Chief Change Officer
#228 John Gates: Sweaty Palms? How to Negotiate Your Salary Without the Panic
Thu, 13 Mar 2025
If negotiating your salary makes you sweat more than a job interview, you’re not alone. John Gates, author of ACT YOUR WAGE, knows how to turn those anxiety-fueled conversations into strategic wins. Forget the old-school advice about just “asking for more.” John explains why real salary talks aren’t about throwing out a number, but about controlling the conversation, shifting your mindset, and playing the long game.Key Highlights of Our Interview:Coast-to-Coast Hustle: The Ups and Downs of Chasing the Corporate Dream“During that process of chasing the Fortune 500 career and climbing that ladder, I moved across the country many times. I was laid off several times. I know how terrifying it is to be laid off or separated from a company that once loved you, but now no longer needs you."From Prosecutor to Defense Attorney: Why Switching Sides Matters“I do view myself as a former prosecutor who became a defense attorney. I think the best defense attorneys are people who used to be prosecutors because they understand the tactics and strategy and what the other prosecutor is trying to achieve.”The Silver Bullet Effect: Practical Steps for Negotiation Success“I start teaching them how to have safe conversations about pay almost immediately. So, very experimentally, I will teach them and drill them and rehearse with them first.”Salary Negotiation 101: Gladiators Need Not Apply!“Know your worth and demand your worth. People say, figure out what you’re worth, insist upon that… When I hear that, what I see is high risk. It’s confrontational. It makes it seem like you’re going to be this gladiator… This sort of ultimatum strategy of ‘take it or leave it’ is problematic.”6 Rules For Successful Salary Negotiation:1.Do not put “open” or “negotiable” in the salary requirement field — Always put a number.2.Reframe your salary number into a range during the phone screen — It’s important to shift into a range rather than sticking to a fixed number.3.Shift the conversation from salary to total compensation — This includes understanding incentives and bonuses beyond the base salary.4.Use AI tools like ChatGPT to prepare for interviews — This helps generate potential questions and practice responses.5.Use interview time to sell yourself instead of satisfying curiosity — Focus on addressing their pain points and demonstrating your value.6.Avoid moving the goalposts during negotiation — Present everything you want in one batch rather than one at a time to prevent putting your offer at risk._____________________Connect with us:Host: Vince Chan | Guest: John Gates______________________--Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.10 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.130,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today. --Chief Change Officer--Change Ambitiously. Outgrow Yourself.Open a World of Expansive Human Intelligencefor Transformation Gurus, Black Sheep,Unsung Visionaries & Bold Hearts.12 Million+ All-Time Downloads.Reaching 80+ Countries Daily.Global Top 3% Podcast.Top 10 US Business.Top 1 US Careers.>>>140,000+ are outgrowing. Act Today.<<<
Chapter 1: How did John Gates become a salary negotiation expert?
Thank you very much, Vince. I'm so excited to be here and eager to talk about all the secret stuff when it comes to pay negotiations, something most people want to know about. But first... You got to know about me. So that's fair. My career is an interesting one. I grew up really poor. And so I self-funded my college education working at Domino's Pizza. And I was one of these crazy guys that
I was very motivated to get through college as fast as possible. I had to earn money. I had a young family. So I ended up finishing two four-year degrees in two and a half years by taking 18 to 20 credits a term, working 30 hours a week at Domino's Pizza to self-fund it. It was a crazy actual burnout time. Young and poor and motivated and ambitious. That's the way it was for me.
So I began as a financial analyst and it was really strange. I got a job right out of college working for a high tech company as a financial analyst. But two or three weeks before that job was to start, they rescinded all the job offers. And that was a terrible event in my life because I was planning to pursue this career. I had a young family to feed and support.
And now all of a sudden I was facing unemployment before I even got started. I ended up falling into being a recruiter by mistake. And I don't think recruiting is something that most people pursue on purpose. Most of the time you fall into it by mistake. You end up doing it because it's something you're good at. And I found out that I was really good at it.
So I started climbing the corporate ladder in the Fortune 500 as a technical recruiter. Very quickly got into leadership and eventually became head of global recruiting for multiple Fortune 500s. During that process, though, of chasing the Fortune 500 career and climbing that ladder, I moved many times. I was laid off several times.
And I know how terrifying it is to be laid off or separated from a company that once loved you, but now no longer needs you. That sucks when it happens, but... I moved from Oregon, my home state, to Virginia, about as far away from Oregon as you can get. Then I moved from Virginia to Alabama to take another job. Then from Alabama to Indiana for another job. Indiana to St. Louis, Missouri. St.
Louis to Texas. And then finally, Texas back to my home state of Oregon, which is where I am today. So during all that, I became known as a recruiting process fixer. Now this is some guy who comes in and fixes the problems like a car mechanic car is sputtering. It's not running to its full potential. We need to diagnose the issue and fix it. And so that's what I became known for during that time.
And. While I was the head of global recruiting, I trained hundreds of recruiters on how to share with people. I ended up overseeing about 75,000 job offers at all levels and in multiple industries. So that's where I have been. And ultimately came the salary coach.
You are a salary coach, which I see as an evergreen profession. Whether the market is up or down, you help people maximize their compensation packages. Many entrepreneurs, coaches, and tech founders start a business because they have faced the same problem. Learn the hard way and then turn it into a product or service.
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Chapter 2: What are the common pitfalls in salary negotiation?
Don't pass that. You are out. But the end of all that, I had the recruiter I was working with. His name was Chip. Chip came into the room a couple hours after. I'm just going to lay it out here for you. I've interviewed over 20 people for this job. It's urgent that we get this filled. This was an IT recruiter position right before Y2K. So they had to get this filled.
He said, only two people out of the 20 plus we've interviewed have passed the process. You're one of them. And the other guy just withdrew. And this is where the light bulb really came on for me. He said, John, what's it going to take to get a yes out of you? I really want to go back to the hiring manager, tell him this is spilled.
And so what do we need to do to get you to commit to this move to Virginia? So through that process, I was able to get my salary increased by $10,000. I got a signing bonus of $10,000 added in. I moved up a bonus tier, which was big deal at Capital One. Bonuses are a huge part of the culture there. It's part of your status in the organization.
And I even adjusted the relocation plan to one that's usually reserved for executives. So I think I did a pretty good job, but I had so much leverage And I, you know, even I, young in my career, knew that I had tremendous leverage there. After they said yes really fast, I spent the next three years at Capital One wondering how much money I just left on the table.
And so that kind of itched my brain for the next three years. And I started tracking then as a recruiter, as I was extending offers to candidates, I started tracking how much I was able to close below what was authorized. Let's say a hiring manager says, John, we'd like to, we'd like to extend an offer. You can go as high as 310,000. But let's start the negotiation at 285.
And by the way, here's a $15,000 signing bonus. Use it if you need to. And this kind of thing happens all the time in corporate recruiting. So I'd start the negotiation at 385. And if I could close at 392, then I just closed below the max. If I didn't need the signing bonus, I wrote that down too. And I started setting goals to cover my own salary with negotiation savings every month.
And I was able to make that goal real and achieve that most months. Fame started to spread around within Capital One that I was the guy who knew how to do this. So then I started training other recruiters about it. And that's really though what made me understand how much money the average salary person is leaving on the table.
Over the course of time, I decided to switch sides now and help the job candidate to get all that money that's, in most cases, already been approved. What they're willing to give you, want you to have that. And I've developed this system now that helps you to get it safely.
Over the years, you've probably come across a lot of negotiation advice that you disagree with. What are some of the worst pieces of advice you've seen out there?
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Chapter 3: Why is demanding your worth a risky negotiation strategy?
When you're making an ultimatum, there's usually an off-ramp. You're saying, take it or leave it. That gives the other person the chance to say, okay, I'm leaving it. And that means it's high risk in the name of salary negotiation too. I think another big mistake that people make is they let their fear dominate them in the process.
Now, I think everybody who's listening here, you, you're yourself too Vince, probably been in transition before where you're in a spot where you don't have a job, got rent to pay, mouths to feed. You're terrified sometimes when you're in transition. Especially in a bad economy, you're worried that you might not get another offer anytime soon.
It might be eight or nine or 10 months before you get an offer. And that fear pushes you into this place where you are too conservative. You want to avoid that risk so much. You want to advance to interviews. So you lowball yourself in the phone screen. You want to put this job search uncertainty behind you.
So you take the offer that comes because it's good enough instead of poking out a little bit to see what else they might be able to do. So being dominated by your fear, I think, is one of the common mistakes that people make. Um, and this advice going out and demanding your worth doesn't acknowledge the fear that most people feel when they're in this process.
I guess the last mistake that I'd like to make or mention here is that some people think that negotiation starts when you get an offer. I think that negotiation is a process. And it's true. You begin negotiating when an offer is in your hand. However, there's a lot of positioning and prep work that goes into getting the best offer in the beginning.
I'll tell a story about a client that came to me recently and said, John, I just got a low ball offer. It's 30% less than what I thought I was going to get. And this person wasn't a client from the beginning. They called me right there at offer stage with the, with the low ball offer. And I started to explore it with this client and said, okay, tell me what you told them early in the process.
Like, how did you apply? What did you say when you applied? What did you say in the phone screen? Now tell me about your interview process. When you talked about money, how did you do that throughout all of these opportunities to discuss money and your worth and your value and the value that you're going to bring to their company?
But it turned out that he stepped on a whole bunch of landmines that he didn't even know was there. And it's the mistakes he made earlier in the process is what drove him to get this 30% lowball offer. If you get a lowball offer like that, you can make a small adjustment. You can move up a little bit, but you're probably not moving that offer up 30%.
I think of it this way, like they just gave him a 72 Volkswagen Super Beetle and he wants a Mercedes. What we can probably do at this stage is paint the VW Beetle a different color. We can put some nice rims on it, but we're probably never getting him the Mercedes at this stage. They already believe that he's worthy of the Volkswagen Beetle.
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Chapter 4: How can job seekers prepare effectively for salary negotiations?
You need to build leverage in order to get the best deal at the end. So advancing through phone screens without risk or limiting yourself, building value in the interviews. and how to become the preferred candidate. You're not going to get an offer unless you're the preferred candidate. So how do you do that? I spend a lot of time developing that with my clients. Then ultimately,
How to get the best first offer. Every dollar that's still on the table, we want that to come to you without putting the offer at risk. In that early example where maybe there was a signing bonus up to $15,000, I didn't need it. I'm going to teach you how to discover if the signing bonus is available, possible, all that stuff, and we can get it included for you. That's pretty much it.
I think another thing that we focus on a lot, you mentioned it earlier, Vince, and that is a shift from salary-only mindset into a total compensation mindset. Every company is a little bit different in how they approach paying people. Some companies, they've got all the eggs in the salary basket. There's nothing else. It's just salary. And other companies have a significant incentive plan.
Some have long-term incentives like stock or ownership positions that are complex. Others have a really rich benefits plan. And it's important to realize that you can negotiate on multiple fronts, not just the salary front. You can move your level up. You can even negotiate on things like severance.
This sounds a little bit crazy because everybody hears that and they'll think, this sounds like a prenuptial agreement on the eve of the wedding. Do I really want to bring up severance when I'm trying to convince them to hire me because it makes it look like I've got one foot out the door? But yes, you can, and there is a safe way to do it.
You just have to do it at exactly the right time and precisely the right way. There's a lot of ways you can approach things. And lately, even money has taken a backseat for some people. What they really want is workplace flexibility. Can I work remotely or can I be in the office only two days a week? Those are all things that are negotiable. And that's one of your goals.
We work on it together to see if we can get that in. And most people underestimate or don't understand the offer approval process. And this is really important. It's quite political. And the more senior you are, the more political it gets. Basically, after you interview, if they decide you're the one that they want, that supervisor
has to go to their boss and maybe a committee of other people and convince them, this is the offer I want to make. This is why I want to make that. And they have to defend the numbers at that stage. This is why it is difficult to go back and get that Mercedes later.
If the hiring manager has gone out in a political environment and said, this is what I want to do, and this is why I want to do it, it's really difficult to go back and get a second bite at that apple. You might get a nibble, a small adjustment, but by the time that initial offer comes, difficult politically to get significant shifts.
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Chapter 5: What process does John Gates use to help clients during negotiations?
We're finding the maximized comfortable offer and the employer is going to celebrate when they close you. That's our goal. We don't want to destroy relationships on the way in for the sake of a little extra money. Likewise, sometimes my clients want, they express that they want more money
then i think it you know i think it's gonna i think it's gonna set up an uncomfortable performance expectation if i feel that might be a risk i tell them about it i'll let them make their own decision about how they're gonna proceed but sometimes if you're making such a high salary they may expect you to work 16 hours a day or
set you up with unrealistic performance expectations that's just going to sabotage your work experience over time. We don't want that either. We want healthy, balanced, and prosperous. That's the goal at the end.
For those who may not be able to afford your services, may buy your book or listen to this episode for your insights. Can you give us a couple of pieces of actionable advice? Something they can use to help themselves ease the pressure and open up new horizons of thoughts before seeking professional help.
Oh, sure. Yeah, in fact, I think I could probably give you more than five if that's okay. It is always frustrating to me that good advice on pay negotiation is really hard to find. In fact, I think I'm unique in the world. I don't think there's anybody else that does what I do as a specialty.
So here's a bunch of things that I think people could use immediately, whether they hire me as a coach or buy my book or join the Salary Coach Academy, which is another way. But in the application, when you're filling out an application, it's gonna ask you for your salary report. Everybody knows that this is a screening question.
A recruiter's gonna be looking at that and deciding whether they're gonna call you. And this is a point of anxiety for a lot of people. First bit of advice here is do not put in open or negotiable or something like that. Put a number in the box. And the reason for that is recruiters are extremely busy. There are a lot of applicants right now for every job.
A recruiter only has time to call five or six people. And if 10, if 10 people meet all the qualification, he could call 10, but only has time to call five. He's going to call the five that he's pretty sure are going to pan out. If you put in open or negotiable in there, it's a major area where he might schedule the time to call you and then realize very quickly that was a mistake.
So putting a number in there I think is very important. The number you put in there should be on the low side of what you'd be willing to accept. This is not going to lowball you though because... Tip number two, you're going to write that down, and then when the phone rings, you're going to reframe that number into a range in that phone screen.
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