How to negotiate an executive offer

Ask once, ask completely

Senior negotiations go wrong when they arrive in instalments. A candidate asks about base, gets an answer, then comes back about equity, then about notice. Each round is reasonable on its own and the cumulative impression is of someone difficult to close. Put everything you want in one considered message, ranked, so the other side can solve it in one meeting.

Ranking matters as much as content. If they can only move two things, you want them moving the two you care about most, not the two that were easiest to say yes to.

Separate what you want from why it is reasonable

Every ask lands better attached to a reason that is about the role rather than about you. “I would like the review at six months” is a preference. “The first two quarters are where this role either fixes the reporting problem or does not, so a review at six months lets us both look at it honestly” is a proposal about the work.

The person on the other side has to defend your package to somebody else. Give them the sentence they will use when they do.

What to do with a number you do not like

• Do not counter immediately. Ask what the figure is built from — band, midpoint, budget — because the answer decides whether countering is even possible.
• Ask what would have to be true for it to be higher. Sometimes the honest answer is a scope change you would happily accept.
• If the base is genuinely fixed, move the conversation to the parts that are not: measurement, timing, protection, equity shape.
• Say what you will accept, clearly, once you know. Ambiguity at this stage reads as reluctance and cools the whole thing.

The thing nobody tells you to check

Read what happens when it ends. Notice period, severance, what occurs if the company is sold, what occurs if your role is restructured under a new owner. These clauses are agreed in an afternoon while everyone is pleased with each other, and they are the clauses that matter on the worst day of the job.

The honest limit

No technique creates leverage that does not exist. If you are one of three acceptable candidates and the band is rigid, the negotiation will be short whatever you say. Leverage at this level is built earlier — by arriving before the process was crowded, and by being the person somebody inside already wanted.