The Offer

The offer came with sacrifice. The offer on one side looked good. The offer on the other side looked rather different. How does one decide to accept or deny the offer? One decides with careful consideration I hope.

Now the offer type doesn’t really matter. It could be a new job offer. It could be a promotion offer. It could be a relocation offer. It be an offer to buy a home. It could be an offer to buy a car. At the end of the day an offer is just that. An offer!

An offer can be accepted. An offer can be rejected. An offer can be counter offered and/or negotiated. In any offer there are various parties involved. It’s a transaction of sorts.

For my example here I will use the sports team offer. I coach a competitive-level team thus I extend offers for kids to play on my team based on skills, talents and overall spots available on my team. Not everyone gets an invite. The main reason being there are normally more applicants than available spots. Just like the job market. More candidates than openings.

When offers are extended one person could be overjoyed by their offer and another could feel like the offer is not reflective of their worth. If one accepts the offer and one denies the offer, should there be any negative feelings toward the one who denied the offer?

In my mind the answer is a big fat no. An offer is made and the other party has a choice to take the offer or decline the offer. It’s pretty simple.

I recently had a property for sale. I got an offer to buy it. I didn’t like the offer. I provided a counter offer. This is customary in a real estate transaction thus it’s noted as generally acceptable to deny or counter offer. This also reflects my perception of my property’s value. It may even have some emotions involved in the decision if I had owned the property a while.

As a person, if I applied for a job and I received on offer but the compensation wasn’t enough to pay my bills, meaning it wasn’t a good fit, would my friends be disappointed if I didn’t take the offer? It would 100% be my choice so I would think not, unless one of those friends was assisting me financially. In that case a friend may think I should take the offer as some money is better than no money. If the company was disappointed, I would just be honest with my reasoning and let them know if budget money frees up to call me back. This 100% has to do with my personal value and how I would not settle for less than what I thought I was worth.

Circling back to the sports team example, if I was the coach of a high school soccer team and I offered a slot to boy A on varsity and a slot to boy B on junior varsity should there be any worry that one may deny my offer to either team?

I wouldn’t think so because as a coach I know I made offers to the players I thought were best for varsity. If the varsity player declined their offer, I would have a runner-up or next-in-line person to offer the open slot to. If on the other hand, the junior varsity player didn’t accept their offer what would I do?

Nothing. I would do nothing unless that person asked what they could do to get better for the next tryout. I would only provide those details if I was probed. The offer was denied thus I would move on until the next review of open slots next year.

At the end of the day offers get made in so many areas of life. The sooner we all learn that we can’t win all the time the better. Finally the Patriots football team/fans learned that lesson before another Super Bowl this year. It is also important to learn that we should never judge another until we have lived a day in their shoes.

The emotional aspect of the house sale could have to do with a family member being deceased and the only memories left were made in that home. How do you put a value on that?

The emotion involved in the job scenario could be how hard the person worked professionally to reach a certain pay level yet the job offer was below the minimum threshold that person set for themselves.

The emotion behind the JV offer could be that their best friend made varsity and the other person didn’t think the game would be fun without their bestie. Or maybe it was a set of identical twins and one made varsity while the other made junior varsity. How tricky would that scenario be?

Life is tricky. Balance is important. Understanding and valuing the other side of an equation and offer can sometimes get missed especially when emotions are high. Remember no good decision is made when emotions are high.

Always take time. Maybe 24 hours to evaluate offers to see the pros and cons before making a rash decision. I know when dealing with real estate offers they are time sensitive yet the time allows for consideration.

This post spurred from a couple of online articles relating to high school sports, the value of a coach and also the lack of sincerity of coaches who make cuts! I’m a coach. I make cuts. It’s not easy but I normally have reasons. Some may agree with me some may not. That’s life.

When I read negative articles I often try to put myself in the other person’s shoes and wonder how this situation has impacted them. I then reflect and take action as needed. I wish more people did that vs. casting judgment.

I also took action after reading the articles and let my daughter’s basketball coach know how much I appreciated her time and coaching of my daughter. A good coach can help grow confidence and further passion of an activity or sport. A coach who only cares about winning can knock down a player’s confidence in a pinch and simultaneously instill a dislike for the sport once loved.

Just a night of reflection and writing time for me. It is my hope that this blog reaches someone who needs to hear this message:

You define your personal value.
You are a reflection of yourself, make yourself proud.
You say yes or no to all things in life.
You can grow from adversity.
You can win if you choose to win. It’s all about choices in life.

We all make mistakes. We all have the ability to bounce back after crazy times ensue. Will you take the next offer if it’s lower than you hoped for? What would you gain from taking a subpar offer?

In home sales if an offer seems inferior you may have to step back to evaluate deeper. If you have to pay x more dollars for three months while you get a new offer was the first offer that bad? Decisions, decisions.

Life is full of decisions, opportunities, curve balls, and offers. You will never make all the right choices. But one can always learn from missed opportunities. Life is a gamble.

Keep gambling!