Negotiation
No Raise with Your Promotion? Try These Three Things
- by Holly Burton
Picture this: You’ve had an absolute triumph of a year at work. You and your boss have both advocated hard for you to get promoted. In your one-on-one, your manager tells you it’s finally happening. After many long months of effort, you’re finally getting that coveted step up you’ve been chasing. Yay!
*Cue the triumphant Ru Paul’s Drag race gifs in your work besties group chat!*
A few weeks later, you get a contract for your new job. To your great surprise, they’ve unilaterally assigned you a salary – lower than you’d like, of course! – for the new role, and you are meant to sign on the dotted line, end of discussion. Eep!
So what do you do when HR (or your manager) gives you an offer but the pay is way below what you’d expect? And what if they’ve strongly implied (or outright told you!) that they do not expect you to negotiate? Are you just out of luck? Doomed to forever make a sub-par salary? Stuck doing more work for less money, thanks to your “wonderful” promotion?
Nope! There’s hope for you yet. Go back to your boss or HR and try a few things:
#1 - Ask Questions
One of my favourite negotiation tactics, especially when I’m faced with a person who’s particularly prickly, is to ask questions. Even if they’re saying that they don’t want to budge on salary, you can often ask a few questions without raising those “Ack! She’s trying to negotiate!” alarm bells for them. It’s a subtle way to wedge the door to negotiation open without them noticing, even as they’re trying to unceremoniously shut it in your face.
Questions allow you to build an understanding of the reasoning, constraints, and logic of the company. That’ll help you either spot a weak spot in their argument and counter it, or begin to build a path to your desired salary in the future.
Here are some questions you can try to start:
"What is the pay band for this role? And where do I sit within it?"
And if you want to get particularly spicy (and you’ve done your research):
"My understanding is that the person who had this job two years ago got paid X. What changed?"
Tip: Don’t forget to pay special attention to anything they say about pay bands. It’s common for folks getting promoted to be brought in at (or very close to) the bottom of the pay band so they have “room to grow” and increase their salary over time, but that means you get the money later instead of now! Check out our amazing video, Progression Lag: The Secret Penalty on Your Pay, for more info on how these kinds of pay band shenanigans hurt your long term pay prospects (and what to do about them!).
#2 - Start a Discussion About How You Can Get to Your Target
Your next step is to pin the salary conversation to some concrete, measurable metrics, skills, or milestones. Biased salary decisions often boil down to someone’s “gut feel” about how your skills stack up, so uncovering the rational (or not-so-rational) arguments behind that can help gently expose their biases and give you (and them!) a way to correct them.
Start the conversation by asking what they’d need to see to give you the pay you’re looking for:
Once they’ve given you their answer, follow it up with a verbal confirmation:
This one-two-punch of questions makes them commit verbally to a plan that gets you to the number you want. This is valuable for a couple of reasons:
Now you just need to demonstrate that you have the things they’re looking for. Depending on what they say, respond with one of:
"Oh amazing! I actually have that skill already. Last year I [example]..."
And follow that up with:
“So, the great news is that I’m doing what you need already. Can we increase the pay to $X?
Or...
"Great! So could we revisit my pay in 3 months? Then, if I'm [demonstrating skill], could we revise my pay?"
And then, when they say yes to that very reasonable request:
"To do [skill/task/project], I'll need [specific support required, like being given a project of a certain level or type, attending a training, additional headcount to complete a project, etc]. How can we make that happen in the next [short timeframe]?"
This conversation is a great little salary negotiating trick to have in your back pocket because it helps you lay out the case for higher pay according to their own criteria, not just yours. That makes it hard for them to later argue that what you bring to the table isn’t enough – they just told you it was enough!
Tip: This “tell me your criteria” trick works great for career development conversations, annual reviews, and promotions too – get them to give you a cheat sheet and then follow it all the way to a new title and five star reviews!
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#3 - Negotiate for Other Stuff
Sometimes, despite using your best WIMDI-approved negotiation tactics, the money you’re looking for just isn’t in the cards. But that doesn’t mean you can’t have a conversation about the value of your skills and how they can recognize them in ways other than base salary.
Get creative and find an alternative solution that comes from another budget line item!
Try some of the following options if they won’t budge on base pay:
Followed by any combination of:
"...can we address this with a change to the equity compensation?"
"...could I have an extra week of paid vacation?" (or other "non-financial benefit" you'd like, like additional flex time, etc)
"...could I get some budget to [take course, hire a coach, etc]?"
Making these extra asks will help you maximize your potential compensation, even if the base pay is lower than you’d like.
Feel free to mix-and-match these add-ons – just make sure to ask for them in order of importance! If extra paid leave is more valuable to you than equity, ask about vacation first and hold the equity question in your back pocket as a deal sweetener or alternative if they say no to your first request.
Tip: If you’re asking for professional development funding, pin your request to something that concretely gives you skills directly related to your new job (vs, for example, attending a conference). Bonus points if it helps you build a skill your boss or HR identified in #2! Use this opportunity to move your skill set towards your next promotion or pay bump.
Why You Need to Make the Scary Ask
It’s challenging when you’re faced with a “take it or leave it” offer. Walking the line between keeping your boss happy, and advocating for yourself can feel fraught at the best of times, but it’s important to push back and ask for what you’re worth.
The benefits of negotiating go beyond just making sure that you’re paid fairly. When you make a choice to accept the first offer or negotiate, you teach your company what you’re worth, what they can expect from you, and what they can get away with for other people. If you stand up and ask for more, you’ll be training them to see you – and the women who come after you – as people who deserve a bigger portion of the pie.
As scary as it can be to open a conversation about your compensation that seems closed, negotiating your offer goes beyond just helping you make more money. It sets the tone for your professional reputation going forward in your new role.
