The Executive Offer Negotiation Playbook: Scripts, Counters & Comp Worksheets (Fillable PDF)

The diligence is done. The offer is in. You have roughly ten days of maximum leverage — and most executives spend them being agreeable.

This playbook is the companion to Interviewing the Interviewer, built for the window between verbal offer and signature. It converts every open risk from your diligence into contractual terms: the sequencing, the realistic numbers, and the exact language for asks most leaders deliver badly or skip entirely.

Who this is for

The offer landed this morning, and something in you already wants to just say yes before it evaporates. This is for you if you're an executive in the ten-day window between verbal and signature — holding real leverage with no script for spending it. If you deliver hard messages for a living but go soft when the compensation is your own, this playbook is the spine.

Inside the 11-page fillable PDF:

• Part 1 — Leverage, Timing & Anchors: the leverage curve, the one-counter rule, anchor-reset language, and must-have/trade/give multi-issue trading
• Part 2 — The Comp Stack: an 8-component table showing what actually moves at VP-to-C level — base, sign-on, bonus guarantees, equity, acceleration, severance — with realistic movement ranges and the trade each pairs with
• Part 3 — Word-for-Word Scripts & Counter Emails: 9 live-conversation scripts (receiving the offer, the consolidated counter, the downside package, competing offers, declining without burning) plus 4 copy-paste email templates
• Part 4 — Fillable Offer Comparison & Negotiation Planner: side-by-side worksheet for two offers plus your current role, with walkaway, target, and BATNA fields
• Part 5 — The 72-Hour Counter Checklist: written offer to delivered counter in three days, step by step

Works standalone. Sharpest when paired with the diligence toolkit — the scripts anchor every ask to evidence you gathered in the loop, which is what separates a counter that reads as rigor from one that reads as greed.

9 scripts. 4 templates. One consolidated counter, delivered at full strength.

Instant download • US Letter • Edition 2026

General guidance for negotiating employment offers; not legal, financial, or tax advice. Have counsel review before signing.