How to Negotiate for The Salary You Deserve as a PM

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Kelsey Alpaio: Hey! I'm Kelsey, and welcome back to The Retro on The Digital Project Manager podcast—where we dig into past lessons, future trends, and what they mean for your career.

If you've recently landed a new project manager role—first of all, congratulations! That is not an easy feat in today's job market. But before you sign that offer, there's one big step you can't afford to skip—negotiating your salary. Research shows that if you fail to negotiate, you could lose out on literally millions of dollars over the course of your career. But I also get it, I've always personally struggled with salary negotiations because they can be awkward and stressful and honestly just straight up intimidating. 

So today, we're tackling how PMs can negotiate with confidence. And to help guide us through it, I have Yonelly Gutierrez here with me—she's a Senior Project Manager at Palo Alto Networks and the Founder of Velvet Vision, a coaching program dedicated to helping women land $100K+ project management roles. 

Yonelly, welcome to the show!

Yonelly Gutierrez: Hi! Thanks for having me. 

Kelsey Alpaio: So tell us a little bit about yourself and the work that you do.

Yonelly Gutierrez: Absolutely. So as you mentioned, I'm a senior project manager working in professional services at Palo Alto Networks. So basically we help clients deploy their cloud security solutions outside of my nine to five. Also, like you mentioned, I run a career coaching business where I help women break into project management roles.

So my background is interesting 'cause I actually transitioned from Tech from higher education. I have no technical background, but I still work as an IT project manager and I love it. So now my main focus is on helping others negotiate their worth and landing, life-changing offers. 

Kelsey Alpaio: That's great and perfect for today 'cause I wanna dive right in here.

Why is salary negotiation so important and especially for project managers? 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Yeah, so it's really important because project managers are essentially the backbone of execution at any organization. And so when you're acting in a leadership role in your driving impact outcomes, like you have to get compensated well for that.

So unfortunately many PMs, they accept their first offer without negotiating. And like you mentioned, you're literally leaving thousands and even millions of dollars on the table. And over time that gap compounds and that's gonna affect your lifetime earnings. So it's really important to negotiate when it comes to getting a new offer.

Kelsey Alpaio: And for project managers, what are the skills that they naturally have that can help them in this negotiation process? 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Like I mentioned, project managers are supposed to be leaders, and so we also need to be good at communication, stakeholder management, and also risk management. And all those skills can combine and actually help you when it comes to negotiating offers.

So it's a combination of being a leader, having great communication, and also spotting risk. You might see some red flags in the negotiation process, and if you value yourself enough, you might have to pull back and reconsider other options. 

Kelsey Alpaio: So in terms of the research someone should be doing before negotiating their salary, how can someone figure out what they should be asking for? And are there surprising ways to get this information outside of, the Glassdoor, PayScale, those websites that we typically hear about? 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Yeah, so I was gonna start with that. There's so many tools that our fingertips, and even in addition to Glassdoor, LinkedIn Salary, Levels.fyi.

You can actually use ChatGPT too. So that's one additional tool. Two other ones can be informational interviews. So as you're networking with others, you can simply ask them, Hey, what's the market rate for a PM with this much of experience? And people would be happy to share that information. The second tool is actually using the PMI salary calculator.

So they collect data from different project managers and you can get very. Level and specific with it. You can select if you have a PMP or not, your city. And even if you are a male or female, and so it's really cool. Definitely if you're a PMI member, go check out that free tool. 

Kelsey Alpaio: Yeah. All really great resources and I do just wanna shout out to that, the DPM does have our own salary survey that we put out every year, so another great resource for people to check out if they're trying to do some research ahead of time.

So diving into the actual negotiation process here. What is the best way to bring up salary during the hiring process? Like when in the process should it happen? Should you be the one to bring it up, or should you let the employer take the lead? What does that look like? 

Yonelly Gutierrez: So for me and what I coach, the women that I work with, definitely let them bring it up first whenever possible.

If they ask early, you can actually respond with, I'm focused on finding the best overall fit. I'd love to learn more about the role and responsibilities first. Does the team actually have a salary range in mind? That way it keeps the conversation open without locking yourself into a number too soon. 

Kelsey Alpaio: So if a company can't or won't budge on salary, what are some other things people should negotiate?

Yonelly Gutierrez: Yeah, so there's so many different options, and that includes bonuses, additional PTO, maybe even getting to work remotely. Professional development stipends was just actually really fun. I've done that before. So when I was first transitioning, I invested a lot in career coaching, PMP prep, and I actually negotiated with them that they would, if they would reimburse me and they did.

Other options can be stock options, a better title, relocation assistance, and even a salary review in six months. 

Kelsey Alpaio: Yeah, those are all really great options. 

But I do wonder, at what point during a negotiation, if you're not getting the things that you want out of it or the things that you deserve, when should you walk away and just say, you know what, no thanks. This isn't the role for me. 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Yeah. There's absolutely times when you should walk away. So ideally before you're ever getting to the interview process, you're doing research and you're essentially coming up with a range that you are okay with. And if they ever come below that, I think at that point you should walk away.

So really just having that confidence in backing yourself up with data of this is the acceptable range. If they're not even going to consider that, at that point I would walk away. I think if you have gone back with the company at least two times and you're starting to get this feeling that hey, they're not really willing to work with me.

If you're able to, at that point, I would say, thank you so much. I am deciding to go with a different offer, but really it comes down to you and how you view yourself, your confidence levels. And honestly, sometimes people are just in a financial situation where they have to take something and that's okay too.

So it really just depends. But I would say at least give it two back and fourth. 

Kelsey Alpaio: And you this is a fear that I've always had. I don't know if it's a rational fear, but I know that some of the time when I've wanted to negotiate a higher salary. I've gotten in my head and said if I ask for too much, if I keep pushing back, like they're gonna rescind the offer, is that something that actually happens? Is that something people should be worried about? 

Yonelly Gutierrez: No. It's not something people should be worried about. Yes, I'm sure there is a situation out there where they have rescinded why would you wanna work for a company like that? It really just depends. But no, you shouldn't. Companies are expecting for you to negotiate and they're ready for it.

And also, what I also like to mention too, to the women that I coach, is that from the beginning, you're setting this expectation of how you are as a professional, right? And by the end, they should be so excited to work with you that they're gonna be willing to come to the table and negotiate and create a package that's gonna make you excited.

So ultimately, I think that's not something that people should be worried about. 

Kelsey Alpaio: Great. Good to know. 

So what advice do you have for someone who might be nervous about negotiating or maybe finds this process a little intimidating? 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Yeah, so the best thing you can do is practice. So you literally need to rehearse your responses out loud and again, remind yourself that negotiation is expected.

It's not rude or aggressive or anything like that. You bring value in advocating for fair pay as part of career growth. And the more that you do this over the span of your career, the better that you'll get. So it is gonna feel a little bit icky. It is gonna feel a little bit scary, especially as women, right?

'cause we're not really raised to go for what we want and demand our worth as much as our male counterparts. And so there is like this general sense of anxiety, but you really do have to just get over it and understand again that this is an expected part of the process. And you deserve it. And as women, we really need to get over that payment gap that we experience in our lives. And so we really just need to push for what we want in the end. 

Kelsey Alpaio: So you mentioned practicing being a big thing here. Can we walk through some scripts, maybe some things that you can say during an interview, like for example, say I want a hundred thousand dollars salary, but I've just received an offer for 90,000. What is some of the language that I can use to get to that number that I want? 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Sure. So you could say something like, thank you so much. I'm really excited about this opportunity. Based on my research and the value that I bring, I was expecting something closer to a $100K. Is there flexibility in the budget to get closer to that? 

Kelsey Alpaio: And what if they were to come back and say, Hey, we actually can only do 95,000. It's the best we can do right now. That's all we can negotiate. 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Yeah. Typically, I would still go for it for a second time, like I mentioned earlier, so you could say something like, I really appreciate you working with me on this.

If we can do $97K, I'd be fully confident in moving forward today. And if they come back and say, Hey, it really is 95, then at that point you could start to negotiate some of those other things that we mentioned earlier. 

Kelsey Alpaio: Awesome. Yeah, I love that. Really short to the point, really clear about what you want and what you feel like your value is.

Yonelly Gutierrez: Exactly. Yeah. And again, people are expecting you to push back and negotiate. You're short, straight to the point. You're not rude or anything. But yeah, it's almost like with a tinge of I know what I deserve. I have value and this is how much I'd want. 

Kelsey Alpaio: Great. So this is my last question here. If listeners were to remember just one thing about salary negotiation after listening to this episode, what should it be?

Yonelly Gutierrez: Always negotiate. Even a small increase now compounds over your career. And honestly, the worst they can say is no. But the best case scenario could change your financial future. 

Kelsey Alpaio: Absolutely. Yonelly, thanks so much for spending time with me today. This has been so helpful. 

Yonelly Gutierrez: Thank you for having me. It's been really great meeting you and discussing negotiation today. Thank you.

Kelsey Alpaio: That's it for today's retro. Be sure to follow the show so you never miss an episode. And if you wanna keep the conversation going with a crew of a thousand plus project management pros who get it, come join us at thedpm.com/membership. Thanks for listening!