Most people negotiating a job offer do one of two things: accept the first number out of relief that an offer exists at all, or ask for "a little more" without a real strategy behind the ask. Both leave money on the table — often a meaningful amount of it, compounded over years of raises calculated as a percentage of that starting number. The Salary Negotiation Coach exists to replace vague nerve with actual research-backed strategy.
It starts with your real BATNA
Your Best Alternative to a Negotiated Agreement — the concept behind Fisher and Ury's principled-negotiation research — is what actually determines your leverage in an offer conversation. A competing offer changes everything about how a negotiation should go, because you have a real number and a real deadline to work with; having none changes it just as much in the other direction, and requires a different approach entirely. The Salary Negotiation Coach starts by getting honest about which situation you're actually in, rather than pretending you have leverage you don't.
Anchoring isn't a guessing game
Research from Galinsky and Mussweiler, and separately from Mason, documents how the first number stated in a compensation conversation measurably pulls the final outcome toward it — an effect that holds even when both sides know anchoring is happening. That means the question of who states a number first, and what that number is, is a real strategic decision with a quantifiable dollar impact, not something to leave to whoever speaks first out of nerves or politeness.
Negotiating the whole package, not just base salary
A lot of negotiation coaching stops at "ask for more money." The Salary Negotiation Coach works from integrative full-package bargaining — sign-on bonus, equity, start date, remote flexibility, vacation, title, professional development budget — because trading across multiple variables often gets both sides to a better outcome than a single number tug-of-war where one side has to lose for the other to win. A company with a fixed salary band may have real flexibility on a signing bonus or extra vacation days, and knowing that changes the entire conversation.
What a session actually covers
It works through your specific offer, what you know (or don't yet know) about the company's constraints, and what you're actually optimizing for — is this about the number itself, or about starting date flexibility, or about a title that matters for your next move? From there it builds a specific counter-approach: what to lead with, how to justify it without over-explaining, and how to respond to the most common pushback, like "that's outside our range" or "we don't typically negotiate sign-on bonuses."
A note on what "leaving money on the table" really costs
A single unnegotiated starting salary doesn't just cost the difference in year one — most raises, and many future offers, get calculated as a percentage of the current number, and some employers anchor a next role's offer partly on your prior salary history. That's why a few hundred dollars of "not wanting to seem greedy" in one conversation can compound into a genuinely large gap over a career, which is exactly the case for treating this negotiation as worth real preparation rather than an afterthought tacked onto an otherwise exciting offer.
Who this is for
Anyone with an offer in hand, or expecting one soon, who wants a real strategy for the conversation instead of psyching themselves up to "just ask" and hoping it goes well.
What a real counter-offer conversation sounds like
Instead of a bare "can you do better," a prepared counter typically names a specific number grounded in market data or a competing offer, states it plainly without over-apologizing for asking, and pairs it with a reason the employer can repeat internally when they take the request to whoever approves it — "based on my research for this role and level in this market" carries more weight than "I was hoping for a bit more." That small structural difference is often what separates a counter that gets a real response from one that gets a polite, final no.
Works well alongside
If the negotiation is happening before an offer even exists — during the interview process itself, where early signals about compensation expectations matter — The Interview Prep Coach handles that stage. And the same BATNA-and-anchoring research applies well beyond salary: see The Negotiator for vendor, deal, and general business negotiations that use the identical underlying framework.
Timing matters as much as content
When possible, it's worth delaying a number until the employer names one first — the anchoring research above cuts both ways, and whoever states a figure first typically pulls the outcome toward it. If pushed to name a number early, a well-researched range (not a single figure) preserves more room to negotiate than a specific number does, and signals that the range came from real research rather than a guess pulled out of the air under pressure.