What's the only thing you can't get back?

It's not your ex!

We had a client come to us recently with a leadership position at a site with over 400 people. I don't know about you but sometimes trying to lead a couple of kids is about all most people can handle!?Getting 400 people on the same page is no small task.?Look at the NBA and the turnover there, those coaches are coaching some of the best athletes in the world and can’t get 12 guys to operate as a cohesive unit.

We're obviously excited about this opportunity right.

It's our client's largest facility supporting their largest customer, that's exciting stuff for us.? Opportunity to impact their business, impact someone’s life with a great opportunity, put a good leader in place to impact 400 other people’s lives.? It gets us up in the morning.

And then they told us the salary, $110,000. And after they said it, no one said anything else. On our end we’re sort of looking at each other.? I don't know what they were doing, I'd hoped they were waiting to say "just kidding" but that never came.? We’d never worked in this geography before, they had, so while extremely skeptical, we’re open to their “expertise” in their own market.? We thought well maybe that’s the going rate there.?

We asked them where they got this data and they let us know and off we went to start looking around.

You know how many people we find for this opportunity within 50 miles of their location? 9

And how many of those 9 did we present to them? 6

And what was their average salary before making a change? $160,000

Our client’s first response was can you call Tom and ask him if I’ll take $130,000.

Our response? No, we can’t do that.?Why??Well first, Tom is an A player and currently a hiring manager.?We’re not going to insult him because one we don't want to and two we'll work with him on something else.?

Second, Tom’s data isn’t bad, yours is.?If the average salary were $110,000 than Tom would be outlier, but he wasn’t.?We also could have said, tell you what, we have an amazing opportunity for you but we’re just going to need you to take a $30,000 pay decrease…sound nice??Didn’t think so.

And this all started because of bad data.?Really bad data.

Here’s the other thing about a buying decision, and this might be the most important part: someone must be willing to sell it to you at the price you’re willing to pay for it!?Items included in this phenomenon: your house or any other inanimate objects you might own, or, on the flip side, want to buy.?

What about your time??The most valuable and precious item we have.?The only thing you can’t get back.?When you sell someone your labor you’re selling them your time.

So what are we saying here?

1. Who you sell your labor to is important, make it worth it.
2. And second, it doesn’t even matter if the data is good when it comes to salaries because someone has to be willing to sell it to us in that range. In other words, unless you change something, what someone is willing to sell it to you for, is the range.

Good luck out there!