3 Tips for Negotiating Your Next Raise
You've decided to ask for a raise. Good for you! Believing you're worth it is the first step. This article will help you map out where to go next when it comes to negotiating your next raise.
Step 1: Visibility
The first step in successfully negotiating a raise starts with increasing your visibility at work. Check your attitude: Are you a team player? Are you doing your job well consistently and conscientiously? For most women (and hopefully this won’t be the case in another 40 years) it feels incredibly awkward to self-promote. Because women don’t feel comfortable talking about themselves, they miss the opportunity to share with their bosses (beyond an annual performance review) what they contribute to the bottom line. Sometimes their contributions go unnoticed or, worse yet, their accomplishments are attributed to others.
Start making a conscious decision to touch base more consistently with your boss. Offer suggestions for improvement and don’t be afraid to “brag” about things that you did. For example, you could say, “I thought you’d like to know that I improved the data on the point-of-sale system so that ...” Let your boss know that you're a team player AND that you think strategically about the business and how it can be improved. You're positioning yourself to be perceived as more valuable in their eyes.
Step 2: Request a Meeting
Leaders are too busy to notice everything that’s going on. If you're serious about asking for a raise, your second step is requesting a time to meet with your boss. You can request via email, text, or in-person the next time you see them. The important part is to request the meeting while also telling them that you’d like to talk about your performance and participation at the organization. They may want to defer that conversation or say something to dismiss that meeting request. Stand your ground. You might say something like, “In order for me to continue growing and contributing to the organization, I’d like to have a conversation with you about my role and my salary range.” Keep it short and sweet. Suggest a few times to make it simple them to say yes.
Step 3: Own Your Space in the Meeting
You’ll want to prepare for the meeting with a few notes. What do you think are your most valuable contributions to the team from the last three months? Use specific examples and describe how that contribution made a difference. Frame the request for a raise around your desire to take on more responsibilities at the company. It’s very hard for employers to turn down a raise that comes from a desire to contribute more to the company and its bottom line.
Prepare for the objections as well: We can’t pay you that because we can’t pay everyone that. Can you bring this up next month with me? I don’t have the money to pay you right now. Remember that objections help you understand what they're thinking; remove the objection and the path is clearer. Try using “If … then” logic with your boss. If I were to help you (insert task/activity goal) by (determine a timeline), then could we talk about a raise?
Asking for a raise is rarely a yes or no experience. A maybe is fairly common. When you walk out of the meeting, you'll want to be super clear on what's holding you back from a raise. Identify it out loud with your boss so that you both leave the meeting with the same clarity. Asking for a raise is a negotiation and agreeing on each step of the journey is part of the plan.
Conclusion
Whether you get the raise you asked for or not, you get to celebrate the meeting. You planned it, attended it, and you're now in the driver’s seat for your career. Good luck. You’ve got this!
Jenny Mitchell, CFRE, DMA, CEC, is the chief visionary officer of Chavender, where she works closely with leaders to change the world one mission at a time.