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Today women who run their own business must negotiate everything:  insurance, bank fees and loans, suppliers’ costs, and fees from clients or customers’ prices. So if women business owners must negotiate every day and they don’t like doing this we have a challenge.

My experience with Irish businesswomen tells me that there are two major issues facing them about money.

First, women don’t realise they should negotiate more and second they don’t believe they are any good at it. Both result in women being uncomfortable about tackling money issues in their business life.

To get over this, women need to do a negotiation self audit by asking themselves:

• When did I last really negotiate for something, especially a financial point?
• When do I plan to negotiate next? What is my next financial negotiation?
• Do I know what I am worth?
• In the past year how often have I queried what I was told, accepted without question  a price quote, a salary package, or a fee for my services?

If you are not negotiating all the time then you need to start at once. As things get tougher you will need to be focussed on getting what you need.

 Are women expecting too little?

 Before we make the decision to start a negotiation we must first be unhappy with our present situation. So the challenge facing women may be that they are not unhappy enough. They may be settling and accepting too little, raising the question are women happy with less. Not only must you be dissatisfied but you must also feel that you deserve more. You must realise your worth.

Do women undervalue themselves?

I find women who are sole traders and offer services like consultancy, facilitation, training, interior design and beauty services often fail to understand their market power. They don’t realise that there is a good market for their skills, their skills have a value and that selling themselves cheaply actually loses them business.

Even when they realise their market power, they still have difficulty using it to get top rates. They are good at accurately valuing others but fail to apply this to themselves. It is like they have a blind spot about themselves. Consistently I see women charging too little. I now think that this is a major breakthrough point for business women.

Are women influenced by the lack of women role models?

Much economic power rests in men’s hands and so we live in a world of unequal balance of power between men and women. Have you thought about how this might be informing your perception of who is in control and further influencing you when you fail to negotiate?

Look around you. Look at all the low numbers of women in top decision making positions, on company boards, in political parties. A recent survey by the Professional Women’s Network has found that overall progress in getting women onto boards of management is glacially slow. The top 300 European companies now have 9.7pc women on their boards.

It is vital for women to have a realistic view of their worth before any negotiation. By this I mean a realistically high value, as I see more women underestimating than overestimating.

Ways to know your worth in the market place

• Know your unique selling point.
• Understand exactly how are you different, better than your competitors.
• Find the best in your field and benchmark against them.
• Make the best your starting point and improve on it
• Compare yourself with men and women doing similar work. If you compare yourself to other women only you may be setting the bar too low.
• Do research on your competitors. Find out their rates or prices
• Understand the value you bring to your customers

How to negotiate your worth

It is fundamental to concentrate on the right things.

Sell value not time.

I find women consultants, coaches and trainers often sell their time and completely forget to sell the transformations they bring about.

Sell the benefits of using you not the process

Interior designers sell time and product not the utterly new lifestyle. Never forget that you sell the sizzle not the sausage.

Avoid the attitude of gratitude

I find many women are so pleased to have gotten the business that they accept the first offer of money and pass quickly over the negotiation process, thereby doing themselves out of higher amount of money.  Their unease with money makes them gloss over it. This attitude of gratitude must be ended.

Know your worth

The starting point for many women in business is “what do I need to earn?” rather than “what am I worth?”, the former  is a limiting position, while the latter is a totally open one. This change in how you view yourself has a fundamental effect. Again and again I see that as a transforming realisation for women.

 Further information can be found here.