How to Ask for the Raise Out Loud
By Joel Asante · Career & Business
Much is written about pay negotiation: benchmarks, timing, leverage. It is mostly good and mostly beside the point.
The problem is that people who have done all the preparation still cannot get the sentence out of their mouth, or get it out and then immediately undermine it.
This is a speaking problem, not a strategy problem.
Asking is worth something
The evidence on raises specifically is thin, but there is good evidence on the closest neighbour, the starting salary. Michelle Marks and Crystal Harold surveyed 149 people who had just started new jobs.1 Those who negotiated their starting pay ended up on about $5,000 a year more than those who did not. How they asked mattered too: open, assertive approaches, whether competitive or collaborative, did better than compromising or giving way. And the strongest predictor of not asking at all was disliking risk.
It is a survey, not an experiment, and a starting offer is not a raise. But it points the same way as everything below: the ask itself is a large part of the outcome, and stating your position openly tends to pay better than hedging it. More detail is in the study write-up.
The three failures
The dissolve. The number is stated and then padded into nothing. "I was thinking maybe something around 15%, but obviously I understand if that is not possible right now, and I am really happy here anyway, so..." The ask has been withdrawn in the same breath it was made. Nobody has to say no; you have said it for them.
The apology. "Sorry to bring this up..." You have framed a normal professional conversation as an imposition, and the other person will accept that framing because you offered it.
The flood. Nerves produce volume: eight minutes of justification, most of it weaker than the first point. Long cases are diluted rather than stronger, and they signal that you do not think the strong points are sufficient.
The shape that works
Four parts, in order, short:
1. Name the conversation. "I would like to talk about my compensation." Full stop. Do not embed it in a status update.
2. The case, in three sentences. What changed, what it was worth, what you are now doing that you were not before. Three. Pick the strongest three; a fourth weakens the set.
3. The number. Specific. "I am asking for X." A range tends to get read from its bottom end, and "something around" is a range in disguise.
4. Stop.
A worked example
Say you are a product designer who took over a second product line six months ago. Here is the whole ask:
"I would like to talk about my compensation. Since March I have run design for both the app and the web product, which was two roles last year. The redesign I led on the checkout is the one the team credits for the drop in abandoned baskets. And I now run the weekly design review, which I did not before. I am asking for a salary of X."
Then nothing. Four sentences of case and one of ask, under thirty seconds out loud. Every sentence can be checked, and none apologises.
Part four is the whole thing
The silence after the number is where the conversation is decided, and it is the hardest thing in this entire piece.
It will last a few seconds and it will feel like a minute. Every instinct will tell you to fill it: to soften, to add a caveat, to laugh. Do not.
You have asked a question. It is their turn. Filling the silence takes the turn back and answers your own question, usually downwards.
This is worth rehearsing literally. Say your number out loud to a wall and then stay silent for a slow count of ten. Do it until you can hold it without your face doing anything. It is a strange drill, and it works.
Why your number should come first
If you can, say your number before they say theirs. Adam Galinsky and Thomas Mussweiler found in negotiation experiments that whoever made the first offer tended to get the better outcome, because the opening figure pulled the final one towards it.2 They also found the defence: the other side could weaken that pull by focusing on information that pointed the other way.
For you, that means two things. Choose your figure deliberately, because it will frame the conversation. And if your manager names a number first, do not respond to it straight away. Go back to your own reasons and your own figure, out loud. Anchoring covers the mechanism.
Voice and posture when you ask
Flat, not rising. "I am asking for X?" with an upward inflection turns a position into a request for permission. Land the sentence downward.
Do not shrink. People physically get smaller when asking for money: shoulders in, volume down, eye contact away. Keep the same volume as the rest of the conversation, and the same posture.
Do not negotiate against yourself. If the response is a pause or a neutral noise, it is a pause and nothing more. Adding "but I am flexible" into it is conceding to nobody.
Common mistakes
Asking in a corridor. Book the conversation. A raise mentioned in passing is easy to answer in passing.
Arguing from need. Rent and bills are real, and they are not the employer's reason to pay more. Argue from the work.
If the answer is no
Have this ready, because it is common and the unprepared response is to accept and leave.
"Understood. What would need to be true for this to be a yes in six months?"
This is the sentence that converts a rejection into information. Either you get concrete criteria, which are useful and give you a date to return on, or you get vagueness, which is also useful, because it tells you the answer is structural and you now know something important about your situation.
A drill for the night before
Say the four parts out loud, standing, three times. Time it; it should be under a minute. On the third run, hold the silence after the number for a count of ten, and then say the "what would need to be true" sentence as if the answer had been no.
References
- Marks, M., & Harold, C. (2011). Who asks and who receives in salary negotiation. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 32(3), 371–394. https://doi.org/10.1002/job.671
- Galinsky, A. D., & Mussweiler, T. (2001). First offers as anchors: the role of perspective-taking and negotiator focus. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81(4), 657–669. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.81.4.657