Salary Negotiation – You did it, you’ve found your dream job. To find your dream job you have done a lot of hard work. Long phone calls, making a professional resume, submitting it to multiple places, giving dozens of interviews, and finally, you got your dream job.
Wow!
And now you need to negotiate your salary. One of the toughest tasks for many people.
Maybe you are scared, a little bit afraid, a little bit intimidated.
Or maybe you’ve been with the company for some time now for a few years, and now you want a salary hike and you want to talk to your employer about higher pay, a higher salary.
What do you do?
You see most of the information out there is how you negotiate salary from an employer’s perspective.
Today I’m going to do something very different.
I’m going to share the CEO’s perspective on salary rise.
I am going to share how do you negotiate salary?
How do you talk to a CEO, how do you convince a CEO?
How do you read their mind?
You see, the problem with most employees is, that they either ask for a salary increase too soon meaning they have not established a track record, a performance record, or what they have done, too early.
You see you don’t get higher pay because you demand it.
You get higher pay because you deserve it.
Or they ask for it too late, meaning they have been with a company for three, four, five, six, or seven years but very little increase in pay.
So you don’t want to do it too early, you don’t want to do it too late.
Here are 7 salary negotiation tips that will help you to get a salary raise.
Salary Negotiation – 7 Proven Tips for Salary Negotiation
#1 Don’t negotiate your salary in text or email
You see most employees are afraid to talk, they’re afraid to sit down face to face or get on the phone with their employer, or talk about pay increases because they lack confidence, they lack self-esteem.
They make use of e-mail or text messages.
My advice to you is never to use email or text messages for a salary raise.
Why?
You cannot communicate your tone, your emotions, or your body language via text message or e-mail.
So the best thing is to arrange a face-to-face meeting. If face to face meeting. If face to face meeting is difficult arrange for a video call.
In a face-to-face meeting, you can make use of your emotional tonality, and your body language. All these you can use for communication.
You can use your eye contact, to demonstrate, to show your confidence, you need to be confident when you are going into a salary negotiation.
So don’t be afraid.
Prepare speech and practice it multiple times.
Salary Negotiation Tip 2.
#2 Go to the meeting with facts and not feelings
You see, most employees make this mistake, they come to the meeting only with feelings and emotions.
Your manager or CEO is not going to get convinced only by your feelings & emotions.
You need to show facts and figures to get a salary raise.
Most the people say to their managers that –
- I feel like I have been around a long time
- I feel like I’ve been contributing
- I feel like I’ve been working hard, and then
- I feel like I deserve more pay.
That does not work, because that’s the feeling.
You need facts and figures.
What have you done?
You should do your research ahead of time. Find out what are some of the contributions you’ve made to the company?
So when you sit down with your employer, you’re not just talking about feelings, you’re presenting, kind of almost like a case, like a lawyer, and let’s say hypothetically you are a Digital Marketing Manager.
You manage the company’s digital marketing & social media account.
You need to go to the Manager or CEO with facts and say since my employment here, here’s what I’ve done.
- I have generated revenue worth 1.2 Cr with digital marketing.
- I have grown the company’s Facebook account by 39% since I was here.
- I have used so and so effective social media strategies that have helped the company to grow its digital presence.
- I have saved this much money for the company.
Now the CEO may or may not know these things, so when you present a case, now you’re speaking from facts.
You can also present your future digital marketing strategy.
This is how I’m planning to make the company more money, this is my plan to generate more revenue, this is my plan to bring in more customers, and this is my plan for how I could make things better.
You see the difference. So prepare yourself well for the meeting & yes facts matter the most for salary negotiation and not feelings.
Tip 3 for Salary negotiations.
#3 Ask Questions, Don’t make statements
During a salary negotiation, you don’t just want to keep making statements.
Because it will sound like and feel like you are justifying.
You’re saying, oh, here’s what I’ve done, and here are the things, and here’s what’s going on, and all those are good, you’re presenting your case, but you always want to be asking questions.
Remember – Whoever asks the questions, controls the conversation.
So you want to be asking leading questions, discovery questions, probing questions, you’re asking your employer, by getting more information, by kinda gauging how they’re feeling about the different requests that you might have.
Instead of just making a statement and then it’s very easy to turn into an argument or some kind of conflict when you’re just throwing statements out there.
But when you’re asking questions it would feel much more like a collaborative effort;
So, ask questions, and don’t make statements.
#4 Set the Agenda
Don’t be afraid to set the agenda. What that means is, where is this gonna go,
- What is the purpose of this meeting,
- What is the outcome,
- What are we trying to accomplish?
As an employee, you want to set the agenda, set the tone, right.
- What are we trying to accomplish here?
- What is the outcome we want from this meeting?
So you could say something like this, Mr. Employer, you know I’m very excited to be joining your company, I’m truly excited about this opportunity, and I look forward, very much look forward to working alongside your amazing team.
Do you mind if we talk about compensation for a second?
Oh, not a problem, shoot.
Talk about compensation.
You see, Mr. Employer, based on my research, for someone with higher, with my background and credentials and my skill sets, the market rate is X-amount of dollars, this much per year.
And then right from there the CEO, the employer, will say well, you know what, yeah that’s kinda what I’m thinking, as well or they might say that’s a little bit more, that’s a little bit higher than what we have budgeted for.
But then you’re not guessing, you’re not afraid to say hey this is what the market rate is, this is what industry rate is, how do you feel about that?
That’s it.
You set the agenda. And you go from there.
#5 Don’t be needy – Needy is creepy
You don’t want to sit down, face to face with your employer, and be all needy about what you want.
That is a big turn-off.
So do not use words like, oh I want, or I need, I see this a lot.
Your job pays you $, a year, and you actually wanna make $, dollars a year.
So there’s a five thousand dollar gap. Instead of saying oh, I need another $, a year for my position, right.
Or I want big vacation pay, I want overtime, or I need this and I need that,
it’s a big turn-off for the employer.
Nobody gives a shit what you need, right.
What you wanna do is you want to ask questions with finesse.
Be on the same page.
A much more powerful thing you could say is,
I would be more comfortable with it.
You see the difference, I want this, I would be more comfortable with it.
So example.
Let’s say the job you want $, and the job pays $, first of all, you could say well, is there any flexibility with that? Is there any flexibility with that?
See how powerful that question is?
And then you could say that, you know I would be, I would be more comfortable with $X a year.
Would you be comfortable with that?
How do you feel about that?
Do you hear the difference?
Don’t be needy and you wanna be neutral, right.
When you’re in salary negotiation you wanna be neutral.
Neutral, you are friendly but you’re firm, you’re not attached.
The key thing is here, not to be attached.
You just, hey, you know what, I’d love to work here, I would love to contribute, just how can we make this work?
Don’t be needy.
#6 Become more valuable
You see most employees, want more pay without becoming more, without adding more value.
They think just by working more hours that’s more value.
Well for certain jobs, like lower-level entry jobs, that might be the case, but for certain higher-level jobs, you’re not getting paid based on hours, you’re getting paid based on results.
What you bring to the company, what you bring to the organization.
So, as an employee, you wanna find ways to always upgrade your skills.
How to become more valuable, what can you bring more to the table?
How you can become competent high-performance employees.
Because good people are hard to find, right.
And as a CEO we look for a return, we call that return on human capital.
If I’m spending a dollar on this employee, how much is this employee bringing in for the company?
If I’m spending a dollar I’m getting a dollar return in revenue, you would do that all day long.
As a CEO I would do that all day long, it’s never a problem.
And it doesn’t matter, I’m not just talking about you are in a position in sales or marketing, in support, admin, operation, PR, research and development, it doesn’t matter, every single person, to me, within my organization, every single person’s in sales.
Every single person is responsible for generating revenue.
- Doesn’t matter what it is
- Doesn’t matter video production
- Doesn’t matter if social media
- Doesn’t matter it’s an operation
Every single person’s job is to generate revenue.
Now sometimes you can generate revenue by bringing in more revenue, sometimes you generate revenue by saving money by not being cheap, but eliminating waste.
That’s another way to do it, so you need to find ways to become more valuable.
One of the mistakes that I see a lot of employees make is they approach this scenario with oh I’ve been here for five years, I’ve been here for three years, it doesn’t matter.
It’s not the point. Years don’t equal results.
Just because you’ve been here for a few years doesn’t mean a whole lot.
On the other hand, a new person could come in, and if that person could bring a lot of value to the company, and could generate more revenue, that person would get compensated for that.
So you need to become very, very valuable within the company.
Now if you’re not so sure, sometimes you could ask the CEO, what can I do to bring more value to the company, what can I do?
You’ll be shocked how many times people do not talk to the supervisor, or manager, right.
The CEO, what can I do to bring more value?
They just, they guess, they hope, and they wonder why they do certain things and they don’t feel that they’re being appreciated, because you’re doing things that may not matter to the CEO, right.
I’m talking about becoming more valuable, being more effective, right.
Being able to perform better.
Being able to do that, and then be very clear about what the CEO wants.
Be very clear about what his vision is and how can you solve problems for him or her.
Better yet, how do you solve problems for him or her ahead of time, before even the problem comes up.
If you do that then you don’t just become valuable, you become invaluable to the company.
When you become invaluable to a company, I promise you, pay’s not an issue.
#7 Painting a Picture in the CEO’s Mind
Let’s say you’re sitting down, you’re now negotiating, and you’re getting a no.
The boss, the CEO is saying to you well, I don’t think this is the right time for you to get the pay increase.
Now instead of looking all defeated and saying oh yeah, you know, like, you know, you didn’t get the pay that you want, turn that into a question.
Ask, you know, you need to sell the employer.
What, what is gonna happen.
You can’t just deserve and say oh I want more, remember don’t be needy, what would happen, what would be, what would be his or her expectations.
So I’m gonna role play a little bit with you, okay,
just a scenario.
So let’s say you get a no.
What you wanna say is something like this, Mr. Employer, my goal, my vision for this company here, for this organization is,
- I want to be your most valuable team member.
- I want to be your most valuable employee.
- That my goal is not to be an expense for the company.
- I want to be a revenue generator.
- I’m gonna make the company five times in return.
- I’m here to contribute.
- I’m not here to mess around, right.
- This is not a job for me, this is a career.
So, Mr. Employer, help me to understand.
Right now I’m making $, a year, and my goal, my goal is to get to $, a year, or $, a year.
Maybe not immediately, maybe there’s a plan.
Can you teach me, can you coach me, can you show me, can you tell me what would it take for me to earn $, a year.
What would be your expectations?
And see the minute you say that, now, the CEO is thinking, wow,
I have got, I have an ambitious person here, who’s hungry for success, who is not just asking because, demanding pay, but it’s like okay, so how can I help this person become more successful?
How can I help this person earn the money that he or she wants to earn?
Now the CEO will tell you,
Well, you know what, I would expect these things to happen.
I would expect these milestones.
I would expect these KPIs.
And then you say well you know what, Mr. Employer, let’s just pretend, suppose I could do this and this and this and this and this and this, everything there you’ve laid out.
So you would be comfortable paying me $, a year if I could do all of that for you, is that what I’m hearing from you.
And he’ll say yeah absolutely, boom, right there, you’ve got the commitment.
Maybe not right now, maybe not right now because you still gotta do these things, right, then all you need to do is ask one simple closing question;
Mr. Employer, let’s pretend I could do all these things, and I’m gonna prove to you I could do all of those and more and exceed your expectations, would you be open to revisiting this day from now?
Now I can book a time with you and sit down and we can, we can talk about this again.
Now, what are they gonna say?
They’ll say absolutely, of course.
Right there, you’ve planted a seed.
Okay, you’re gonna do these things.
And what is gonna happen?
By the time you sit down, you do the same thing again, right.
Then the CEO is helping you to become more successful.
What would it take?
If you’re working for a growing, high-growth company, the opportunities are limitless.
The sky’s the limit.
There’s never a lack of opportunities.
It’s all it takes is your willingness, your ambition, your skills, willingness to go that extra mile, willing to go all in, not to be just a typical, employee mentality but to be a team member, to be a high-performance individual & entrepreneur mentality.
Solving problems before that problem comes up.
You do that, you don’t need to ask, I could tell you, all the techniques, all that is good, you don’t need to ask for higher pay.
If the CEO is truly a good leader the CEO will give you higher pay.
Because you don’t need to ask for it.
Everybody knows the value of a high performer.
Over to you
So those are the seven tips for salary negotiation.
I am 100% sure that these tips for salary negotiation will help you in getting a quick salary raise.
If you find these tips useful make sure to share them with your friends and colleagues on Facebook, Twitter & Linkedin.
Help them to grow financially by getting a salary raise.:)
