Episode 8: How to negotiate a higher salary (promotions or internal gigs)

👋 Yo! Welcome to the next episode of How to negotiate where you learn how to grow your career and income with better negotiation strategy in less than 5 minutes. 

📣 Offer for you

Had some incredible conversations over the last 2 weeks, so opening up my calendar again. For anyone who wants a 1-1 consultation on negotiating salary for new job offers, I’m opening up 5 free sessions this month. We can go over your specific situation and talk through best way to maximize salary. You can also reply here with your context and we can work async.

In the last 6 years, I’ve doubled my salary twice and helped dozens of others do the same.

Last week we ended up going deep on how to negotiate salary for internal gigs (promotions / scope change). Below I recap the learnings from our conversation:

💰️ How to negotiate your salary

Your ideas need to be based on objective arguments not subjective — i.e. less around what you deserve and more around a fair value exchange.

Two mistakes folks make around salary are a) basing their arguments solely on inputs (e.g. I spent x time or I have more projects/work therefore I should get paid more) or b) making their arguments based on emotions rather than facts (I work harder therefore I should be paid more).

These stats fill me with rage and are exactly why I decided to start this newsletter.

So there is absolutely no doubt that you absolutely do deserve more. My point here though while you do deserve more there are more effective ways to make an argument for a higher salary.

💎 What you need to know beforehand

1. What is the market value for your role / experience?

2. What’s the % change for promotion? (5%, 10%, 15% etc.)

3. What level is your new title mapped to?

4. How does location influence?

5. What experiences separate low end from high end?

These are not the only things you need but this is the minimum to be educated on. Beyond this, what would help is a very clear understanding of how your role impacts the business.

That means an easily understood line from your work to revenue for the company — saving money, helping get more money, or helping lose less money. I’m confident any role in the company can tie back their work to revenue (future episode). In the meantime, if you’re having trouble with this reach out.

1. What is the market value for your role / experience?

If you haven’t already do some research on what you make vs. your peers (your team, friends in similar roles in same location, survey data online). Make sure you compare apples to apples ➡️ e.g. a startup with 100 employees will not have the same compensation as a 10,000 person public company nor will a 2,000 person company rapidly growing even if the title seems similar.

2. What’s the % change for promotion? (5%, 10%, 15%, etc.)

Typically for promotions within a company the salary bump is predefined by percentage. So while you may have done some math to say you want $10,000 or $25,000 or whatever amount, you need to convert it to a salary bump relative to your level. Every title will have an associated band and they create percentage jumps based on that. ➡️ e.g. entry level to senior could be a 5% bump, senior to director 10% and so on.

3. What level is your new title mapped to?

Once companies mature they assign titles to levels similar to college classes e.g. 300 level courses are for first years ➡️ L3 could be the entry level role, L4 for senior, and so on.

If you are currently negotiating because your scope expanded or you are applying or a new role, you need to ask what level this title is mapped to at the organization (every organization could be different here so get a few datapoints).

4. How does location influence?

As companies mature (specifically the HR function), they will also mature compensation process. They will begin purchasing benchmark data for companies in similar size to you what they are paying to make sure they are competitive. As that process evolves location may or may not play a factor. ➡️ e.g. they may pay based on city tiers (tier 1 = SF, NYC, etc. tier 2 = Austin, Denver, etc, and tier 3 being anywhere else).

Global companies become even more complex. TLDR - ask your HR team how location plays a role today (or read through job descriptions on your website to see the latest guidance).

5. What experiences separate low end from high end?

And finally, the money question I covered in salary negotiation (new gigs) — “what experiences or skills separate people from the high end of the salary band to the low end?” This will help you understand what inputs the HR team will be using to place you in a band and now you can tailor all of your talk tracks to showcase your expertise in these skills and experiences specifically to command the highest bands.

If you need any help applying these concepts, feel free to reply here and we can talk specifics. If it would be helpful to read my step by step script on negotiating salary respond ‘2x my salary’.

I can help with:

• researching salary benchmarks for your role/title/location (north star)

• knowing when to drop your anchor (what exactly to say)

• figuring out whether an offer is a good deal or not

• valuing the equity package

As always, feedback is a gift and I welcome any/all feedback on this newsletter - good or bad. See ya next week 👋 

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📆 Looking to connect? Find me on LinkedIn or grab some time on my cal here.

✨ Special thank you to Gigi Marquez who suggested I start this newsletter 🙏