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How Brandon Bramley Started The Salary Negotiator
- Who: Brandon Bramley
- Website: thesalarynegotiator.com
- Course Topic: Negotiating Salary
- Interesting Stats: Increase our lead conversion rate by nearly 30%
Who are you and what course have you created?
Brandon is the founder of The Salary Negotiator.
We designed salary negotiation courses for career professionals who are looking to increase their compensation, whether they’re negotiating for a better pay package at their current company or starting a new job. Our courses include step-by-step strategies that are applicable to all industries and across all levels, from entry-level to C-suite. Our courses are an essential resource for anyone seeking to navigate the salary negotiation process in a professional manner.
Here’s a list of our courses:
What market does your online course serve?
Our online salary negotiation courses cater to both job seekers and career professionals in their current companies who are looking to ensure they receive the appropriate compensation. These courses are designed to assist individuals across various industries, including tech, finance, HR, and healthcare, regardless of their role type or career level. Negotiating doesn’t come naturally to everyone, and when you’re in the process of negotiating your compensation package with either a new or current employer, you want to present yourself in the best possible light. That’s where our courses come in – we’re here to help everyone achieve just that.
What’s the biggest benefit of taking your course?
The biggest benefit of taking our courses is that they will provide you with the confidence to successfully negotiate for better pay. This way, you will be able to advocate for yourself and ensure that you are at the top end of the pay scale.
How did you get into the market?
It all began eleven years ago during one of my negotiation classes in the final semester of college. At that time, I had just secured a job offer at American Airlines in their Procurement department. My primary responsibility would revolve around leading business-to-business negotiations. I wanted to make a good impression on the hiring team so I planned to try negotiating my job offer as an undergraduate. My intention was to then present this experience to my negotiation professor as part of my final project.
The negotiation ended up being successful and resulted in increases to my base salary, a sign-on bonus, and even an allocation of airline miles. Upon sharing this accomplishment with my negotiation professor, she put me in touch with another student who had recently received an offer from American Airlines. I then guided him through a successful negotiation as well. Once I started at AA, I noticed that apart from us two none of our peers within the cohort had pursued a salary negotiation. This struck me as interesting and as my colleagues transitioned to new careers, they consistently turned to me for guidance in negotiating their job offers.
After doing that for about five years I decided to start The Salary Negotiator and offer my experience to everyone.
Why did you decide to create an online course in the first place?
We previously only had personal coaching so I developed these courses to ensure that everyone has access to our salary negotiation tools and strategies.- Brandon Bramley Click To TweetThis process is not easy, and many people avoid the conversation entirely so my goal is to educate everyone on this subject and ensure they receive competitive compensation. The courses we designed provides them with an actionable plan from start to finish, complete with templates and tools that guide them confidently through the salary negotiation process.
Did you have any moments of doubt before you created/launched it?
Yes, I had many doubts when deciding to spend the effort to build and launch the courses. My main concerns were that no one would buy them or that they wouldn’t find value in them. It was hard trying to imagine that something I coach regularly for clients could be captured in a repeatable course where I’m no longer actively involved in the conversations.
If so what made you turn it around and do it anyway?
I decided to proceed with it anyway because we needed another option for our clients in addition to our personal coaching and another revenue stream to help in growing the business. I reasoned that the worst-case scenario would be that it helped document our strategies and techniques in written form. Creating my first course took many hours but when complete it was amazing to see the final product.
What’s your online course like?
Our online salary negotiation courses consist of a combination of recorded videos featuring me speaking, text, imagery, and downloadable resources. I designed these courses so that users can either watch all the videos to access the content, or they can choose to read all the text. In either format, they will receive the same content. This approach accommodates individuals who prefer either text-based or video-based learning. Additionally, each section is accompanied by downloads that provide users with templates, scripts, and tools that are intended to guide users through the negotiation process.
How long did it take you to create your course?
I’ll be honest, the first course took me a couple of months. Initially, I drafted everything in text form where I was treating it almost like I was writing a book. I created a comprehensive table of contents that covered every aspect of salary negotiation. As a quick follow, I developed downloadable resources to complement each course section. Once both were complete, I had to dive into the realm of video recording. This meant learning how to record videos of myself and producing videos specific to each section of the course.
Once all these components were in place, I faced the task of selecting a Learning Management System (LMS) to host my course. This involved setting up the LMS and constructing the course within its framework. The final step that ended up taking more time than expected was crafting the sales page because it was crucial to ensure that it accurately described the course and attracted potential participants.
Luckily, this created a solid framework that I could leverage for future courses and streamlined the creation of the second course, making that entire process a breeze.
Tell us a little about the process of launching your course and getting your first sale(s).
To be honest, it went really well. After making the sales page live and incorporating references to it throughout my website, I launched it with a post on all of our social channels. In addition, I ran marketing campaigns on Facebook Ads and Google Ads to support the launch. Almost immediately, I began to notice traffic to the sales page and even secured our first few sales on the very first day.
Do you have a lead magnet?
No, we have not tried a lead magnet on our course.
What’s the traffic strategy that works best for you?
We’ve tried Google and Facebook Ads but our best traffic strategy has been focusing on SEO for it and including it throughout our blog post. That’s brought consistent traffic to it and brings in consistent sales.
What online course platform are you using?
We are using Teachable.
Do you like it?
I currently like Teachable a lot for the most part and it made it easy to build out the course in an easy-to-follow framework. It essentially has the structure and then you bring the content, videos, and downloads.
Are there any features you wish it had?
Yes, the only downside is that it does have some limitations for those who already have a high-performing site where you want to sell the courses on there. There is no way to integrate the checkout into your website and it takes the user to Teachable to checkout. This isn’t terrible but having the checkout on the sales page could make the process easier. You’re also limited with the customizations on the checkout, so it doesn’t match your website theme. Outside of that I still enjoy the platform and it’s one less headache to deal with when running a business.
What made you decide to use your chosen platform over others?
I decided to use Teachable over other platforms because it seemed to be the easiest one to integrate with any website and at the time it was the most affordable. They have increased their fees since then which I am not a fan of but they have consistently rolled out new features which is a benefit.
What other tools do you use to run your online course business?
I mostly use just Teachable. The only other tools would be Microsoft Excel and Adobe PDF for the downloads included in the course. Outside of those I do have a few integrations through Zapier to help automate reaching out to clients that signed up but Teachable does have some of those options that I could’ve used as well.
What books or training programs have you found useful on your journey to a successful business owner that others might find valuable too?
I think Traction by Gino Wickman was very useful for my journey of launching and growing my business. It helps you focus on the items that matter and truly get traction for growing your business.
Do you have any big mistakes you’ve made along the way that you’d be willing to share?
My biggest mistake was trying to build the first sales page myself. This is an area that really needed to look great and have a flow behind it and took me way too long to build myself. I suggest using designers on Upwork to develop the sale page if you don’t have that experience as it will save time and drive more sales.
Please share some idea of revenue.
We’ve seen consistent sales with both of our courses, and it has helped bring a nearly passive revenue source to our business. This has helped offset our revenue drivers since our other form of revenue is from coaching.
Please tell us a little about what the money you’ve earned from your course has done for you.
This has helped us stabilize the business since it’s a passive revenue stream. It used to be based on how many hours we charge or how many negotiations we charge but now we have these additional streams to help normalize the monthly revenue. It’s a huge benefit to have multiple income streams so we can take bigger bets by knowing we have consistent revenue.
In addition to revenue are there any numbers you would like to share?
Launching and rolling out courses has helped us increase our lead conversion rate by nearly 30%. We used to not have anything except for coaching so if a client didn’t want coaching, we lost the lead. However, with these courses we now have another option that is more affordable to offer to clients. This has helped us close nearly 30% more of our leads.
What has creating your course done for you personally?
It’s really made me see the value in my skillset and knowledge. - Brandon Bramley Click To TweetI never thought I could record my notes and strategies and that so many people would find value in them. It has inspired me to create more courses and now we’re working on developing books.
Do you have a story of a transformation from any of your clients?
A client recently required assistance in negotiating an analyst job offer at Apple. The client didn’t seek personalized coaching, so I referred them to our course. They didn’t know if they could negotiate because the offered pay was already notably higher than their current role and they believed they lacked leverage for negotiation as they didn’t possess another job offer. However, after completing the course, they reached out to inform me that our techniques had helped them in successfully negotiating their offer. They achieved a compensation increase of over 14% in comparison to their initial offer, resulting in an additional $27,000 annually. The client was enthusiastic, as they had never envisaged advocating for themselves to attain such a significant compensation increase in their career.
What advice do you have for people just starting out?
I wish I knew how easy it was to build a course for sale online and how passive it can be once you finish it. - Brandon Bramley Click To TweetIt does take some legwork in the beginning but if you have education to offer then it’s worth creating one because there will be someone out there that will benefit from it. The other item I wish I knew was that I should’ve created a full course outline from the start with Section and Sub-section titles. I kind of piecemealed the first one together as I wrote it but if I started with an outline then it would’ve been much more efficient. That helped tremendously with the second course.
Learn more about Brandon Bramley of thesalarynegotiator.com:
