Put the softening on the way you ask and keep the number bare. Would there be any flexibility on the figure? is a hedged frame around a firm ask. Maybe something around, I don't know, perhaps fifty? is a hedged number, and it has moved the number downwards before the other side has said anything at all.
That distinction is the whole of this page. Learners who have been told that English requires politeness apply the politeness evenly across the sentence, and it lands on the one part that has to stay still.
Eight phrases, and the register they sit in
English negotiation is indirect. A flat no is rare and is heard as an ending rather than a position, so the language is built to leave room.
- That would be difficult, which is a refusal. Hearing it as hesitation rather than as a no is a costly misreading.
- Is there flexibility on, opening a point without naming your own target.
- What is driving that number, asking for the reasoning rather than challenging the figure, which usually produces more information than pushing does.
- If you can do that, I can move on price, the conditional offer, which concedes nothing until the other side moves.
- That sounds close, signalling that a deal is within reach, and it is a move rather than an observation.
- What would that look like, asking somebody to make a vague proposal concrete.
- I would need to see, attaching a condition without refusing.
- Let me check and come back to you, which buys time and is never questioned.
Ask as a question, and attach a reason
English asks for more in the interrogative rather than the declarative. I want a higher salary is a statement about your wants; is there any room on the salary? is a question about their constraints, and it invites an answer rather than a defence.
Attaching a reason changes it again. A want is not negotiable, because there is nothing in it for the other side to work with. A reason is: it names a criterion, and the conversation moves to whether the criterion applies, which is a discussion rather than a standoff. The reason does not have to be dramatic. Another offer, a published range, the scope of the role as described, all of them work because all of them are external.
Then stop talking
The most powerful move available in English negotiation costs nothing and is culturally very hard: say the ask, and then say nothing until they respond.
A silence after a request is uncomfortable for everybody, and the person who fills it concedes something, almost always. What gets filled in is a justification, a softening, or a lower number, and all three are given away before the other side has stated a position. Learners are especially likely to fill it, because a silence in a second language feels like a failure to have said enough.
Counting silently to five after the ask is a slightly ridiculous technique, and it holds the silence, which is the only thing it has to do.
Where it stops: negotiating against yourself
The stall is conceding before the reply. It shows up in three forms and they are all the same move: hedging the figure, adding but I'm flexible in the same breath, or filling the silence with a lower alternative.
Nothing corrects it, because from the inside every one of those feels like courtesy and each of them keeps the conversation pleasant, which is what a second-language speaker is most anxious about. The other side has no reason to point out that you have just moved twice on your own.
What makes it specifically a language problem rather than a temperament one is that the hedging vocabulary was learned as a block. Maybe, perhaps, around, I think, sort of are taught together as politeness, and nobody says that they are only polite when they are attached to the frame.
A number that came from somewhere other than your history
The salary ranges published on job boards are free to read, and in a growing number of places employers are required to publish them, so a real range for the role in your city is available before you say a number to anybody.
They replaced naming a figure based on what you currently earn, which anchors the whole conversation to your own history rather than to the market, and which is the single most common way a candidate loses money in a language they speak perfectly well.
The limitation is that a published range is a range and a wide one, and the top of it is rarely what a first offer touches. Use it to know whether an offer is inside the range at all, which is the question that decides whether to ask, rather than as a figure to quote back.
What it looks like when it goes wrong
The recognisable failure is a figure delivered with a question mark on the end of it. The rising tone turns a position into a request for approval, and it is one of the few places where an intonation habit carried from another language costs money.
The second is apologising for asking. Sorry to bring this up, but tells the other side that the ask is an imposition, which invites them to treat it as one. Asking about pay is an ordinary part of the conversation in English-language hiring and nobody is offended by it.
The graded formulas that carry an ask are the same family that carries an objection, which is interrupting, agreeing and disagreeing without offence, and the conversation this one usually follows is the questions, and answers that sound like a person. Both sit under the English that decides whether you get the role.
What is left after the words is a matter of timing and of what else you have in hand rather than of language, and getting the English right will not rescue an ask made at the wrong moment: choosing work, getting it, and moving up.