What would it take to make you move?
Every SAP salary negotiation runs on three numbers: the company's approved band, the recruiter's negotiating lane and your move price. Most offers fail because they are treated as one. Three voices, three seats, one negotiation.
Someone asks whether you are happy at work. Whatever you answer, the next question is: what would it take you to move?
We all have an answer, more or less. What we don’t have is the right answer. There isn’t one. But there is a right order.
Say you gave the recruiter a number: 25% above your current salary. They reply, “OK, let me get back to you.” Now you don’t know whether you hit the sweet spot, undersold yourself or left €20k on the table.
That uncertainty has a cause. Every negotiation runs on three numbers, owned by three different people: the company’s approved band, the recruiter’s negotiating lane and your move price. Most offers fail because the parties treat them as one.
The company prices the problem. The recruiter shows the lane. The candidate names the move price. In that order.
This edition tells one negotiation from all three seats: the employer (Robert Lienhard), the recruiter (Lennaert Buschman) and the candidate (Deborah Born). It is the one place you get to sit in all three.
Why the numbers are moving: three clocks
Every salary negotiation in the DACH SAP market now runs inside three clocks. None of them is visible at the negotiation table. All of them move the numbers.
The demographic clock. The cohorts born 1954 to 1969 reach retirement age by 2036. The Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft puts the net loss at 4.3 million workers by that year (IW, June 2026). The SAP ecosystem is not exempt. Many of the people who built and still run the ECC estates of the 1990s and 2000s belong to exactly these cohorts.
The maintenance clock. SAP ECC 6.0 mainstream maintenance ends in 2027. Extended maintenance runs to the end of 2030 at a surcharge. A transition option stretches to 2033, but only via RISE with SAP, private edition (E3 Magazin). Among DSAG members still on ECC, 37% target the end of 2027, around half expect to use extended maintenance and 4% plan for 2033. The obstacles they name: skills shortage, parallel transformation projects and budget (DSAG Investitionsreport 2026, via Computerwoche).
The cloud gap. The same survey shows SAP S/4HANA on premises at 56%, private cloud at 17% and public cloud at 5%. Only 6% plan high or medium public cloud investment in 2026. The people who know the old system are leaving; the people who know the new operating model are still scarce. Companies are hiring for a transition, not for a steady state.
The legal clock. The EU Pay Transparency Directive (2023/970) requires employers to state the starting pay or pay range before the interview, and it bans questions about pay history. The transposition deadline was 7 June 2026. Germany missed it; the Federal Family Ministry has signalled implementation by early 2027 (PTA heute, June 2026). The direction is set: the company’s band becomes visible earlier, and your current salary becomes harder to ask for.
Bitkom’s data shows where the clocks collide. 85% of German companies report an IT skills shortage, filling an IT role takes 7.7 months on average, and 56% say candidates’ salary expectations do not fit their pay structures (Bitkom, August 2025). That last figure is the subject of this edition.
A desk has a price. A skill has a market.
Most failed offers happen because the company priced the desk and the candidate priced the skill.
Filling a desk means replacing a headcount: same grade, same band, same location, ideally the same cost as the person who left. Hiring a skill means buying a capability the organisation does not have and needs for a defined period. Running a fit-to-standard workshop. Holding a clean core line against the business. Moving finance from ECC habits to public cloud release cycles.
| Filling a desk | Hiring a skill | |
|---|---|---|
| Starting point | The vacancy and its grade | The problem and its deadline |
| Price reference | The predecessor’s salary | What the market charges for that capability now |
| Question asked | Who fits the band? | What does it cost to solve this? |
| Typical ECC-to-cloud error | Replacing a retiring ECC expert like for like | Defining the transition capability first |
| What breaks | The offer, at the last stage | The band, early and on purpose |
The ECC-to-cloud shift sharpens the difference. A senior ECC consultant’s value lay partly in custom code and modifications the organisation itself created. A public cloud mandate rewards the opposite: saying no to modifications, working with quarterly releases and building extensions outside the core. A retiring ECC expert is rarely replaced by a younger ECC expert. The role itself changes.
Ways to buy a scarce skill in DACH
Companies in the region have more options than one permanent German contract. Each one changes which band applies.
| Option | What changes | Watch-out |
|---|---|---|
| German permanent contract | Local band, grade and works council structures apply | A global scope paid on a local band creates the gap described below |
| Swiss contract | Higher salary level; different pension, tax and social security | Credible only where the role, the entity and the work genuinely sit in Switzerland |
| Austrian contract | Separate band and collective agreement logic | Often lower nominal pay than Germany for comparable senior roles |
| Freelance or contractor | Day rate instead of band; no internal equity issue on paper | German false self-employment rules (Statusfeststellung) limit long, integrated assignments |
| Keeping senior experts past retirement age | Since January 2026, the German Aktivrente makes up to €2,000 a month of employment income tax-free beyond the statutory retirement age | Employees only, not the self-employed (Lexware) |
| Nearshore or CEE delivery | Different cost base for build work | Rarely solves the on-site, German-speaking, business-facing role |
| Reskilling ECC staff | Keeps process knowledge in house | Needs time the 2027 to 2030 window may not give |
The Aktivrente row deserves a second look. A retiring ECC expert who would gladly stay two more years may be cheaper and more motivated as an employee than as a freelancer, because only the employee gets the tax relief. That is a desk-versus-skill decision in miniature.
The three numbers
A company has an approved price for the role. A recruiter knows where movement may still exist. A candidate has a price at which changing jobs becomes rational. Three different numbers.
| Number | What it is | Who owns it |
|---|---|---|
| The approved band | What the organisation has budgeted for the role, grade, location and employment structure | The company |
| The negotiating lane | The room inside the mandate: base, variable, sign-on, level, review timing and exceptions | The recruiter knows it |
| The move price | The package at which leaving a known position, forfeiting benefits and accepting new risk becomes worthwhile | The candidate |
A fourth number distorts all three: your current salary. It is historical information. It is not the market value of the new mandate, and once pay transparency rules are in force, it is a number employers in the EU may no longer ask for.
Current salary, market value and move price are three different things.
The employer’s seat: a fair offer cannot create an unfair exception
Robert Lienhard writes What Must Remain Human, the sapperment column on talent attraction. He is an independent talent attraction adviser and writes in a personal capacity.
The hiring manager may like you. That does not mean the hiring manager can move the band. Salary bands follow the approved role, grade, location and budget. Base pay can move inside that corridor, but not indefinitely, and some elements are governed by policy rather than by anyone in the interview room.
The company is also negotiating with people who are not in the room: the employees already doing comparable work. Paying one new hire materially more can create salary compression, or a gap nobody can justify. An offer can be commercially reasonable for the candidate and still produce an unfair internal exception. Once the German rules apply, with pay transparency reporting and a shifted burden of proof, that exception also becomes a legal question.
So exceptions need a sponsor: a senior person prepared to defend the business case. Sometimes the market evidence shows that the role was undergraded rather than underpaid. Regrading the position is then more defensible than an unexplained salary exception. In the ECC-to-cloud transition this happens often: a role graded as “SAP FI consultant” turns out to be “finance transformation lead under a fixed deadline”.
The recruiter is given a corridor, not unlimited authority. When the recruiter names a ceiling, it may be real, even if other components stay open.
What helps the company say yes:
- A commercial reason: wider responsibility, revenue or P&L ownership, a larger geography, turnaround conditions, unusually scarce expertise.
- A concrete cost of moving: a forfeited bonus, unvested equity, relocation, a benefit surrendered.
- Requests outside base pay: flexibility, a development budget, a defined scope, an earlier review.
What makes the company doubt you will ever close: reopening settled points late, and a series of new demands after apparent agreement.
The employer’s underlying question: can we explain this package to the people already doing comparable work?
The recruiter’s seat: nobody wins the lottery at the negotiation table
Lennaert Buschman writes on the mandate side of SAP hiring. He is a managing consultant at Osprey International and writes in a personal capacity; views are his own.
Recruiters negotiate compensation every week. Most candidates negotiate a handful of major offers in a career. The recruiter knows the band, the approval structure and the constraints; the candidate usually does not. The real imbalance is information, not confidence.
The negotiation before the negotiation. It starts in the first screening call. A recruiter may name the maximum package before any interview. That is transparent and efficient, and under the EU directive it will increasingly be required. It also anchors you before you understand the role, and at offer stage the recruiter can point back to that early agreement.
The dangerous answer is “That’s fine.” It sounds polite and reads as unconditional. A safer reply:
“Thank you for being transparent. I understand that this is the maximum currently approved for the role. I am happy to explore the opportunity on that basis, provided we stay aligned on the scope, level and total compensation structure.”
The legitimate reason to reopen. “You clearly want me, so pay me more” is a weak argument. A material change in the proposition is a strong one: a larger geography, management responsibility, revenue or P&L ownership, a regional role becoming global, a turnaround, a difficult legacy estate, hiring responsibility, or decision accountability higher than advertised.
“The process has clarified that the business requirement is broader than the role we originally discussed. Can we review the level and package so they stay aligned?”
The recruiter as an internal ally. The recruiter wants the vacancy filled and needs a case to take back to the client. An unexplained demand is hard to sponsor; a case tied to scope, role value or forfeited compensation is not. Acknowledge the constraint, then ask which other mechanisms exist: a sign-on payment, a guaranteed first-year bonus, an earlier or off-cycle review, higher variable pay, re-levelling, equity, a mobility allowance, relocation, leave, contractual flexibility, a training budget.
The recruiter remains the client’s representative. That does not make the recruiter your opponent.
The candidate’s seat: never price yourself before the company has priced the problem
Deborah Born is the founder of sapperment and of the SAP TM Hub.
Mandate before money. Before any number, establish what the company is actually buying:
- Why does the role exist, and what must it achieve in the first 12 months?
- What are the reporting line, the team and the budget?
- Which decisions does it own? Does it own, influence or merely coordinate revenue?
- Is it regional, European or global?
- Is it a new role, a replacement or a previously failed search?
- Which grade has been approved, and which country’s band is being used?
In an ECC-to-cloud transition, add two more: who owns the clean core decision, and what happens to the role after go-live? A mandate that ends with the project is priced differently from one that runs the platform afterwards.
Current pay is not the anchor. Disclosing it early lets the employer benchmark you against an existing band before the mandate is defined. Pay transparency law is moving the same way: the employer states its range, and your history stays private.
“My current package is not the benchmark for a broader mandate. The relevant comparison is the scope, accountability and market level of this role.”
If pushed, give a range tied to the package structure and the mandate, not one isolated figure.
A move price is not personal expenditure. It can legitimately include compensation surrendered, unvested equity, a forfeited bonus, probation risk, lost tenure and employment protection, a company car, relocation, pension differences, how achievable year-one variable pay really is, flexibility, travel, restrictive covenants and the uncertainty of a new organisation.
It should not be argued from mortgage payments, school fees or household costs. Those may set your private walk-away point. They do not establish the commercial value of the role.
Worked example: Company Butterfly
Company Butterfly is fictional, and so are all the figures below. They illustrate the mechanics and are not a salary benchmark.
Butterfly, a German mid-sized manufacturer, is moving from ECC to SAP S/4HANA Cloud Public Edition before extended maintenance ends. It opens a “Lead SAP Finance” vacancy at grade L5, the grade of the retiring ECC finance lead. After four interviews the role reads differently: global template ownership, clean core governance across five countries and responsibility for the programme’s finance stream.
That is an L6 mandate on an L5 desk.
| Component | Company band (L5) | Recruiter lane | Candidate move price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fixed salary | €150k to €175k | Up to €180k with a sponsor | €190k |
| Target variable | 20% | Up to 25% | 20%, first year guaranteed |
| Sign-on | Not in policy | Up to €20k | €30k (forfeited annual bonus) |
| Mobility | Company car from L6 only | €500 a month allowance | Equivalent of the current car |
| Review | Annual cycle | Off-cycle review possible | 12-month review, written criteria |
The gap is not €10k of base. It is the grade. Pushing base to €190k inside L5 would put the new hire above every existing L5 in finance: Robert’s internal equity problem. Holding at €175k leaves the candidate carrying a global mandate at a local desk price: the move price is not met.
Two honest resolutions:
- Regrade. The hiring manager sponsors an L6 business case built on the expanded scope. The band moves, the car policy follows, and the exception disappears because it is no longer an exception.
- Narrow the mandate. Keep L5, remove global template ownership, and bridge the move with a sign-on and a guaranteed first-year bonus. The candidate then decides whether the smaller job is still worth moving for.
What does not work: an L5 salary for an L6 job, topped up with equity or promises. Variable pay and equity cannot make up for a fixed salary that has to carry the candidate’s core economic risk.
The package is larger than the salary line
Ask for the formula, not only the percentage. “30% variable” says little until you know what triggers it, who sets the targets, whether there is a cap and what happens in year one, when you inherit someone else’s pipeline and plan. The full checklist is in Know your worth means more than salary; the short version:
| Area | What to ask about |
|---|---|
| Cash | Fixed salary; target variable; bonus formula and triggers; individual vs company targets; cap, accelerators, historical payout rates |
| Bridging | Guaranteed first-year bonus; sign-on; treatment of forfeited bonus or equity |
| Equity | RSUs or options; vesting schedule; liquidity |
| Benefits | Car or mobility allowance; relocation; pension; insurance and disability cover; holiday |
| Ways of working | Remote commitment; working-time flexibility; training and certification; sabbatical |
| Contract | Notice period; probation; non-compete; side-activity and publication rights; severance |
| Role | Title, grade, reporting line; team, budget and decision rights |
Structure matters as much as the headline. A 70/30 split carries a different risk from 50/50. On-target earnings are not guaranteed income, and a high OTE can hide an inadequate fixed salary. A mobility allowance replaces a car only if the net effect is equivalent. The country of the contract changes pension, tax, mobility and employment protection.
Negotiate the career, not only the job
A 5% increase improves one year’s cash flow. A higher grade changes every future band.
- Wider scope changes the next role you qualify for.
- Revenue or P&L accountability can permanently change your market position.
- An earlier review is worth something only when the date, the criteria and the decision-maker are written down.
- A title alone is weak. A title with mandate, budget, team and measurable responsibility is not.
For the ECC generation, this is the real question of the next five years. Twenty years of ECC experience is a skill with a closing window. Owning a public cloud finance template is a skill with an opening one.
The strongest negotiation may not be for more money inside the existing job. It may be for a better job inside the organisation.
Know the role, know the candidate
And then there is AI. The well-prepared candidate has let an AI optimise a CV against Butterfly’s AI-generated job description. On paper, everyone now looks extraordinary. So before anyone is invited to interview, both sides need to know whether the role and the person will actually fit.
The fix is two short written lists, exchanged early. Know your role: what must be delivered, under which circumstances and with which resources. Know your candidate: what the person needs in order to deliver those results.
This is the moment of truth. Say employees cannot order anything over €50 from the online shop, there is no agreed go-live date and the business has not signed off the business case. Then don’t sell the role as a ground-breaking vanilla delivery in six months, live before Christmas, with full freedom to order your own IT equipment.
Equally, if you dislike speaking to large audiences, your English is rusty and you prefer your camera off, don’t claim that you cherish every interaction and are a natural on stage.
Lying about your skills will come out. Lying about your salary might come out. Lying about what makes you happy will make you miserable, and you will spend every working week enduring a job you should be enjoying. Get the job you want, not the one your ego wants, or the one your AI told you to want.
Closing
The DACH SAP market is about to lose much of the generation that built ECC, in the same window in which those systems must move. Companies that keep pricing desks will keep losing candidates at offer stage and will call it a skills shortage. Some of it is a pricing shortage.
The fix is not a bigger number. It is the same number, agreed in the right order: the company prices the problem, the recruiter shows the lane, the candidate names the move price. When those three line up, the negotiation is short. When they don’t, the most useful outcome is to find out early.
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Cheat sheet
| Do | Don’t |
|---|---|
| Establish the mandate before giving a number | Disclose your current compensation early |
| Tie any early acceptance to scope and level | Answer an early ceiling with an unconditional “That works” |
| Use ranges linked to responsibility and structure | Reopen only because the company likes you |
| Acknowledge the recruiter’s constraints; ask “how” and “what” | Use personal costs as the justification |
| Explain the business reason behind each request | Assume every component is fixed |
| Trade rather than concede: use one concession to secure another | Split the difference without changing another part of the package |
| Ask who can sponsor an exception | Threaten unless you are prepared to leave |
| Request the exact bonus formula | Invent competing offers or deadlines |
| Define your walk-away point before the call | Accept or reject during the offer call |
| Take time to review the written offer | Treat “I’ll see what I can do” as agreement |
| Put every agreement into the contract | Rely on a verbal side agreement; the recruiter is not the contracting party |
| Keep the recruiter able and willing to advocate for you | Force an immediate answer |
Sources
- Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft (IW Köln): Babyboomer in Rente: bis 2036 fehlen 4,3 Millionen Arbeitskräfte, June 2026.
- E3 Magazin: Deadline extension for ECC 6.0 until 2033.
- Computerwoche: DSAG Investitionsreport 2026, February 2026.
- Bitkom: IT-Fachkräftemangel, August 2025.
- PTA heute: Entgelttransparenzgesetz, June 2026. Haufe: Entgelttransparenz.
- Lexware: Aktivrente 2026.
sapperment is an independent publishing platform and is not affiliated with SAP SE. SAP is a registered trademark of SAP SE. Contributors write in a personal capacity. Company Butterfly and all figures in the worked example are fictional.