How to ask for a raise, in five sentences

Most advice about this starts by telling you to be confident. That is not the problem. The problem is that you do not know what to say, so the conversation stays in your head where it is safe.

Start by giving up on being noticed

The belief that keeps people underpaid is that good work speaks for itself. It does not. Budgets speak. Your manager is not withholding a raise out of malice, and in most companies starting that conversation is simply not their job.

The same comment turns up under every video about this, written by people who are good at their jobs. Ran the department. Made them hundreds of thousands. Got more responsibility and no more money. Left, and got thirty thousand more elsewhere for the same work.

Leaving is often the right answer. There is another version where you get most of that without changing buildings, and it takes about forty uncomfortable minutes.

Never say “I deserve more”

Deserving is a feeling. Nobody can evaluate a feeling, approve it, or take it to a finance director. It also puts your manager in the position of judging you rather than solving a problem with you.

Replace it with a sentence about value and a number.

The evidence has to be in their language. Not “I worked incredibly hard on the migration”. Numbers, with units attached: revenue generated, percentage over target, cost removed, markets added, conversion moved from one figure to another.

The five sentences

This is the whole conversation. It takes under two minutes to say and most of the work happens before you walk in.

1. “I would like to discuss my role and compensation.”
2. “I am happy with where we are going and I am willing to take on more responsibility.”
3. “Over the last period I generated X, Y and Z.”
4. “Based on that impact, I would like to work toward a compensation level of €X.”
5. Then stop talking. Let them answer.

Number five is the one people get wrong, and it is the one that decides the outcome. Do not justify further. Do not apologise. Never, under any circumstances, say “I know this might be too much.”

You have made a reasoned request backed by evidence. Let it sit there and be reasonable. Silence is not disagreement. It is somebody doing sums.

The conversation that was worth more than all the others

The first thing I ever successfully negotiated was not a bigger number. It was a different shape, and it is the move almost nobody makes.

If your pay has a fixed lid on the upside, that lid is usually the most negotiable thing in the whole package. And almost nobody touches it, because they are busy asking about base. There is more on how that works in what OTE actually means.

What number should you actually ask for?

The honest answer is the one your evidence supports, which is a different number for everybody. This works it out from what you have, and tells you what is missing.

What to do the week before

• Write down every result from the last twelve months with a number attached.
• Find out what the role pays elsewhere. Two or three real data points is enough.
• Pick your number, and pick the lower number you would accept. Know both.
• Book the meeting properly. Do not raise it at the end of a one-to-one about something else.
• Say the five sentences out loud once. It is a different thing in your mouth than in your head.

Afterwards

If the answer is yes, get the date it starts. If the answer is not now, ask what would have to be true for a yes. Get it written down, with a date. If the answer is no with nothing attached, you have learned something about the seat rather than about yourself.

Then put it in the calendar for next year. The people who get paid properly are not the ones who had one brave conversation. They are the ones who had it five times.

Questions people actually ask