Posted by Dave Lorenzo - Business Coach

Carnival of Career Intensity – Post Two

Steve Faber presents How to Get A Raise – 4 ways to Make Sure Your Boss Says “Yes” posted at Debt Free.

There are three legs in your personal financial triangle you can use to get debt free; 1 - Make more money, 2 - Reduce your expenses, 3 - leverage your existing resources to do more with what you’ve already got. In order to improve your personal finance picture and get to debt freedom, you can use any combination of the three. Making more money is nice because you can use #3, leverage, to increase its effect even further.

Many people don’t get as many raises as they should, either because they never actually ask for one, or because they don’t do what they should to make sure their boss says “Yes!” when they do ask. Here are 4 things you can do to make sure you’ll get that “Yes” when you go after your pay raise.

Be careful about using another job offer as leverage. If you plan on taking the other job anyway, fine, take the job. If however, you’d really rather stay put, you should be very tactful when you present the fact that you’ve got a better offer, and you’d like your firm to match it.

1 – Have all your ducks in a row. If you want to get a raise, you need to be ready. Have all the reasons why you deserve a raise ready to present to your boss, in a clearly organized fashion. Not only will the reasons support your pay raise, but the fact you are so organized and actually have your supporting documentation will be a reason in itself for your boss to give you that raise.

2 – Think about it from your boss’s point of view. If you were your employer, what would it take to make you say “yes” to your pay raise? This is vitally important. Business owners, understandably, tend to think about things from a business perspective. They value high quality employees and don’t want to lose them. Looking at the question from your bosses point of view will help you think about why they should say “yes”, and what you can do to help them say it.

3 – Increase your value. Do what ever you can to increase your value to your company. This will actually take a bit of planning and groundwork. Think about your job functions and how you can do them more efficiently. You may have suggestions on how to improve your job’s process or your company’s overall efficiency. Additional training will almost always be viewed as a plus, especially if you undertake it on your own time and it directly benefits your job. If you’re in a sales position, remember that you are directly impacting your company’s bottom line. The more you bring in, the better the firm’s revenue, and ultimately yours. If you are compensated with a commission, obviously increasing your sales will increase your income. Increasing your value doesn’t mean working your fingers to the bone with endless hours of unpaid overtime, however.

4 – Propose a Different Pay Structure – Maybe you would be better compensated if you had performance bonuses or some other compensation structure that rewarded you commensurate with the value added you gave to the company. It happens in pro sports all the time. Players will be incentivized for hitting certain performance targets. An extra $50,000 for every touchdown over 15 per season, or $125,000 for each sack past 5 on the season. It’s normal in business for the same thing to be negotiated as part of a compensation package, and perhaps it would work for you too. A bonus structure is a win-win for all concerned. It gives the employee a chance to achieve greater compensation, and it gives the employer a chance to compensate the employee only for quantifiable value increases.

You could also look at getting unconventional compensation in lieu of just money. These are great in many cases, because they allow your employer to make use of underutilized resources, and you to benefit from them. Maybe you could get a company car or use your firms recreational property a few times a year. The possibilities here are endless, but vary tremendously depending upon your company.

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1. […] Evelyn Jabri wrote an interesting post today onHere’s a quick excerptCarnival of Career Intensity – Post Two. Steve Faber presents How to Get A Raise – 4 ways to Make Sure Your Boss Says “Yes” posted at Debt Free. There are three legs in your personal financial triangle you can use to get debt free; … […]

   Pingback by change » Ask for a Raise and Get the Boss to Say “Yes”. — April 1, 2007 @ 06:38

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