From time to time, we'll have spent hours advising a client to maximize one offer – then out of the blue, they'll find another opportunity that pays more than the offer we'd been working on. Congratulations! That's great news for the client, but it does leave our coaches in a bit of a bind: they invested lots of their time in an initial negotiation process, and thanks to circumstances outside their control they no longer have anything to show for it.

This is a very rare problem (usually clients would still want to negotiate their fresh offer!), but in these instances we do suggest to our clients that they tip their coach directly between $250-500 depending on the amount of work put in before the accepted offer, at their discretion, and we ask that the client speak with a member of our leadership team to make sure nothing went wrong during the process.

In rare instances, clients may try and keep one offer secret from us in an effort to avoid compensating their coach for their time. We find this typically results in bad outcomes and missed opportunities to maximize earnings for the client, but in these cases we make a call on a case-by-case basis when to consider the situation a case of multiple simultaneous offers or an unexpected, out of the blue windfall for the client. We appreciate our clients' understanding and flexibility as we try to keep things fair for their coach!

One important exception to this rule: when the 'out-of-the-blue' competing offer comes from a client's current employer, regardless of whether they were directly solicited. This is actually very much an expected part of the negotiations process (in fact, it's often a great tactic for getting more), and any increase at one's current job would be included in our standard 10% fee calculation.

This is our least favorite part of our jobs, but unfortunately it has occurred a handful of times in the past. In these rare instances, we'll work with a client to help try and secure a substantial increase – but rather than being happy with the 90% they keep in year 1, some folks try to avoid paying our coaches for their time and the value they added through the negotiation. Of course, if our service fell short or our advice wasn't helpful, we're happy to work with clients and be flexible on our terms and conditions, including waiving our fee if our services didn't make a difference. 

But when folks decide to try and ghost us to avoid paying, we reserve the right to charge a fee to help compensate our coaches equal to 2.5% of the latest total compensation package we know about. The 2.5% ‘ghosting fee’ is payable in full via the initial Stripe payment 30 days after the conclusion of their negotiation or the last day we heard from them, whichever comes first. And if we aren't able to collect, after 60 days we are authorized to report delinquencies to employers and credit bureaus... though of course, we will make every effort to get in touch to avoid a rare and regrettable situation like this ever arising. Please don't do this!