How to Negotiate Your Salary So Everybody Wins

Negotiation, like all communication, is a skill and an art form. There are ways to go into a salary negotiation that will help your manager be on your side and ways that will create tension.

The more prepared you are, the better the conversation usually goes.

Here are my top tips from what I've seen work in multiple client scenarios (and also from my experience as a people leader at LinkedIn ):

1. The best time to prepare for a salary conversation is six months before. Understand your performance compared to your peers and if you're performing at a level above your current role or just meeting expectations. If you're just meeting expectations, then you have six months to improve your performance. Do this before you have the salary conversation. Do not go into a salary negotiation if you're underperforming or only meeting expectations. It likely won't end well and will diminish your reputation with your manager.

2. Benchmark salary data with information from Seek, LinkedIn, and surveys from recruitment agencies. If you can't find this information, contact agency recruiters

3. Show your contributions over the past six to twelve months and how you're overperforming based on the expectations of your current role

4. Get letters of recommendation from cross-functional partners and clients (no one ever does this and it will go a long way. This will show how you've been performing at a higher level)

5. If your business says no, are there other options? A chance to ask for more stock options? Can the business pay for a coach to improve your performance even more?

6. Practice the talk track a few times before. If you get nervous, send an email before saying you'd like to talk about salary expectations.

Here is an example of an email template you could use while approaching your manager. I have seen this outline work successfully with multiple clients.

Hi (MANAGER NAME),

Good to speak yesterday and I've loved working in (CURRENT ROLE).

On reflection, I feel the salary of CURRENT SALARY OTE is a bit low compared to the market rate. I know salary conversations are coming up, so I wanted to summarise below what I will bring to the role.

Here are some things I've worked on this past year:

Get very specific and detailed here. What are the outcomes of your accomplishments and how have they helped the team/company? It can't be examples already expected of you in your role.

1. Example 1

2. Example 2

3. Example 3

Results

1. Example: I finished FY22 on 138%

2. Example: I delivered X amount of projects in a timeline of X

Market rate 

Below is market rate of CURRENT ROLE in ANZ from $OTE according to Tech Recruitment Specialist AGENCY - I have friends who are CURRENT ROLE at COMPETITOR AND COMPETITOR who are on $X OTE.

List more ways you are going above and beyond in current projects.

I am happy to discuss this in person but I thought it would be easier to put in an email for you to review first. I've also attached letters of recommendation from my cross-functional partners and clients.

My expectation is $OTE. I am very appreciative of the opportunity and looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Let me know if you would like to discuss this evening or on Monday briefly.

Have a good weekend.

HK

In this template, you are showing that you have gone above and beyond, you're coming prepared with industry data, and you are appreciated by cross-functionals and clients.