Negotiating a Promotion/Raise

Herein is a summary of key lessons from our recent Generational Dinners event. To read more about event planning, promotion, and experience design lessons for the event, navigate to this blog post instead.

Mindset

Shift away from a manipulative frame of mind where you’re seeking the best outcome for yourself. It’s not me vs. them, remember, should you succeed in your negotiations, you’ll continue to work with/in this organization and it’s in your best interest not to only prioritize the best possible personal outcome if it results in distaste and distrust moving forward.
Remember it’s a 2-way conversation, you have to be flexible too.
Don’t expect immediate on-the-spot answers.
It’s OK to say no/provide a counter offer.
Try to focus on them not you.
- We have a tendency to focus on our own pressure, on the reasons why we need to “win”.
- When you focus on your own limitations, the other side will appear more powerful and you may unconsciously compromise below a fair value (if you have realistic expectations) due to lack of confidence.
- Remember, even if they are unselfish, their primary motivation is still how it will benefit themselves/the company too.
- Always bring the conversation back to your strengths and overall value you’re offering to the position.
- How will the outcome better empower you to perform, increase output, exceed targets, etc. that will lead to not only better outcomes for the company, but also improve the reputation of your manager/help them achieve their goals.
Founders/early team members/if you’re working in a startup, tend not to negotiate. Sure, it’s important to prioritize and understand the limitations of a startup, but as the company grows, and as you see more success, remember to justify your worth as you’re very likely undercutting yourself to begin with.
Recognize Imposter syndrome. Here’s a separate and more detailed blog post on this topic.
- To increase confidence and get more comfortable selling yourself, create a brag list or list of achievements.
Be aware of limiting beliefs imposed by cultural norms or inferiority complexes.
- e.g. Expatriates are more talented.

Leverage/Options

Go in with a clear objective and understanding of your non-negotiables.

Do your homework:

Understand fair market value.
Vs. perceived or expected quality of work/responsibilities (especially important if you are already in a role and you may or may not meet these expectations).

Beyond salary, there are a plethora of options. Remember, even though there may be constraints on some of the below depending on company policy, everything is negotiable:

Equity
Commission/Revenue share
Childcare
Training/education expenses (for self/family).
Healthcare benefits (Health spending accounts, gym membership, etc.)
Location flexibility – remote vs. office.
Work hours flexibility
Mentorship

You can always ask “is this negotiable?” or “How did you get to this number?”

It helps you both understand what you can negotiate and the factors for consideration that influence your end outcome.

Companies WANT to give you benefits and want you to use them as they can expense them too + they’re better $$$ value as they don’t need to pay additional CPP/EI in proportion.

Understand what you bring to the table:

Skills
Strenghts
Responsibilities
Your drive/motivation
Alignment on mission + values

Timing

Specific to salary.

For a new job: Only AFTER you have a job offer

For existing:

Give them a heads up. If you raise it as a surprise, they’ll be on the defensive and you’re less likely to get a favourable outcome. They should be just as prepared as you are – remember, it’s not about win-lose.
Have them book it in their calendar so that they’ll be in the right headspace for the conversation.
Bring it up after a milestone – e.g. positive performance review, great quarter, company acquisition.
It’s also OK to ask for performance reviews/evaluations earlier than scheduled (they may not always say yes, but it never hurts to ask).

How to approach

Highlight new or changes in your responsibilities if any and use that to justify a revision.

Examples:

“I’m grateful for this merit increase – thank you for looking out for me. But I was hoping for a more substantial raise because I’ve taken on a lot of new responsibilities this year.

“Is there some way to adjust my salary to reflect my current responsibilities? Based on the market research I’ve done, I was hoping for a raise to [your target salary].”

Prove your worth/value, highlight accomplishments (obviously).

Techniques

Remember, it’s not about manipulating for the best possible personal outcome. If you don’t negotiate whilst considering their interest, it’ll ruin the relationship moving forward.

They’ll also be familiar with these techniques and will also likely use them on you. Awareness will ensure you’re not being taken advantage of.

Anchoring

Use a range instead of a specific number.
Ideally anchor on the higher end to allow for splitting the difference.
But remain realistic and ensure it’s justifiable.

Let them make the first offer

Why?

We tend to undersell ourselves – remember, imposter syndrome.
If you oversell yourself, you immediately exclude yourself from consideration (there are usually hard internal limits on salary range that they use to disqualify candidates).
Seeing their first move, you are in a better position to anchor your counter offer.
And…the first person to bring up money usually sounds selfish. You’ll want to avoid giving this impression.

What to say: “Any reasonable offer will be considered.”

Counter Offer

Use open-ended questions, they prompt responses that contain more information that’ll help you decide what you can be flexible on, hard limits, and other concerns they might have.

Like letting them make the first offer, if possible, put the impetus on them to propose a higher offer.

e.g. “Is there anything else you can do?”

Don’t say

“I’m really excited about this offer but after discussing it at home, I was wondering if we could agree on a slightly higher starting salary?”

It allows them to put the impetus back on you

“Yes, we could go a little higher, what did you have in mind?”

Similarly, don’t say,

“I’m really excited about this offer but after discussing it at home, I was wondering if we could go $5,000 higher in terms of the starting salary?”

The other party will either

Quickly agree (you’ll never know how much money was actually on the table)
Meet you in the middle by saying “How about we settle halfway at $2,500 more?”
Or you could accidentally oversell (and disqualifying) yourself if you asked for too much

Sunken Cost Fallacy

E.g. you’ll sit through a bad movie because you’ve already paid for it. We tend to stick with what we’ve invested in to “justify” our actions.

Get the other side to invest in you as much as possible.
- Get them to send you as many emails as possible.
- Talk with you on the phone as much as possible.
- Get as many people involved as possible.
- Request a second tour of the office or to see one of their satellite facilities.
This upfront time investment also helps the other side feel better about their decision, even if they had to increase their offer.

Take your time, it might also lead to them sweetening the deal.

In-person/real-time

You might feel more uncomfortable asking for more money over the phone/in-person.

But guess what – they’ll feel more uncomfortable saying “no” too. More so if there are multiple decision makers involved in that conversation together with you.

Avoid

What about highlighting multiple job offers to create leverage?

Generally, in negotiation, whoever has more options and therefore is less reliant on any one option, wins.

However, it gives of the impression that you’re not passionate about their company, that you’re more of a mercenary than an advocate.

Rejected, now what?

Try to establish these 2 if possible:

What you need to do to earn the raise/promotion you’ve requested?
A timeline (by when).

Remember, it’s not just about improving performance (i.e. doing something better). You can also explore what else you can do, what additional responsibilities can you take on.

Accepted, now what?

You betcha, expectations are going to increase. Step up your game, up your ante.

Get ChatGPT to negotiate for you

Someone mentioned this as a joke, but seriously, ChatGPT is frighteningly capable.

Though I can’t get a specific response related to this since every situation/context/variables for negotiation are different. Here’s advice from ChatGPT on this topic: