How to Negotiate A Raise: Presenting Your Accomplishments
The hard part of going for a raise is that if you do or say something, like most things in life, there is no guarantee of the outcome. Your odds of success go way up by working my system. But, nothing is foolproof. Much depends on your delivery, self-confidence and how well you follow directions. Your boss doesn’t always respond the way you thought and hoped. My back-up plan is that if you don’t receive a great raise, you will be in a fantastic position to get it somewhere else.
Why? You’ll be in a terrific position to get the raise elsewhere due to all the great preparation you did in advance of the discussions with your boss. And now you can easily leverage that preparation work for use with another employer. That is real control. That new employer will see you as an outstanding contributor who is deserving of a healthy increase.
I encourage each of you to respond to me with your comments and questions so everyone can learn. The first 9 emails in our series will discuss 9 essential rules for setting the foundation of your pay raise conversation. Ignoring any one of these rules could reduce your pay raise chances considerably, especially getting a significant one.
Let’s dive in with arguably the most significant tip.
Tip #1:
Maintain a confidential list of your money/time saving accomplishments and any work you performed over and above your basic job description. This is a confidential list because you don’t want your boss or co-workers seeing it. You’ll need this list later to help make your case.
If you don’t have things at which you excelled like saved money, reduced costs, improved efficiencies, then it will be tough to get a significant raise. An exception is if your boss loves having you around for any number of reasons like a great attitude, good influence on others, always helpful, boss’s favorite, and other soft skills, that can have a positive impact on your salary.
But, make no mistake, if you are doing the basics of what you were hired to do, then you have not created added value unless you do it faster and better than anyone else. The less you positively impact the firm’s bottom line, the less of a raise you’ll get.
It is crucial that the accomplishment list mentioned above is worded correctly. So if you saved a million dollars for the firm by streamlining order processing and improving collections, but don’t state it in a proactive and metrically oriented manner, then you’ll be leaving serious money on the table.
We will cover this topic in more depth in our next email. This one is critical to your career advancement and you can’t afford to miss it!
Any one of these insider techniques can raise your chances of getting a considerable raise, but why go it alone? You often only have one shot to make the best case for a pay raise.
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