The Joys Of Intense Salary Negotiation

  Morning guys, So for the last couple of days, I’ve been involved in intense salary negotiations with my head of outbound sales Adham. It’s been (dare I say it) - an intense learning experience for us both. Over the last 60 days, I’ve been trying to build out a sales team. Whilst this has been happening - Adham has been with me since the 27th of June - so 11 months now and in that time his development has come a hell of a long way. He was the first sales guy I started the team with and it’s crazy to see how far the actual business has come in that time. Back then we had 1 client - and now we have 10+ on the lead generation side of the business and could easily have more. Now that I’m looking at these numbers it’s understandable why Adham and I are having such negotiations. He’s walked a hard path with Pearl Lemon and been on his own for much of it. In the last 2 months, he’s definitely come of age as the team has expanded as the clients have rolled in. And now we’ve for the last couple of days (especially with a sales guy) been eyeing up the number of appointments needed to hit targets Vs responsibilities and some interesting things have come out of the whole experience. [convertful id="197358"] Let’s go through them one by one:

• As Adham is still ultimately a student of Architecture in Cairo - appointment setting and not team leadership is the main focus. So we’re dropping team management. This has ultimately only been a distraction
• Adham can book appointments and has been able to do so for some big clients and can consistently do it - which is what the emphasis will continue to be on
• If he hits his upper goals then he can earn up to 66% of his base in addition
• He also now has a guaranteed salary - whereas before it was on a pay-per-project (although we’ve consistently stuck with it)
• He doesn’t want to attend any meetings or be obligated to come to any training - he just wants an appointment driven metric
• He will be around to support the clients that have the most urgency which Lydia will tell him
• He will rotate between clients to book calls depending upon who has the most need

It’s interesting getting involved in these negotiations to nail down the full remit of his job role and get him and me into a place where we’re both happy. It’s definitely been a challenging journey for Adham these last 13 months together but he’s absolutely come a long way and got used to the pressure that comes with appointment setting. Some interesting points to note about this negotiation -

1. Adham wrote up what he was looking for in an email
2. I asked him to copy-paste it into Whatsapp and then I responded there
3. Most of the negotiations happened over Whatsapp
4. The final offer was hashed out over a phone call
5. The whole process was intense over a couple of days
6. The offer now needs to be written up into an email so he has it in writing
7. The offer is firm for 3-months at which point we’ll review it with a view to seeing if it should stay the same/increase/go down after a 12-week period
8. The main thing Adham was looking for is stability - he has earned it

It was a good learning process for me personally in trying to hash out terms with a young and ambitious man who has clearly demonstrated he’s willing to put the work in and put up with me. Both of these things are not easy - and I take my hat off to Adham and commend him for pushing forward with this. With all of the trials and tribulations we’ve had over the last 13 months - this is a good outcome for us both :)