern matching engine for sure.
Josh Matthews:It's a pattern matching engine. So anybody here who has it turned on on their phone and you start texting, right, and all of a sudden it's like you type in T, o and it pops up the word tomorrow, right, because that's the you know statistically, that's the word that you're going to click next. Okay, so we're no different. And so when we get into negotiations, we we are perceiving a certain pattern and we need to kind of disrupt that pattern and get people to calm down and feel safe and feel feel happy. So we can start by doing that one with our tone, right? So, hey, vanessa, if you and I are going to talk a little bit today about, um, my compensation and, by the way, you've been a fantastic boss we're going to talk about, uh, you know, thanks for having this meeting with me, but my tone is going to be a little bit like this. It's going to be a little bit up, right, it's going to be friendly, it's going to be playful, it's not going to be.
Josh Matthews:Vanessa. We're going to have a talk today and I want to. You know, I need to raise and that's final right that assertive communication style is so rare in effective negotiations that you shouldn't even think about it. Okay, you should just never even think about this stuff, right? It's so rare once in a while, now and then we have to use a different kind of voice. You guys hear me do this voice sometimes on the show, but we have to. We have to kind of go from this, you know, up talk like, hey, how are you guys doing what's going on? Welcome to the show. But right, that's the tone. It's going up. It's called an up inflection, right, versus a downward inflection, a downward inflection, right. So do you follow me like this downward talk, go ahead.
Vanessa Grant:I definitely don't have the downward inflection, but I feel like whenever it comes to a salary negotiation, usually it's them bringing it up first or you know, either at like an annual meeting or, if you know, recently like negotiating salaries with a with an interpreter, because I don't get the serious like okay, we're going to have a heavy talk about this, but I I go into, oh, I don't know, you know it's, it could be, this is kind of what. Where I'm at right now. Oh God, I hate this stuff Like I. For some reason, my subconscious just turns into like stream of you know word vomit of yeah, word vomit.
Josh Matthews:So I was going to cut you off. Keep going.
Vanessa Grant:No, no, no, that's that, that's it. I almost have the opposite problem of like, where I can sound confident in my interviews, but as soon as you talk money like, I sound like a, like a lamb like a lamb, okay.
Josh Matthews:So look, this is just a matter of one not having done enough thinking about it. I think this is about research, right? Truly, research, I mean step one, with all negotiations, and I know this is a really loose format that we're talking right now, but we have to begin with research, right? What do we want? Why do we want it? Why do we want it now? You know it sounds like a chant at some protest what do we want Raises, you know, like nobody responds well to that. So you've got to do your research.
Josh Matthews:So let's say, I know you've got this brand new job, okay. But let's say you stayed with your old job and your boss came to you and you maybe, maybe you knew that they were going to come and talk to you about compensation. And, by the way, if they do, they say, hey, I'd like to have a meeting with you and start talking about compensation Right Now. They, they sit you down and they say we're going to talk about that right now. You know, and say, well, that's great, you know, I'm happy to have a conversation with you. And then what you want to do is get them to talk as much as possible so you can see what they're thinking, what they're coming up with, right, get them to solve the problem for you, right, so you can really push that off. So let's you want to role play Vanessa, you want to just give it a go.
Vanessa Grant:See what that might sound like. That's it. My lizard brain is going to come out, but sure, let's do it.
Josh Matthews:Well, here's the deal. I'm going to make it easy, because you're going to be the boss.
Vanessa Grant:Okay.
Josh Matthews:Okay, guys, we haven't planned this, so we don't know what the hell's going to happen.
Vanessa Grant:I'm also bad at this too. I'm you know. I'm like, oh sweet, you want more of the company's money. That's not a problem, that's not great.
Josh Matthews:Maybe we should have Fred do this. Fred, you want to do it? Sure, I'd be happy to do it. Okay, fred. So you're coming to me. Let's say I'm making 120. I'm a Salesforce consultant. Okay, I've been there for two years, I haven't had a raise. And you want to make me an offer, and it's going to be an okay offer, but it's not going to be a great offer. Okay, so let's go ahead and do that. So go ahead and talk.
Fred Cadena:Hey, Josh, just that annual review time. I wanted to make sure we said a little bit of time to sign up to have the conversation, Really appreciate the contributions you've made to the team. I think you've grown at the level that we've expected you to for the year and just really think that moving you from 120 to 125 is a great move for you. So you'll see that in a couple of weeks and if you have any questions, let me know.
Josh Matthews:Okay, well, fred, thank you for bringing this up. I mean, I never say no to more money, right? Absolutely. Why would you? Why would anybody? Yeah, and I really appreciate you bringing this. It sounds like this is something you've been thinking about for a little while.
Fred Cadena:Absolutely. I mean, I think that I really enjoyed having you as part of the team for the last year. You've become, in the last few months, great contributor, stepping in making contributions, and I just want to make sure you feel valued as part of the team.
Josh Matthews:Well, let me just say thank you so much. I like it's very gracious of you because I know I didn't come to you asking for a raise but you brought it up and that really tells me that you care about my career. I know you've been tracking it and I can't thank you enough for making this an important topic for you. I'm sure you'd understand, like most important topics, they probably require a little bit of thought from the other person, because this is kind of news to me, right?
Fred Cadena:Well, I am absolutely. Did you have? Have you put some thought into it as well?
Josh Matthews:You know what, Now that you mention it, I have. I mean, who doesn't right?
Jason Zeikowitz:Mm-hmm, yeah, so it's that time of year.
Josh Matthews:It's that time of year. Look, when we get to Christmas, we're all trying to figure out how we're going to pay for all those presents, right? So again, thank you for the offer, right? Just out of curiosity, how did I think it sounds about a three and a half four percent raise? How did you come up with that number?
Fred Cadena:Yeah, absolutely, you know, I was definitely looking at some information on the levels of contribution across the team. You know, obviously we have a budget, you know, for the entire department and I just wanted to give you a number that I thought was reflective of the contributions you've been making over the course of the year.
Josh Matthews:Okay, well, again, thanks, fred. You know some of those accomplishments. I'm kind of curious which ones do you feel were most impactful in this past year?
Fred Cadena:Sure, absolutely. I think you know you definitely. You know, being on the team for a year, I think you showed a lot of eagerness in your first few months and asking out of good questions, speaking into what decisions we made on the platform and why we, you know, made certain architectural and design decisions that we did In the latter half of the year. And I'll say I specifically remember all the effort you put in during the last release cycle to go through the release notes and bring out three or four different things that could really help us reduce our technical debt. So you know, just seeing that initiative, that eagerness, were big parts of what I had in my mind when I put that number together.
Josh Matthews:Gosh, you're going to have to write my resume for me because you're saying some really awesome stuff. Now, guys, I'm just going to do a mini timeout and talk about what's happening here. Who wants to share what they think is happening? I'm kind of curious, peter. What do you think is happening in this conversation right now?
Peter Ganza:It's funny you asked me that you both did a great job.
Josh Matthews:We're still going by the way.
Peter Ganza:Yeah, you know, just take a break. It feels like it's like, in a way, kind of bouncing all around. I mean, I know it's just kind of made up or whatever, right, but you're both sort of peeling back the layers and from my side it feels like it's getting more uncomfortable.
Vanessa Grant:I am so uncomfortable in this conversation Are you.
Peter Ganza:Okay, then you know what I agree with Vanessa. Then it's a conversation we should be having.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, yeah, just from both sides, because it's almost like it sounds like I can hear Fred trying to explain his rationale and I hear you. I can almost feel like the subtext on both sides, which is just like take the damn raise and be happy about it. Then the other side I don't want to take the damn raise and be happy about it. I'm just so uncomfortable.
Fred Cadena:I am definitely trying to send that subtext message. I didn't ask Josh how much of a hard ass he wanted me to be in the roleplay, but he's definitely doing a great job. Obviously, I offered a raise. I offered it in the context of contributions. Now he's trying to nail me down to say what those contributions are, so he can come back around and say well, if you really value those things, then 3 percent isn't really reflective of what I've done. Yeah, that's right. Exactly what Josh is doing. It's phenomenal.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, but, fred, am I making you uncomfortable?
Fred Cadena:No, You're not making me uncomfortable. I mean, I think and again this goes back, I think a lot of times people anticipate these types of conversations, at least on the management side, and keep a little back. That's part of my managing the situation. I offer it up, I know there's going to be a back and forth, and so I have something in reserve to come back around and say well, actually, let's make it 130 or whatever that number ends up being.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, Exactly Now. Thank you, Fred. I think you're doing a great job, by the way, because I think you're hitting really the right level. This happens all the time. Guys, we're going to offer you this. You're doing amazing, so we're going to give you five grand. I'm thinking F you. Thanks for the 3.5 percent. 9 percent interest. Cost of living has gone up 8 percent this year.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, are you seeing milk?
Josh Matthews:Yeah.
Fred Cadena:I can't even buy milk on that.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, you can't even buy milk. I mean, god, do you know how much Bugatti's are going for? Now? This five grand is not going to help, right? So Fred is trying to make this short. It's a bullying tactic One.
Josh Matthews:What did he do? He caught me by surprise. So now I'm unprepared. That's what we were talking about with you, vanessa, right? So if someone catches you off guard, great. Now you're not prepared. You haven't done your research. This is why you got to do your research and know your value all the time.
Josh Matthews:The other thing that I've done is I've just said thank you and been gracious with every time he says something nice about me. Right, I haven't tried to butter him up. I haven't said you're the most amazing boss. I didn't kiss his ass. I'm holding my ground here. Right, it's not going both ways.
Josh Matthews:The next thing that's happening is I'm asking him how or what questions, and how or what questions are open-ended? They don't. Sometimes I'll say something and I'll say blah, blah, blah, blah, right, and I'll go yeah, okay, so that's a closed-ended question. That leads. Now you're controlling the conversation, kind of whipping him around, but when I'm asking how or what he's going to answer and I don't know what's in his head, right, yeah, I mean he could have said anything he said. He could have said I'd give you 30 grand if I could, but the CEO is being a hard ass. Like he could have said anything, right, and I don't. But I don't know what it is, so I don't know what I'm dealing with. This is like a hidden enemy. Now, when you're in a negotiation, it's not an enemy. Sometimes it is actually, truthfully, it is sometimes an enemy. But in a work situation, look, it's just two people that are trying to come to terms on an agreement, right, both have a slightly different perspective and they want to come to an agreement where they're both happy. Now, I don't really care if both people are happy, I just want you guys to be happy, Right, like, that's how it works. You have to get paid the right amount. If he says, yeah, I'm going to give you a raise to $200,000. And I'm looking at the market and seeing the market start to tank a little bit, like, I feel like, are you sure you want to pay me that much? Because I don't want to be the one who's going to get axed first.
Josh Matthews:I was at a boat show this weekend and sitting down with a guy who's been with Salesforce for over 10 years and he's in enterprise sales, and I mean he was talking about the cuts that were made from December through the spring at Salesforce and a lot of it was like you live in this region, you're getting paid this much, you're gone Right. So I want to be careful of that. Getting paid the right amount is what's important. Now I happen to believe in this conversation 125 is not the right amount, right. But I'm not trying to be negative, I'm not trying to push back, I'm just trying to get him to keep talking and sharing more and more and more. So now I know he's brought up how I did this cool architect thing, how I'm really eager. What else did he say? I don't even remember. Apparently, I'm a pretty darn good consultant, though.
Fred Cadena:You're a pretty good, darn good.
Josh Matthews:Thanks. Very good consultant. Thanks Fred.
Fred Cadena:I just want to like riff, honestly. You said for a second you don't know what's in my head. That's true, but you should come in with some little work's documentation of what should be in my head, right? Yeah, if you knew that. You know, last quarter you completely blew a deployment and overwrote a bunch of data and cause you know, 20 hours of outage. You know, know that that's in there too, right? Or you should have your. Here's the stuff that I did, that I that I can lean back on If I don't bring up and it's not at this point in the conversation, but if I don't bring up that cool thing you did with the release notes. You should have that ready. Yes, all the time.
Josh Matthews:All the time that slide 17 on my presentation.
Peter Ganza:It's taking the bullets out of the gun, guys you know who, dr Searad, sorry, I was just going to say you know who does this phenomenally well, oddly enough, salesforce. So we all heard or know about you know this V2 mom. Right, it's kind of it's still there but it's not being talked about as much. I was on the fan of it when it was introduced to me. I was like, oh, whatever, you know kind of have to plan for I mean, I'm working marketing and product marketing. So it's what are? You know what are my metrics going to be?
Peter Ganza:Anyway, fast forward to, you know, my first review, and you know you work on it throughout the year you have, you know you spend time with your manager I forget it was like a month on a monthly basis, not that much time, and it's, you know, not really an awkward meeting. It's going to just checking up and updating metrics and what. Anyway, the first review was quite simple because it was all there, right, and nobody could argue. All the data was there. It just came down to negotiating. Essentially, I mean very little room to negotiate because I'm going to crush it and I got my bonus. But the V2 mom or a foundation would address exactly what Fred was just talking about. Yeah, and they right, that's true.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, so you know, you guys both bring up a really good point. This is the reason why we have to do research. Well, what does Fred really want? Right, like I know that Fred is gutting for a promotion. Maybe I know that. Right, maybe I know that of the you know seven people under him, he lost three people this year. Right, like I could know that that might be something that he has high turnover in his division. Why is that? Right, because these things can be used as leverage. It's called getting leverage Right. You can move a lot of weight if you've got a long enough stick, right, and so this is just getting a longer stick by doing our research. Let's jump right back into it. Okay, Fred, and I just want to recap again how and what I'm getting Fred to talk, right, okay, so now I'm going to give a little bit of a pushback. Okay, you guys ready?
Peter Ganza:You ready.
Josh Matthews:Fred, you okay, we're good, okay, alright.
Josh Matthews:And I don't even really remember. You know what I said, you know how'd you come up with that, or, like, you know what were the things that stood out, or whatever it's like okay. So I don't really remember where we picked that, where we dropped off, but I'll just say, fred, I have to tell you again, thank you for offering me well, thanks for offering me a raise. I mean, I think that's terrific. You were right too. It is something that I have been thinking about, and not just a little bit, fred. I've been thinking about it a lot, Right, we both know I've been here two years, and I was, wasn't I green?
Josh Matthews:Right, when I came on, you were, you definitely were, yeah, and so there's, there's this I have this sense of loyalty to you, to the company, to my peers, to the ones that are still here. Anyway, you know, I have a lot of loyalty to all of these folks, and because you gave me a break and I've learned, I've learned a ton. There's something else I know, though, too, which is that when, when you come in and you're sort of green, like I was, sometimes it's hard for people to look at you like, you know, in the same way that people at other companies might look at me. Right, they might look at me and say, oh, you had five years as a BA at this one company and two years as a consultant here, and then the value for them. I mean, if I'm I'll speak candidly, fred I've done some research and people with my level of experience, certifications, skill set and even with some of the blunders that I made early on in my career that hopefully I've rectified and you feel, I think that you probably feel they've been rectified, or you probably wouldn't be offering me a raise today, but the research that I, that I found, shows that I should.
Josh Matthews:You know, someone in my position now I'm not saying I should get right, I'm not saying that someone in my role, you know, on the open market, is in that 140 to 150 range and you know, while I appreciate a 5k, you know, addition to my salary, that's barely keeping up with cost of living, right? So it doesn't really feel like a raise and I, you know I say that like with as much graciousness as I can, but you've brought up a pretty important topic and you've kind of sprung it on me and I know, you know, that you did right, fred, right.
Fred Cadena:Well, I know, I guess at the time of year we all know when annual reviews come around, but we didn't schedule it in advance, for sure.
Josh Matthews:Right. So this is kind of new to me, and so I definitely don't want to ever sound like I'm not grateful for the role, for the job, or question my commitment and my loyalty to you and to the company.
Josh Matthews:But what I want to do is you know, you just said how you described that I was eager and man I am. So let me ask you this what would it take? You know what sort of things are, you know, describe what I would need to have done to have earned a raise beyond cost of living increase.
Fred Cadena:You know that's a that's a fantastic question and I think that, first, I appreciate the research that you did. I'd love to look at some of that and just kind of see where the where the benchmarks are around experience, because I'm totally open to looking at that type of information. I think there's a couple of things to come to mind for me that we could potentially put on a plan to get you to where you want to be. One is, as you know, we've recently signed an agreement with Salesforce to bring on some new service cloud voice features. Voice features yeah Right, so you know there's going to be some specific training around that. If you wanted to step up for certification and get some of those service cloud voice certifications, that would be one thing.
Fred Cadena:Another thing that I want to go back and look a little bit at your throughput. But you're not exactly on the leader chart on the number of story points. You get done sprint over sprint and so, just looking at productivity output, I love the eagerness, I love how you're attacking some problems, but you know, just from a story points delivery perspective, I'd like to see you consistently towards the top.
Josh Matthews:Okay, and so how much close, like? So where do I stand there? And how much closer to the top are you talking about?
Fred Cadena:You know, I think you're kind of right, usually in the middle. You had a couple of sprints where you were definitely, you know, on the lagging side. I mean I think if you were, you know top 25% consistently and could help out with the new products. I think you know something closer to that 140 number would definitely be in line.
Josh Matthews:Well, thank you, that's great. That's great to hear. I'm kind of so. I'm looking at the same numbers that you are. I just pulled them up on my phone here and I'm kind of curious when you looked at that sort of where I fall, was that over the last two years, over the last 12 months or over the last six months? Because you know I'm looking here and it shows that I'm in the top 25% for my work for the last six months. Are you seeing those same numbers?
Fred Cadena:Oh yeah, I will refresh what I'm looking at. I definitely looked. Since this is an annual review, I looked over the course of the entire year. But you know, we can definitely look and see where that trend line is and I will reexamine. And if you've been consistently across the 25% threshold for the last six months, we could probably do something in the shorter timeframe.
Josh Matthews:Fred, you're my hero, buddy. Thank you so much For real. No, I appreciate it because I want you to know like when I say I'm loyal to you, you know I get calls all the time, right, who doesn't? Everyone who's good in this ecosystem is getting tons of calls. Some dude named Josh Matthews gave me a buzz. I don't know if you know that kind of, but I told him to piss off.
Fred Cadena:You want to say it when you come back, guys? I don't know. I don't know I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. That's a little sus.
Josh Matthews:All right, that was awesome, fred. So, guys, look this. What I loved about this little exchange here is Fred was pulling out numbers I didn't have access to, right. So what did I? So you've got to be prepared. You better know your numbers, man. And if you're going to go and ask for a raise, you better know your numbers. You better know what bullets they're going to fire at you.
Josh Matthews:I talk about take the bullets out of the gun, and what I'm referring to is take the bullets out of their gun so they don't shoot you with it first. Right, the appropriate thing. Had I known this information, if it wasn't a spur of the moment role play, I could have come to Fred and said Fred, I know we're going to talk about compensation and I just want to get it out on the table right now that, frankly, I wanted to apologize because I was real average the first six months of this year. No excuses, I mean, you know what was going on in my life, but no excuses. But I want you to know that I made a concerted effort to increase those and if we look at those numbers, I think that you're going to see a real hockey stick improvement in those numbers right Now, if I say that, fred, can you use that against me?
Fred Cadena:Not really. You've kind of taken the wind out of my sails.
Josh Matthews:Yeah. So here goes his silver bullet. Right, he doesn't just get to be like well, your performance number. So here's your measly three and a half grand, five grand, whatever it is. So this was kind of fun. What else did what else? I'm kind of curious. In the audience, anybody who wants to be a speaker? I see Jonathan here. Great to see you, buddy. I love it when we get a badass golden hoodie on our show. Jonathan Fox, Jonathan Fox, everybody, jonathan Fox. All right, I'll invite you to speak if you'd like to contribute here today. So what else happened here? I never said no, did I?
Vanessa Grant:You did not.
Josh Matthews:No, it sounded like a no. You didn't. You never said no, Never said no. I never sounded like. You know like, too, put back on my heels a little bit like well, how'd you come up with that? You know like, just curious, genuinely curious. By the way, guys, I would have rehearsed this if I thought Fred was going to, you know, be giving me an offer to do it.
Vanessa Grant:Dude, I'm so glad it was Fred and not me. My management style and Fred's are very different.
Josh Matthews:Fred's got a great management style right, like I'll tell you. I think that you know Fred and I sitting across a real negotiation I don't know how well I do this guy is very successful, so I'm not sure how well I do but I'm really glad he got to be here on stage today. Thanks, fred, for that. I'm kind of curious if there's anything that you saw that you think gosh, josh could have said this better or this would have moved me more. This was a tactic I was using on him. Can you break it down at all a little bit more?
Fred Cadena:Yeah, no, I think you called out a lot of the stuff. It's one of those things that with all made up facts, it's hard to point to. Oh well, I would have gone here, I would have gone there, because whatever it is would just kind of be made up. But I really loved the tact that you took, you know keeping me going, you know anchoring me upfront to talking about the positive things I saw on you pushing.
Fred Cadena:I love the reference back to research. I might have and again, it's all made up stuff I might have done more of a specific reference. Like you know, I looked at the XYZ benchmark report, I looked at the whatever you know, just to kind of disarm me from saying, well, I've got my research, because I've definitely had conversations like that over my career. But you know, I think it was good, I think the tact was phenomenal. I will say this and I negotiate a lot. Nothing I like better than negotiating with somebody that also negotiates a lot. It makes it, you know, it makes the conversation a lot more interesting, a lot cleaner. You can kind of get to where you want to get a lot faster. That's true.
Fred Cadena:So, the one thing I was going to ask is I think you use the example early on with Vanessa like, oh, you know you want to negotiate what move you're going to go to, the stakes are low, right, you know what are you at.
Fred Cadena:You know 16 bucks for a ticket and a buck at a popcorn. Yeah, I think a lot of people where they get hung up is the stakes are higher, you know, especially if you're in a situation where there's a job you really want, you're excited for it, you're miserable where you are. You kind of come from this space of scarcity and I think it puts a lot of people at disadvantage to really like go for what they think they want. And the other thing I'd love to hear your thoughts on is just like you've got to start a negotiation, which conversation? Number one, because the company is, you know, the first time the recruiter reaches out to you or the first time you reach out to them, they're already keeping notes, kind of anchoring you to a range that they want to get you to. Just two things I'll throw out there.
Josh Matthews:No, those are great points and you're right. So I'm just going to talk about the last part first, which is, yeah, like a surprise annual review. By the way, steven Gregor, amazing director of recruiting for Salesforce staff in LLC, had his annual review today. Boy, was this guy prepared, like really prepared, okay, like super prepared, smart guy. And so you know, annual review, all that stuff like timely, like we just had this conversation, what was it, steven? Three hours ago, I think, four hours, four hours ago, something like that. So people should know when their annual review is. And if you don't know when it is, you should ask them or when's your six month review? You just go up and be like, hey, when's my six month review? Oh, we don't do six month reviews. And then you just go what, how do you know how I'm doing? You can laugh about it. Let's get Jonathan Fox up here. Hey, jonathan.
Jonathan Fox:Hey, I mean thank you first of all for inviting me to come on to the microphone.
Jonathan Fox:I've been loving the conversation so far.
Jonathan Fox:One thing that I think was really cool in your role play was that and it's from both sides as well, you know because there are times where you're going to be the one on the other side of the fence offering the, you know, the pay rise or, unfortunately, having to deliver the bad news. But what both of both you did really well was remained respectful, and I think that's really important, because as soon as you lose that respect in the conversation, you lose the battle, you lose the conversation straight away, absolutely. But another point as well is respect can still be maintained whilst showing emotion, because ultimately, this is your life, this is your pay packet that you take home and it affects your life, you know, going forward, this is how you pay for your living. So there's nothing wrong with showing emotion and having emotion as well. Both you know showing that you're disappointed or showing that you're actually really happy with what you've been offered, and you can show emotion but still remain respectful as well. I think that's quite an important thing to bear in mind.
Josh Matthews:Oh, it's critical, jonathan, thanks for making that important point. Absolutely, you still get to be yourself. You get to be disappointed. Right Now, remaining relatively stoic is important. You use emotion that's in your control to move the conversation and move the feelings of the other person in a certain way. Like, how hard would it be in a negotiation for me to make Vanessa feel like shit, right, like pretty easy, pretty easy because she wants to make people happy. And you're making this, vanessa, I hope I have never, ever made you feel that way. She just did a sad face, like it would be easy, right, it would be easy, right. But that feeling like now that only you can really only get hurt by people that way when they're really close to you, right, it's got to be about business. This is business. I'm not saying fake tears, don't do that. I'm definitely. How do I put this? I think that you're right, jonathan.
Josh Matthews:People need to show emotion and it's okay and it's important to remain respectful. You'll notice, fred never interrupted me once. I never interrupted Fred once. Right, both of us want to give enough room and space for the other person to talk If we get upset, if we get frantic, if we get all up in our head if we start to like lose our cool. There's a little trick, okay, it's called breathing, and you just need to take a real slow, long, deep breath through your nose, and it's okay to hold it right. It's okay to take deep breaths in front of someone. There's nothing embarrassing about it. You just go wow, thank you, or wow, that number is surprising.
Vanessa Grant:You can say that that's a very though like a huge deep breath, and then you go with that number, like, is that key map?
Fred Cadena:It was a little James Earl Jones-ish, okay, okay.
Josh Matthews:Fair enough, right, it wouldn't be like that. But I mean, again, 80% of your conversations should be in this tone right now. This one, right, fred and I. Fred's tone kind of was like serious, so what? My tone wasn't all bubbly, was it? Because that's going to conflict, right, but it wasn't low. I was like, hey, thank you. Oh, that's so gracious, right, I was still. Just, I was trying to be just slightly more upbeat than Fred in the conversation. If I'm too upbeat, I can't pull him up with me, right, and by the end, look, everything that I wanted to happen at the end happened, which is, I wanted to not say yes and not say no and get him to try and talk himself into as much as possible going back and reviewing these numbers again. Right, he knew it was this sucks, I might say yes, but this sucks, I'm not going to and maybe I won't be here forever. Is that the feeling you got, fred?
Fred Cadena:Yeah, it's definitely you kind of put me soft on notice that you're attentive to your career, that you're paying attention to what's going out there and that you know, if I don't make you feel like you're getting rewarded in every way challenging work as well as compensation you know I may have another backfield to look for.
Josh Matthews:There you go, exactly so, mission accomplished. Right Was an agreement made.
Fred Cadena:No, no, no. I mean, you know, I put some things out there that maybe we could hit this, maybe we could hit that, but no, no hard agreement.
Josh Matthews:No, no hard agreement. But Fred committed to doing something. I committed to doing nothing. I didn't commit to anything, did I? I didn't even commit to working hard. You did not. I didn't commit to any of that stuff.
Josh Matthews:Right Now, maybe I should have this was a longer show or a longer program, then maybe I would have said Fred, I'll tell you what. Thank you. If you review that, if the numbers look like the numbers I just talked about, right, and if you're believing my tone and voice and you're believing the things that I'm telling you right now, I'm telling you, my friend, you know, you may I think you made a great hire and I know I was green man, I was right, like a little leprechaun. But I'm telling you, man, I'm going to bust my ass for you. If you can help me out with this, if you can help me get a raise that feels appropriate to the level of work and expertise that I have right now, I promise you you'll, like, I'm going to be your best guy and I won't let you down. Okay, and that's really important to do that, by the way, guys, and here's the thing, and again it's all.
Fred Cadena:The scenario wasn't well defined up front. We don't know if I had actual decision making authority or if I'm just kind of, you know, taking up a budget number that I was given and doing what I'm doing with it and I have to take it up the chain. But I might have. If I were in Josh's position when I had said, hey, you know, there's the certification, you know there's this, you know productivity question about you know what's your throughput. I might have said, well, hey, if you look at those numbers and it's, and it is 25% for the last six months and if I commit to getting that service cloud certification in the next, you know month, three months, whatever that reasonable number is, you know, will you agree to make this? You know 45 and go for the close. I'm, I maybe old school, but I'm you know A, always B, b, c. Closing.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and so I like that. But what I don't like about that is that that might cost me three to six months of pay raise and that's going to cost me $20,000 or $15,000. Like, you just got like and now I've got to wait six months. Six months later am I going to get a raise? Nope, so now I have a question. I have a question 18 months.
Peter Ganza:Sorry to interrupt, josh. I actually have a question for Vanessa. You're probably like me where you're thinking gosh, I wish you could talk like that.
Vanessa Grant:Totally.
Peter Ganza:It's easy for you, josh. It's easy for you, fred. Right, and that's one of the things I was going to bring up along the way, there's a personality aspect. No, peter, stop.
Josh Matthews:Okay, no, it's. This is. This is bullshit. Okay, no offense, and I mean it. No offense, but it's bullshit. Yes, there are certain personalities that are more assertive and assertive people will have an easier time when negotiating with assertive people, and people pleasers who are negotiating with other people pleasers will have a better time and a better outcome when they're negotiating with other people pleasers. That's a fact. Okay, that's a fact. Not all leaders lead with assertiveness, but there are some diff. There are definitely some advantages to to assertiveness overall. But saying it's easy for me or easy for Fred, I can tell you like it's easy now. He's 46. I'm 51. Been doing this a long time. It's my career. Right, it's not easy anymore than like well, yeah, but you're an app whisperer dealing with app exchange stuff. That's easy. That's like that's easy for you, peter.
Peter Ganza:Like you what do?
Josh Matthews:you say but Josh, I've been doing this for 10 years, right? Wouldn't you say that?
Peter Ganza:Yeah, and that you nailed it when you when, on that last part, you were saying it's easy, now Right, one of the things I was thinking about throughout this conversation is my first job. When I was at Symantec or can tech support, we were measured on calls per day. You need to take 30 calls every day. Well, yeah, everyone did. You know you might have a longer call, whatever I would, if I could control it, do 31 each day. And then guess what, a year after, I didn't even see this coming Going to my manager's office and he said, oh, you're getting a promotion. And I, uh, uh, uh, what? I had no idea. I had no idea it was my first job, right, but now, right, we've been through those motions. So, yeah, I totally agree with you.
Josh Matthews:And Peter, I love your story. That is so like I love that you just said what you said, because the best way to have a raise is be better than other people. Literally.
Fred Cadena:It, it, it's really, it works.
Josh Matthews:No, it, it. It definitely helps, right, I mean, we're in. You know those sales. If I was on a team and I've been on teams it's like I was on a team there were a thousand of us doing the same job, right, stephen was there as a thousand of us doing the same job, you know, at a big corporation, and you wanted to know where you stood. You just pulled up the sheets. There were a thousand names ranked and every week that that sheet came out, I couldn't wait to see it, couldn't wait.
Josh Matthews:You know, it was like seven pages of people and it's like I remember going from page five and then jumping to page three and then jumping to page two and hanging out there awhile, then jumping to the top of page two and then finally getting on a page one as a big celebration and then getting up to the top 20 and then getting to the top 10. And then for awhile it was number one man that's climbing and I worked my ass off for it. You know I didn't see my kids as much as I wanted to during those times, during those months and years, right? So, yeah, you got to. You want to raise. The first thing you should do is not just. You know, do the same job that you did the year before, you'll get your 3%, you'll get your 4% if you did the same thing. But if you exceed expectations right, if you go above and beyond, then then you've got a reason to ask for more money.
Fred Cadena:Can I throw a suggestion out? Totally enjoy, you, feel free to just shoot it down. But so and I've taken this tact with a lot of skills that I wanted to learn over the years I will give myself an assignment to do it at every opportunity. So yeah, negotiation, I don't want to say is like easy, but it is practice. I've done it a lot. I do it a lot and years ago, when I hadn't done it a lot, one of the things I did is I gave myself an assignment for a couple of weeks to say every opportunity I have I'm going to negotiate.
Fred Cadena:I've done the same thing about saying no. Sometimes saying no could be hard for people, and so you know, and I didn't want to be, you know sound, you know obstructiveness or oratory, but somebody would come up to me and say, hey, I need you to, I need this report. You know, can you get it to me by noon? And I say, well, I've got this and I've got this. So about 230, you know, and it doesn't have like everything doesn't have to be a high stakes negotiation, but the more you practice negotiating and if you don't think you have, I mean you probably have 1000 times a day that you could negotiate.
Fred Cadena:But you give yourself an assignment and do it more and you'll. You'll see people's reactions. You'll see your reactions. You'll notice the way that you feel inside like, oh, you know that person's really like, look at their eyes, they really need it by noon and I can give it to them by noon, but I'm not going to give it to them by noon. I'm going to give it to them at 130 because that's what I want. And you know, you just kind of like, like, get comfortable because again, I'm not like you know, I don't want to give anything away that I might be negotiating with, but like I'm bought in a lot of the time, like I want to win, I want them to win, but I want to get what I want to get. And you know, you have to be comfortable in those emotions or you're not going to get there. And to me, the only way to do it is with practice.
Fred Cadena:So, that's kind of my little, you know, suggestion.
Josh Matthews:It's not even a little suggestion, fred. It's a huge suggestion from where I'm sitting right, because what you've just shared with the folks in this audience who are listening either at home or in the car or live on the show or later on the podcast and this is a real thing, right? So real thing is that you can practice this stuff and you can make it concerted effort on it every day. You can just say, okay, I've got to do it three times, you know whatever, three times a day, whatever, I'm going to do it for 21 days. And it could be on anything, on anything, right, like you know the time that your dentist wants you to come in like, hmm, yeah, that's going to be difficult. What about this? Oh, he's a little tight, right, okay, I understand, but can you make it work? Yeah, okay, we can fit you in. It's totally like it's just, it's just friendly pushback.
Josh Matthews:So, please, everyone, check out Chris Voss's book, never Split the Difference. And, by the way, he was the FBI's lead hostage negotiator for 20 years. All right, so that's, that's where he's coming from. And, fred, excellent point. I had a. I had a client I was coaching. I actually used to work for this guy. He was a client of mine. I placed him in a job and then I wound up working for him and then later on he became a. I was doing life coaching along the sales coaching and things like that back in the day and he was struggling to smile with his new daughter.
Josh Matthews:You know, I don't know what the deal was. He might have been just a little bit on the spectrum or something like that. I think he had shared that with me. He's a lovely man, really nice guy, and he just didn't feel connected with his other children as much and he had this new baby and he didn't know what to do and I had him go to an airport this is probably before, I don't know if it was an airport or mall or something like that but I said you got to go to this thing and you need to. You can't leave till you get 20 smiles. He's like well, how do I do that? I said well, you smile at people. He's like I don't like my teeth. I'm like we'll get over it. Smile anyway, man.
Fred Cadena:I love that Right. It's so cool.
Josh Matthews:And he called me up. He's like Josh, I'm leaving, I. It was amazing. He's like I. I only smiled at like 25 people and I got 20 smiles at it. A couple of people kind of looked at me a little bit funny, but almost everybody smiled right back. He's like that was an insane. And then he called me two years later and he's like Josh. I just want to say thank you, because I have such an amazing relationship with my young daughter and I. I'm ashamed that I never had that experience before with my other children. I'm trying real hard to mend that Right, but I realized I wasn't giving them, you know what they needed, right? People want to feel relaxed and happy, so smile. Well, this is no different. So you can go out and you can. Okay, you want to learn how to negotiate everybody by a plane ticket to Turkey and go to the Grand Pizarre and buy yourself a Mirsch and pipe and a rug and see how that goes. Okay, so you could go do that.
Fred Cadena:That might be more in the handling column.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it's a little bit more that, that that's a little bit more haggling. But yes, you can practice this. It's just about getting comfortable through and, like I like to think well, what would David Goggins do? Right, so you've got to get comfortable feeling uncomfortable people Like, if you think things are going to change by staying in your comfort zone. Good luck with that.
Peter Ganza:That's been. I have a question. Hold on Sorry.
Josh Matthews:I'm just going to ask you to raise your hand, peter, that's okay, no problem, thank you. So, like you've got to get comfortable with with being uncomfortable and it doesn't have to be extreme, I'm no one saying go run a hundred miles and and jump in a nice store, you know, jump in a nice. You know you don't have to do that, but you can. You can ask for a different time, right, you can ask for a different. And this is a really good one for you. Sales force folks out there, right, like Fred. Fred just shared a small thing about oh, I need this by 12. Well, I can get it to you by one 30. Well, that worked for you. Right, like that kind of thing. But what you can really do is like, when something hands you a load of stuff, I mean, vanessa, how many weeks did you have 60, 70, 80 hour weeks in some of your jobs? Right, like a lot.
Vanessa Grant:Oh yeah, a ton Consulting. That was like every week.
Josh Matthews:And so how do you even say no, like, how do you say no? Well, you don't say no, you don't say no, I can't do that, because you're usually like, oh shit, okay, it's going to be a long weekend, right. But instead you can say, well, how am I supposed to do that? And they go what? How am I supposed to do that? I already have 50 hours of playing time with these two clients. Who's which client do you want me to call and tell them that their work won't be done this week, right?
Vanessa Grant:It's like a little passive, aggressive though.
Josh Matthews:It's not, no, it's just aggressive, is what it is. It's not passive, aggressive at all. It's are you stupid? Right? But it's still friendly, right? So you can say it a nice way hey man, I'd love to.
Josh Matthews:But how am I, how am I going to do that? It's all in how you ask how am I going to do that? Well, what do you mean? How you're going to do it? You're going to do it, you get it done. That's your job, right? Okay, but there's only so many hours in the week I'm gonna have to not do something, right? You know that, because I work 50 hours a week already and you're giving me 30 more hours to do, and it's Wednesday afternoon. So I'm literally asking how could I do that? And they'll stop and they'll think I'll be like yeah, okay, well, you know, and they'll be thinking about it. Well, can you get? And to help you out? Or let me talk to Anna, let me call the client. It's like can't you just call the client and tell him it's unrealistic? Like you're not gonna say that that's not part of the negotiation, but you're trying to get them to think gosh, this is unrealistic. Maybe I should just call the client and push them back a day or two days.
Vanessa Grant:Yes, that that is the con. Those are conversations I've absolutely had there you go.
Vanessa Grant:So those I feel a little more comfortable negotiating at work. Where it's the, I'll take this on. But what? What needs to? What can I push off or or can somebody else support me on this? Or these are the risks, that of the things that might drop if I, if I, take this on. But that's good, you know that's part of the consulting part. Maybe it's a matter of approaching Consulting engagement like well, these are the risks that you run by not paying me what I'm working.
Josh Matthews:Right, yeah, I again don't be a dick, right, and so I don't. Guys, I didn't sleep much. It's been a really long day goofy car stuff. Today I'm honestly so. I'm probably not like in in my prime here. So if I'm coming off as passive aggressive, then that's my mistake and I do apologize, because that's not at all what I'm trying to convey, right? It's it's not like well, how am I supposed to do that? You know it's it's like okay, how could I do that?
Jason Zeikowitz:Right.
Josh Matthews:And just like be nice to that, so you just get to be yourself. Okay, we're gonna go to Peter and then to Fred. Go ahead, peter.
Peter Ganza:I Thanks, josh. I just had a quick question for Fred With that. You know, when you talked about the practice and and you know sort of that's sort of, but you know, doing that Religiously, I'll say, was that innate? That you know you always had that or did. No, you have some experiences that, yeah, I'd love to know more. But what? What led you to get to this point?
Fred Cadena:Sure. So I the the technique in general, the assignment, like give myself an assignment technique. I got from an executive coach that I used, you know, probably 15 years ago, and then I applied it across a lot of things. I mean, I'd like to think I was, you know, a decent negotiator, but there were definitely a lot of times that I Would just sit back and take things that I didn't want to take, and one of them you know there's two, two of the things and I wanted to work on one was having a stronger know that I can stand behind, and the second was, you know, being better at negotiating. And and so, yeah, I, you know not it wasn't directly something I talked about with this coach, but I said, oh, you know what, I've got this technique in my bag about giving myself an assignment. And so I started out with, you know, for the next two weeks, every opportunity that I can identify, that I can negotiate, I'm gonna negotiate and I'm gonna, you know, go for what I want. And it sometimes worked out, sometimes it didn't, but it gave me practice and I still do it sometimes, and sometimes I'll still just do it. You know, again, I don't want to give anything away to anybody. That's Like you business with me. But sometimes I'm just like you know what I'm just gonna do. I can, I do it, sure, but I just want to. I just want to negotiate this. Yeah, I wanted to. I want to push back on it. So it definitely wasn't an eight, and that's that's why I decided to work on it intentionally.
Fred Cadena:The thing I wanted to share, why I'm talking, is I don't think there's anything wrong with sometimes being passive, aggressive, and I've been in consulting for a while and and there there's some consulting leaders out there that will work you 120 hours in a week. If, if you let them, you know, and and there's some people, josh to to your technique of you know, how am I supposed to do that? The answer is gonna be I don't care, do it. And so you just have to have a lot of tools in your bag. You know, sometimes it's that passive, aggressive, you know.
Fred Cadena:Hey, tell me which one of these things you want to drop. Sometimes it's a hard, no, sometimes it's a negotiation, like the right tool is not always the same tool. You have to have a lot of techniques to go to the yeah In. You know, salary negotiation a little bit less so, but if you're negotiating things like deadlines or work or hey, I need you to be in Toledo tomorrow to take a meeting. Sometimes you need to pull a different tool out of the bag. Negotiations not always the right tool.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it does it. Thanks for great question, peter, and Really good response there too, and I'll just say we'll get to you just one sec here. Jason, thanks for raising your hand. Look, you do need a number of tools, but, but you just need a few to make everything kind of go better.
Josh Matthews:Right again, it's like tone research, it's tone of voice, it's understanding how to appeal. This is something that we haven't even mentioned on this show yet how to appeal to someone's status. Right, we talked a lot about how people can be afraid and things like that. But, like the this Personality that you're talking about, this, I don't care, get it done, right. Okay, frankly, that's me under stress. You just described me under stress, steven. Seen it right. So, like that's. That is sometimes how people are. That's not how they are Generally all day long at home with their families, with the people that they love, when they're feeling calm, right? So that person who's like I don't care how you do it, just get it done. It's like. It's like hey, hey, you know. Like hey, it's gonna be okay, but I do need to discuss this with you. All right, we're gonna find a solution, right, and I understand how important this it sounds like this is really important to you. Yeah, it's really important. It's like, okay, you know, sounds like, if this doesn't get done, wait Whatever you know, say whatever, but name their emotion. Sounds like you're you know. It sounds to me like Some shit could hit the fan if this isn't done on time. Yeah, that's exactly what's up. Okay, yeah, that's not a comfortable position to be in. No, it's not right. When you're naming the person's emotion, you can bring that person down, that person who's like I don't care, just get it done. It's like like, okay, you sound really frustrated and a little bit nervous that it's not. You just say that. What are they gonna say? You're right, okay, so those people are not lost. You can take those people.
Josh Matthews:There's this guy on YouTube. I love watching this guy. He's like a dog whisper or something. I forget what they call. Him is this young, he looks like a little hip-hop fashion dude and he takes these nasty, big, mean dogs, big angry malamutes and things like that that want to bite the face off of strangers, and he gets them by the leash and within about you know, 30 seconds or a minute or two minutes, they're calm and healing and obeying his commands. I love watching this guy Right. If you check them out, google that stuff it's absolutely incredible he's taking. Now these dogs are aggressive.
Josh Matthews:Is it because they're angry dogs? Anyone who thinks the dogs are angry, throw a purple heart. If you think the dogs are angry, throw up a Everyone raise your hand. If you think it's because they're scared, there we go, we get more hands on the skin, you're right. So that purse is. Sorry, jason, you came close. Buddy, you know one or two. You had a one and one two shot here.
Josh Matthews:So those managers who are like I don't care, get it done. Do you think that they're angry? They might be, but what are they really? They're frightened, they're terrified, they're scared. And that's when we start using our announcer voice. Hey, fred, it's gonna be okay, all right. I. I assure you, we'll find a way through this. It's really gonna be okay, all right. Okay, I call it that that sort of, you know, soothing Mother voice, or Chris Voss calls it the FM DJ. You know, friday night DJ, you know. And now, welcome to this Salesforce career show. Right, you, just, you can sue them with your voice.
Josh Matthews:There's this thing that we have in our brains. They're called mimic neurons. Who's heard of mimic neurons? No one. Okay, so mimic neurons Jason has. Okay, so mimic neurons are these neurons in your brain and we start communicating the way other people are communicating with us. So if I got in front of a crowd, I was like, hey, everybody has a go in, right, and I start talking like that. I'm like, ah, blah, blah. You think about it? Comedians do it all the time, don't they? They get revved up and like, oh man, we're gonna have fun. Oh, my god, san Francisco. Blah, blah, blah. Can you believe this place? Blah, blah, blah, blah. Right, and everybody kind of like this starts feeling a little bit more energy. Maybe you're even feeling just a little bit more energy right now. Okay, thanks, thank you for the claps there. So like that's a real thing, okay and then example.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, there's a good example. And then you can get let's just, right now, just slow it down. Okay, we're just gonna slow it down a little bit. Nothing scary here, just changing my voice, my tempo and my inflection. It's kind of going down. Yeah right, that's. What's happening is these neurons are Happening, they're getting fired in your brain and if you start communicating with me, you're gonna start communicating the way I do. I mean, everybody here's talked to a southerner and started you know they're standing next to their friend, they're friends like why are you talking to the southern draw? You know, I didn't even know.
Fred Cadena:I was doing it right. Why am I talking to fog corn layhorn?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, so you can take that scary boss and you can scare, you can calm them down. People aren't angry. People shouldn't be scary. Scary people are almost always afraid Okay, almost always afraid. Or sad, okay, not angry. Maybe they're angry too. You can calm if they're angry, they're angry, you'll know it. Anger is just a. It's just the stage of emotion you get to right before you sadness, right. So I just want to make sure everybody understands that even the scariest, just like the scary dogs, right, someone can find in two minutes how to calm them down. You actually have that power if you practice. I promise you you do, and it won't work a hundred percent of the time, but it will work with the majority of the time and it'll work better and better the more you get used to it. Who thinks? Who thinks that's true? I'm kind of curious.
Josh Matthews:Let's see some hearts or hands in the audience. Okay, got a thumbs up. We've got a hundred percent, not a hundred percent. Some hearts, okay, another heart? Great, this is good, all right. So, um, let's green heart. I like these green hearts. That's cool, All right. Well, go ahead. Jason, you had your hand up before. I want to make sure you get a chance to pipe up here.
Jason Zeikowitz:Um, yeah, great, great, uh, lecture soapbox scrubbing that out. That was. That was great. And I'm curious, josh, did you? I was talking about chris boss. Did you hear the recent interview he gave on the andrick huberman podcast?
Josh Matthews:I haven't watched that one, no, but I, but I really am a huge fan of huberman. I mean I, you know, I like all things neurological and behavior also. That's I'm doing, what I'm doing, yeah.
Jason Zeikowitz:Yeah I had a feeling that you're already new by Huberman, so for those who don't already know, he's a Stanford professor of neuroscience and he has a podcast and YouTube channel as well. For whatever medium you can consume that content, it's the same thing whether it's on YouTube or podcast.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and I heard he's actually going to be leaving being a professor. I heard he's going to go full on on his own. Yeah, and I think he's a professor of neurology. Yeah, neuroscience, yeah. So what happened on that program?
Jason Zeikowitz:Well, the stuff that you were calling out about the tone of the voice and about mirroring and about labeling, he breaks it down. So they're talking about his Christophosis tactics that you just drew out, and he breaks down the science behind it about how your lower tone of voice gets the person to lower their tone in their head. And labeling actually allows the person to hear themselves, because we're better able to hear others than ourselves. So when you label or restate a mirror, in a way, just restate a couple of the things they just said. It allows the person to hear what they just said. They can clarify. They know that you heard it. So all great tactics they are? Yeah, they are.
Jason Zeikowitz:Thanks for sharing, yeah, and also the power of practice as well, because I know when you said how can I do that? That's exactly a quote from Chris Boss and it does sound like I don't know when he says it like he's a pro. He's said it so many times in hostage negotiation situations. I guess it's all about in the moment, finding the right term and just being able to connect, to say a phrase in the moment and that they don't understand what you just said. You're conversating, you're explaining yourself. So that's where to Vanessa's statement about ooh sounds passive, aggressive. I mean, it's something out of context. But if you're connecting, having a conversation, you say something and if the person's and if you notice a reaction that's not what you were expecting, you could then be able to pivot. But the direction is how you are getting the cards on the table. These are how many hours I currently have, based off of my current workload. So how can we make this?
Josh Matthews:work. Yeah, exactly yeah, there's so many. Thank you for sharing, Jason, and you're absolutely right, there are a lot of different ways that you can say it. Maybe I could use your. I want nothing more than to make the client happy. I think you know that, but I'm kind of. This is my situation right now these two other bosses God gave me this. This is this does do Thursday, this stuff's do Friday. What would you do if someone handed you 30 more hours of things to do? Right, oh, yeah.
Josh Matthews:Okay, yeah, got it. Okay, that does sound a little unreasonable, because they can actually hear how stupid it is, right, you know, and then they can solve the problem for you. And that's what's key Getting the person to talk and get them to feel calm, get them to feel comfortable. I'll tell you this, I knew this. I knew this gal from a few years ago three, four years ago and she was like really smart, like really bright, okay, had a lot of good things to say and totally had imposter syndrome. Right, being on being on talk, you know, being being on programs, being on podcasts, being on stage, totally had had imposter syndrome. And to this day she still gets stage fright. And yet I don't know almost anyone else in the ecosystem who is more well regarded as friendly, has amazing followers, and yet she still continues to be like an amazing contributor, right and and.
Josh Matthews:And she wasn't sure she could do that stuff, she wasn't sure she could be a presenter, she wasn't sure she could do public speaking, she wasn't sure she could be a co-host on this show. So you know, when we think these things about ourselves, like, can I do this? Yeah, you can, duh, just practice and go for it, just do it just like Fred said you just do it bit by bit by bit and you're going to wake up. But wouldn't it be better to wake up in two years knowing that you're 50% a better negotiator than if you did nothing about it? And, guys, I wish everybody on this show is listening right now, could have come to this presentation and I do hope to get the whole thing out on a, on a video for you or even on audio recording, because the amount of money that's left on the table just by not getting that extra 10 or 12 grand when you take your new job, not getting that little bump or by accepting a 4% raise instead of a 6% raise every year for 20 years, is in the millions of dollars.
Josh Matthews:It's in the millions of dollars. The example I used was $120,000 person. Now the person negotiates $132,000. Okay, the person who gets the $132,000 in a 4% rate or a 5% raise every year, guess what they're going to get? They're going to make 600 grand more over over 20 years. The person who negotiates a 6% raise every year and started at 132K is going to come over with $2 million more when they retire 20 years later. All right, go ahead, vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:One lovely words, and I also wanted to to say you know, this is along the lines of what we had talked about. I think it was either the last episode or two as far as not having not being asleep to those self-limiting beliefs stepping into fear, because you might actually end up finding something that you're actually quite good at if you practice. This always happens to be one of my weak spots. But another thing that I think I would also encourage folks that are kind of more in. You know, maybe in my position, I always leverage the things that I'm good at to be better at the things that I'm not good at. So when I talk about that, I mean in terms of asking for help. So if, for example, I had a recent salary negotiation I'm not going to get into the details, you know on the show, but I knew I could reach out to you if I needed to.
Vanessa Grant:I know that there are good negotiators in my life, Just like when I was speaking, you know, and I could reach to Janet Elliott, you know, when I was looking for guidance. That's right. Speak, yeah, I think it's the folks that are good at the things that you don't feel confident in and getting that help. It's always okay to ask for help and it's okay to admit that you're not good at something or you don't feel strong at it today. It's always that you know, throw the yet in it. It's not that I'm not good at it, I'm not good at it yet.
Josh Matthews:I love that, vanessa. Yeah, reach out. You know Jason called me around salary negotiation. You can go back a couple episodes.
Josh Matthews:We talked a lot about it and that was for a job offer negotiation and he said the right things and he got what he was actually worth. You know, I'm proud of him for that, because that does take guts. It does take your risking something, and we talked a few weeks ago two, three weeks ago about how you have to be maybe it was even a month ago. Right, he must be willing to walk, walk away, right. It's when you're not willing to walk away that you are really held over a barrel and that's not a comfortable position. If you've ever seen someone held over a barrel, what comes next ain't fun, okay. So like, don't do that. You know we have options in our life guys.
Josh Matthews:You want to go negotiate for a pay raise? Well, it's perfectly okay to just talk to your boss and say I haven't really given this much thought, but I've been here a little while and you know I love it here and I started thinking about, you know, my value to the company and I certainly feel like I'm more valuable now than I was 12 months ago or 18 months ago. I'll be honest, I don't even know how to talk about salary. You know, I don't even know what to ask for, like I really don't know. But I definitely want to feel like you know, I'm valued. You know, can we talk about that? And it'll be like, yeah, we can talk about it. Of course they're going to say yes.
Josh Matthews:If they say no, you need to go find a new job because this person's a jerk, right, so you can just just be yourself and just just say it Like gosh, I don't even that's it. You get to do this Like gosh, you know. Thanks for the offer, fred. I mean five grand, like that's. You know, thank you, like I don't know what to say. I, you know, I think I have a good sense of my value, but if I'm being honest, I kind of want to ask for more. I don't really know how to do it, you know, can you help me out here?
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, that's more my personality style.
Vanessa Grant:But you know, I have to say, even though negotiation isn't something that I feel super comfortable doing, I have felt the impacts of not doing it.
Vanessa Grant:I mean, I, you know, I used to be a VP at a mid-sized company and I make like double. You know what now, what I, what I made back then, just because I was happy to take those 3% raises and I'd been at that company for 17 years. And you know, I, it makes me, if you think about it in terms of like, what you are going to lose. You know, if you think about the, the president, future value of money, not having that money today is really impactful for your future. That's your retirement, that's the, that's. It's so important. And so it really took me too long, I think, to learn that lesson and and even though it's not something I'm particularly comfortable with now, I couldn't imagine not at least trying to get what I think I'm worth and speaking to people about how to, how to get that, and listening to shows like this Because it is so important just for your I mean long term, for your life.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it matters, it absolutely matters. And again, going back, like you can practice small. My son, charlie's 20 years old, he goes to University of Oregon and I got a call late last night, halloween night. What happened? Someone smashed his Subaru and Preza rear window and stole his subwoofer. It was a badass subwoofer too, bummer man Like that thing was like I don't know three 400 bucks in the window, I don't know what that is like 800,000 bucks to fix it.
Josh Matthews:And so, you know, you got it all taped up and he called me, or I called him around one or two o'clock my time, it's about 11 o'clock this time and I was like what's going on? He's like, oh, you know, I, you know, I don't know what to do. I'm going to call mom and do this, blah, blah, blah. But I was like, just call and get some quotes, just call and get some quotes. And so he did. He got two quotes. One was for like 8, 850. And the other one was for like 600 bucks. Right, and he said. He said to the person he's like Okay, well, 600 bucks, you know, I don't know, I think I'm just going to call insurance. And then what's the guy do? Insurance always tries to beat them up. He's like. He's like, he's like, I'll tell you what, I'll just do it for 500 bucks. That's your deductible, right? He's like, yeah, he's like, okay, I'll do it for 500. All he had to do was say one little thing not 100 bucks off, right, like, it's all it took it. When you start getting these little micro wins I saved 10 bucks there.
Josh Matthews:I saved 50 bucks there. I saved 100 bucks there. I saved 1000 bucks there. I saved $5,000. I saved $100,000. I saved $300,000. Right, and, by the way, that's real. This happens all the time, every day, all over the world. Some people are saving money, some people are winning and some people are, they're satisfied and unknowingly losing their shirt, right? So just practice small, all sorts of different things and have fun and read that book. Read that darn book for real. And if books are not, you think you can get the audio book. I like the audio book because I think I does. Does he do the reading? Do you remember?
Jason Zeikowitz:Jason Is Chris Vost in the reading he does Within his wonderful FM late night DJ voice.
Josh Matthews:He's got a like this guy's got a. This guy's got a terrific voice and an enviable voice for sure, absolutely. And you can watch YouTube videos. Just, you know, become like a little bit of a junkie on this stuff. I watch tons of videos on boats Okay, like that's what I do all the time. He's like a watch boat porn. But every once in a while I got to be like, okay, I better watch some like more Alex Ramosy or some more Peterson or some more you know, voss, or some more Robbins or like whatever you know and just got my feel Go ahead.
Josh Matthews:Go ahead, jason. And then we're going to kind of wrap this up and take some questions and maybe answer some other questions around salary. We didn't cover everything today, right, so we'll try to answer any questions. If there are any, go go for it, my friend.
Jason Zeikowitz:Jason. Yeah, two other recommendations to look into as well, addition to Chris Vost's book and his interviews man that that guy has so many interviews out there not only in Andrew Huberman's, which I think was the best of his, but he's done a lot of interviews out there just because he's a great promoter. So if you check your podcast search for him, you can see a lot of his interviews out there. Yeah, in addition to his book. Another book and concept is nonviolent communication throughout a hard, if you've heard of that nonviolent communication.
Josh Matthews:You've got to Vanessa and Fred do Okay, cool.
Jason Zeikowitz:It's essentially, you know, it's how that the dog whisperer was able to whisper to those dogs, understanding that they're not afraid, they're I'm sorry, they're not angry, they're afraid. And it's great for emotional intelligence, for yourself and for others. Separating, labeling, labeling emotion and just being aware of emotion, for instance, even before public speaking. Oh, I'm okay, my heart is racing, my palms are sweaty. Okay, I'm anxious, I'm excited, I could label it that way, I could relabel it. So you're just identifying oh hey, it looks like you're getting a little red, looks like you're talking fast, looks seems like you're angry. So so you're labeling, because you're identifying emotions and you're set and you're separating the emotion from the incident. So that's what nonviolent communication does. It has. It focuses on emotions. Incidents need, okay. So why are you feeling that? How did this stimulus cause that reaction? What? What was the direction you were heading? To that this then change your course, and what's the request? What do we do about it? So those four things observation observation, feeling, need and request.
Josh Matthews:Jason, thank you for sharing that. I'm definitely going to check it out. And you said something really important, which is the why. Right, and this is again I covered in the presentation, but we did not talk about it today. So when someone says I'm going to offer you a $5,000 raise, like Fred offered to me today, or you didn't offer it, he said that's what I was getting, right, I never, I never talked about with the audience here today about thinking about well, why is he offering that? Like he and I both know that is a standard of living raise, not a you've done a good job raise, Like we both know that, right. So then I need to be asking myself, well, why? Okay? Well, he brought up the budget. It's like, yeah, everyone's got a budget, but he might have an extra $400,000 in there to spread around if he wants. Maybe he's trying to appeal to you, know, the CEO. Look how much money I saved by not spending it on these employees. Yeah, exactly, right. So just because he said the budget doesn't mean that it's a small budget, right?
Josh Matthews:What happened in everyone's brain when they heard Fred say that he has a budget? What did you think? Oh, budget bad, not enough money, right, right, but that's not necessarily the case. So why is he offering this? Why was it low? Okay, maybe there are issues with my performance and that would have been in a whole other angle.
Josh Matthews:Fred, thank you for offering me an increase. It really sounds like a cost of living increase. You know how has my performance affected? You know. You know this sum that you're offering. You know what I mean it's like. Why is he even offering me this lousy five grand? And I know five grand could be a lot of money for some people, but for somebody who's making 120, 125 and takes a year, year and a half, to get, that's not that much money. Right, it's 250 bucks to take home a month, maybe, if you're no, not even, not even something like that. I don't know. Okay, so why?
Josh Matthews:So when someone says, you know we want to offer you 130K, right, or or better yet, a better example would be like hey, I need you to work 20 extra extra hours in the next two days, you got to ask yourself, well, I'm going to negotiate that part, but why do they need that done? Well, they're under pressure, okay, who are they under pressure from? Oh, it's the client. Oh, yeah, I know that client. They're tough, they threaten to leave, so they use hardball tactics to put fear into this Salesforce partner that I worked for. Oh yeah, things have been tight in the last year, so they don't want to lose any clients, so they're bending over backwards and they're being held over a barrel.
Josh Matthews:So maybe now that I know the why and then I can just say sounds to me like you're being I mean this, you could be really direct Sounds to me like the client's really holding you over a barrel. That can't feel good. Dude, you nailed it. You're right. We are being held over a barrel. I don't even know what to do. Well, I want to help. Let's, let's figure it out together. Do you see how that works, guys, a little bit, yeah, good. Yeah, a bunch of hundreds there, so cool. Do we have questions before we wrap up this, this fun little show that we've been having? So if you have a question, you can raise a hand.
Jason Zeikowitz:Go ahead. The other thing I want, last thing I wanted to reference, also for some fun for classes, for arguments.
Josh Matthews:Jason, jason, jason, I'm just going to ask you to hit pause for a second, because we're asking for questions right now. Okay, is it all right? Yeah, all right. I just want to check that and then we'll go to you once you raise your hand. Okay, we're going to get some order in this room today, I promise. Thank you, okay. So, vanessa, did we have any questions come in this week that we want to reach out to? To?
Vanessa Grant:respond to I have not received any questions, but I do have one question from more myself.
Josh Matthews:Okay, let's, let's have that. Jason, I promise you'll get a chance to share this stuff, but if you could because we do want to wrap it up if it's not related specifically to salary negotiations or what or the topic, just stick it in a tweet and everybody can hit it. Okay, Go ahead, Vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:So, in regards to negotiations, should you still negotiate if, let's say, there's a range and they offer you the top of the range, is that still a spot? If you, if you said in the beginning that, yes, that range is okay, and then they offer you the top, my gut just says, oh great, I don't have to negotiate then. But I'm curious to hear what you would have to say about that.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's an awesome question, by the way. I want to make sure everybody walks, walks away and hopefully you've listened to this whole show and I want to make sure that everybody, if they are going to offer something to someone, that you give a range and Fred and I were talking, you'll know I didn't ask for a 130 to 150, but I gave a range, right, what I want is 130. So the number that I actually want is the low end of the range, because they're only going to hear the low number. Does that make sense? I mean, hopefully that makes sense. If I say I'm looking for 150 to 170K, the hiring manager is going to hear 150 and I might be thinking 170, and when they offer 150, I'm going to feel like a little bit, you know, but hurt, because they didn't, they didn't hit me higher in the range. Well, that's not your job. Your job is to hit them with the low number. Needs to be the, the number that you actually want, right? So okay, so back to your question. So there's, there's a couple of things that you can do here right Now. If it's a small company and they have some sort of range, you have every right to find out why the range is the range right.
Josh Matthews:Big companies like if you're working, say like Cognizant principal architect is going to make X to X, you know, let's say it's, they're going to make, you know, 190 to 210. And if you've been there for two years you'll get 20%, and if you've been there for you know only one year you'll get 10% or whatever. If you're doing leadership activities, you'll get more bonus and if not, you're going to get this. That stuff's pretty much, like you know, written in stone. Okay, what's not written in stone is your job title. I noticed that I'm at the. You know you've. Thank you for offering me the top of the range for BA level two, right, I'd like to ask you what the range is for BA level three and what the expectations are for any candidate that comes in. Like what? Did I miss? Some requirements for that for that level of the role? Does that make sense?
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, no, that's interesting, but again, it's the why being the business analyst and you're in negotiations, I like it.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, so, but but just know, like, yeah, that's the top of the range for that job title, can you? But you can negotiate a different job title, right? Well, I don't want to be a consultant, I want to be a principal consultant, right? Because principal consultants, the range starts 10 grand higher and moves up further. So if you start me at the hey, how about this? Hey, thank you for offering the top of the range. I'm going to assume that that means you know, like, is it right for me to assume that if I do a really good job in a year but I'm not promoted, that I won't receive a raise because that's the top of the range? You know what, if I came in on the low end of you know, ba level three, so that there's more upward mobility for me for the next couple of years, Right, did that answer it? Hopefully that answered it. It looks like Fred's got a point of view. Go ahead, fred.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, I just say, and I agree 100%, especially on the moving, the moving, the, the, the job title up. Let's say another thing is right now, especially, some jurisdictions are requiring the publishing of a range, and I know for a fact that some places are are are publishing a range that is under what they're willing to offer, in order to not introduce those conversations to everybody else that already has a G Yep, Just to rebob, you got that right.
Fred Cadena:I think it's always fair game If you, if you can like the same thing we talked about before, if you can point to. This is why I think I'm worth this. It's always worth the conversation, yeah.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, yeah, you're always allowed to push back and there's always an angle. There's always an angle right. And you know, guys, this is what I used to preach back in my old Robert half days, which was to both sides, and I still do this, right, cause it some of this advice I'm giving. If you're a client of mine and you're listening, it's like well, josh, are you screwing us over by giving us these ranges? Do you really only always want the low range? And the flat out answer is no, not at all. Like the truth is, we're straight up. This is what it's going to take to bring this person on, and if you bring them on for this, they're going to be happy. That's the right amount, right? If you want to give them more, you're welcome to. If you give them less than, you're going to risk resentment or them going somewhere else. So it's totally up to you if you want to take that risk, right? So just understand that. I don't even remember what else I was going to say. But look, ranges are great and everything's up for negotiation. Just, you want to? Oh, I remember the right amount.
Josh Matthews:Okay, if someone pays you too much, too much, you're going to wind up like all those Salesforce people that had been at the company for 16 years and were making $300,000, but lived in the wrong region and got fired because they made too much. They'd made $299,. They would still have their job, right. So it was the wrong amount for them. It was an expensive amount for them, right? And if you pay someone too little, they're going to resent you and they won't stay. And if you want to talk about expensive, lose a good employee. That's way more expensive than all the boats I would love to own someday. Okay, way more expensive. And people like, yeah, yeah, yeah, you're going to say that you're a recruiter, I am a recruiter and I'm saying it because it's the fucking truth for real. It's so expensive to find someone train them.
Fred Cadena:I was going to say I don't want to put you, I don't want to put you on the spot, but like. That's something that maybe could help some of the people that are feeling apprehensive about salary negotiation. What does it cost if you want to throw out just like a general number If you're replacing a hundred and twenty hundred and fifty thousand employee?
Josh Matthews:what's the cost of the company's Look, if that person leaves and they suck at their job, it costs them nothing, because no one, no, no company should keep bad employees, right. So there's that. But if you have someone who's who's really good like Stephen is on my team, right. If you've got someone who's really good like, the cost to losing Stephen would probably cost me, I don't know, four or five hundred thousand dollars, the long term.
Fred Cadena:Yeah, so keep that in your pocket, right?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, you're asking for your raise, right, like you don't have to say it but yeah, stephen, I don't want to hear about this shit tomorrow either, man, so don't bring this up, okay? But yeah, no, it's expensive, like you know we're. You know it's like you're talking about. You know, stephen's been with me here for two years and he worked, we worked at Robert Half together for three and a half years. So we've got five and a half, almost six, years together and I can't replace that. That's expensive. There's, there's, there's maybe one other employee I've ever had in my life and I've had dozens of employees, maybe one other employee that ever exhibited the same level of you got it, boss, and he'd get it done. That's what Stephen does. You think I can go find that by having a few interviews? Forget it. There's no way. There's no way Now. And I might even be able to find it, but it might still take me two years to actually get the same results. You see what I mean. So it really depends.
Josh Matthews:If someone's got a hundred, let's say, a hundred thousand dollar admin, right, but they've been with the company for a while. And the client you know the internal clients really like that person. They're great for culture, they're reliable. You, they, you can count on them. You can give them projects. The projects get done, they're out of your hair, they don't cause you many headaches, you don't have to have corner off, like you don't have to worry about them.
Josh Matthews:Don't find that other person? Well then you're going to have to pay me and that's probably kind of cost you about $25,000. And if you do go through me, you know you'll have about a 6% chance of attrition and if you do it on your own, you've got somewhere between a 30 and a 50% chance of attrition. That means you're going to have to hire two admins to get the one that you want and God forbid, you use a recruiter who's not very good. Now you're paying 40 or $50,000 and wasting a year. Do the math on that. It's expensive.
Josh Matthews:I mean, I was talking to a friend. He's got a small SI guy and he's been in the ecosystem for well over a decade and he's got a bunch of folks over in India who do a lot of work for him very affordably. And when we were chatting about this stuff we were talking about like yeah, you got to hire two. Like if the average manager goes out to hire someone, they got to hire two people to get one. And guess what? Yours truly has f'd up and done that before. I hired Steven and another person at the exact same time and four months later only Steven was left standing. So like I'm susceptible to it, especially internally.
Josh Matthews:But outwardly with clients is a very different thing. It's forced for the trees kind of stuff. But this person said overseas they had to go through 10 people to get one. So they've curated this wonderful team of eight or 10 people offshore and they're amazing. But he's gone through dozens of people to get that Right.
Josh Matthews:It's harder to vet when someone's offshore. You know hard to know cultural differences so it's harder to read someone Right. So you hire twice to get one. In the US you hire 10 times offshore to get one. Those are the numbers.
Josh Matthews:Unless you're working with a really good recruiter and it doesn't have to be me. But if you're working with someone who's really really very good they're a lie detector then can get people to open up. They can really uncover what's going on and not just protect you from the bad ones but get you to open your mind when you're saying notice someone because of your weird confirmation bias that you've got going on. Whatever, you didn't like the color of their shirt or they smiled funny or you didn't like their LinkedIn picture right, or their resume had typos right, or they didn't have enough certifications. I mean, I can't tell you how many people over the last 20 years managers have hired from me. I'm like you're overlooking this person and I'm sorry but I'm sticking my neck out. If you don't hire this person, I don't know that I'm much value to you because you're not believing me. When they go ahead and hire them and six months later they're like the best candidate ever, thank you, because there's risk of not hiring the right person, just as there's risk of hiring the wrong person. But we fear loss more than we crave gain and consequently, what happens is we would rather say no to candidates without really digging in and see if they're going to be a good fit, right. We just look for these certain signs and then go with our gut, and you know what Everyone's gut is only right about half the time when it comes to hiring.
Josh Matthews:So it's real expensive and, yes, you can use that to leverage a wage increase. You can use that as leverage for a wage increase, a promotion, more time off, more responsibility, special projects, you name it. You can negotiate anything. Stephen's going to be a part owner of this company. By the way, come January he didn't even bring that up. That's just offered to him. It's not a lot, but it's something, because he earned it.
Josh Matthews:Wouldn't it be amazing if everybody that you hired who wanted them to own a piece of your company, like you wanted them to, because you never wanted them to leave, because they were that good? And I'm telling you, you can do far more with five amazing people than 15 B or C grade people. You get five A players. Man, you're running full steam, right. So if you're good, the first thing you got to do is, if you want to raise again, the first thing you got to do is be really good, okay, so be smart, write your time, write your time, stick it out. Stay more than a year, right, attention, you're going to do fine. And, by the way, guys, if you're listening to this show, I'm just going to put this little offer out here for you.
Josh Matthews:If you're listening to this show and you're currently in the next week, 10 days, and you're facing a negotiation situation and you're not sure what to do, you're not sure what to say. You've picked up the books, you've listened to this podcast and you're still not sure what to do. It's okay, just give me a buzz. Hit me up on LinkedIn. Don't hit me up on Twitter, I don't look at it that much. Hit me up on LinkedIn Right. Go to the salesforcerecruitercom, send mea message and you can just ask me. I'm happy to spend a few minutes with you. It's probably not going to be an hour, okay, but I'm happy to spend a few minutes with you and help get you pointed in the right direction.
Josh Matthews:I want everybody to succeed. I want everybody to get paid the right amount. I want everybody to work for amazing bosses and everybody to feel like they can stand up for themselves. That's really important to me. So you know we're here for you guys. Okay, it's been a really fun episode. Thank you everybody. I love this panel, I love this group, this group of folks. You guys are absolutely fantastic. Thank you, vanessa, thank you Fred, thank you Peter. Jason. You've got one minute on the floor. Go for it. I know you got some final things to say. Go for it, buddy.
Jason Zeikowitz:Well, I already tweeted. I'm good, oh, you did.
Josh Matthews:Okay, jason's Iguetz, everybody, stephen, greger, casey, melissa, robert we got everybody here. Thank you so much, reed Morgan. So good to see you guys. Thank you for being on the show. New podcast coming out tomorrow. If you want to learn a little bit about style and how adopting a slightly different style or paying a little bit more attention to how you dress and how you appear to help you level up your career. That's going to be released tomorrow morning, so check it out and we'll be back in. Well gosh, what is it? Two weeks. Vanessa, you're running the next show, so do you have a guest or a topic for that?
Vanessa Grant:Well, peter's going to be my special guest for the show, but we're going to. We need to iron out some more specifics on topics, I think.
Josh Matthews:Fantastic. I will be out on the next show, but back in one month from today or four weeks from today, and thank you, peter and Vanessa, for continuing on the podcast, and I know you guys are going to do a fantastic job.
Vanessa Grant:Can't wait to listen and a little thing, just I want to wish everybody a happy Global Business Analysis Day. Yes, global Business Analysis Day.
Josh Matthews:Happy Global Business Analysis Day. Well, you're my favorite BA and always have been, always will be.
Vanessa Grant:Thanks, Josh.
Josh Matthews:All right, folks. You have a wonderful evening. Thanks for tuning in today. Bye for now.