"I know HOW to negotiate-- but I suck at it!"

Several years ago, I was in the mail room of the university at which I taught; I was looking for work for the new year, because the state budget dried had up money for instructors. I remarked within hearing distance of several faculty members, “I just want to get a job that puts a roof over my head and food on my table."

One of my colleagues looked up from papers she had been stapling, looked me straight in the eye and said, “If that is all you want, then that is all you will get.”

I have never forgotten that. I think about that now when I am setting goals for my medical editing business. However, I am not a business woman in many ways: When I negotiate with clients, I usually err on the side of a) getting the project and b) keeping the client. I have been told by people close to me that perhaps I don’t always do the best job negotiating on my own behalf. It’s true. I am a much stronger advocate for other people.

However, I don’t think I am the only woman who has trouble with negotiations—particularly salary negotiations. I was talking to my friend who writes the blog Cursing Mama about this piece, and she emailed me,

“Negotiating pay? I stink at that.”

I wrote back, “I’m scratching you off the list.”

But she returned with something very compelling: “It isn't that I don't know how to do it – it’s that I lack the cajones to be down and dirty with it. In fact, I think there are a large number of women who undervalue their contributions to the companies they work for. That is one of the factors of the glass ceiling-- our unwillingness or inability to see what we're really worth.

“Still scratching me off your list?”

No, Cursing Mama, I am not. Especially in light of the fact that my friend Arwen, who writes the blog Anthropologists for Corporate America, wrote to me on the same day: “Women still make 67 cents on the dollar, not because corporate America tries to short change us, but because WE DON'T ASK.”

My friend Amy is a photographer in business with her partner, Kim. I actually learned a lot about self-respect and how to negotiate fees when I hired them to take photographs for my medical editing marketing materials. She sent me an excerpt of an email she recently sent to some new, potential clients:

"The good news is that we don't cut corners -- and that results in images that thrill our clients.

The less-than-good-news: both our time-on-task and the fees we need to charge to make projects fiscally worth the time & resources required tend to reflect that no-corner-cutting approach."

Amy and her partner don’t apologize for their fees, and they will explain to clients up front (ask me how I know) that they are happy to work with you on a Sunday, but you will pay more for this. Because if they have to choose between working and playing with their kids? They’ll play with the kids, thanks. And amazingly, (I say amazingly because I am a woman who undersells herself), clients respect this and hire them and love them for it. Amy added, “None of the above would work is we didn't believe it and live it; but knowing how to communicate it (and agreeing to the importance of such communication) has made a difference in the life of SilverBox.”

When I look back on the hourly rate I charged my clients when I first started consulting two years ago, I wince a little bit. It is a little embarrassing. I had based my fees on talking to people in my area about the industry, but what I learned (quickly, fortunately) was that those fees are based on clients who are located in rural Missouri, where I live. If you have clients on the coasts or clients in large metropolitan areas, you have to make adjustments. And perhaps the single-most important thing I have learned is not to base my fees on what I can live on, but to base them, instead, on what I am worth in this industry.