SpringRaise Salary Negotiation

Salary Negotiation

ANYONE CAN NEGOTIATE HUGE SALARY INCREASES!
SPRINGRAISE YOUR CAREER

springraise: an extraordinary salary increase

Salary negotiation is one of the main keys to maximizing your career compensation over time. You can’t leave it to chance. You can’t let your boss dictate to you how much you should be paid. Information is power and Springraise Salary Negotiation is here to help you make the highest salary you can—not just now, but over the life of your career. Don’t take a chance, take the lead in your salary negotiations.

Check out the first of our videos from our exclusive Salary Negotiation Series. Here, our Founder, David Williams discusses how he was able to get a double-digit raise in his first negotiation out of college!

There are eight videos in all and they can be found throughout Springraise Salary Negotiation.

Salary Negotiation Letter

Sometimes it’s necessary to write a salary negotiation letter to clarify your position and ask for higher salary. While we at Springraise Salary Negotiation recommend you do as much negotiation as possible in person, over the phone, through a recruiter, or even an HR rep from the company you’re interviewing with–a letter can be a powerful way to justify your request for more money.

If you must write a salary negotiation letter, it must achieve two goals:

1. Justify your request for higher salary

Justification of a higher salary request can be difficult because there are few external sources that a company will consider valid to justify your request. There are some great pieces of information that companies do use including salary surveys. These surveys are sold to companies so they can get a sense of what competitive salaries are at different levels. If you have that report, then you have equal ground.

2. Convey that you’re willing to walk away from the offer

Positioning in negotiation is key. The ultimate power in a salary negotiation is walking away. Companies spend thousands of dollars to get people in the seats to interview. When they like someone, they WANT that person. If you are that person and there’s a credible threat that you’ll walk away, companies tend to negotiate. Let me make this clear:

***It is cheaper for them to increase your salary than it is for them to keep looking for candidates.***

I have hired many people throughout the course of my career and this is generally accepted law, not theory. It’s a secret employers don’t want you to know! So have confidence and don’t be afraid to actually walk away if the salary isn’t right.

$3.99 SALARY NEGOTIATION GUIDE

You went to Starbucks this morning and got a latte, or mocha frap, or some kind of designer drink that takes 20 seconds to say. Did that four bucks make you any money? One penny? My salary negotiation guide, Get Top Dollar!, will make you money throughout your career, and for the same amount as one days’ worth of your designer coffee. The 2 minute video below shows you just one tactic that has made me tens of thousands of extra salary throughout my career. Get Top Dollar! shows you many more and how to make double and even triple digit percent salary increases. I have gotten salary increases of 16%, 35%, 18%, 80%, 51% and 123% (Wow!) throughout my career. I can help you do the same.

Get Top Dollar! Salary Negotiation Guide

Get Top Dollar! gives you COMPLETE examples of where I’ve used my PROVEN methods to get extraordinary salary increases. This is the tiny investment that will pay dividends for the rest of your career. For only less than your daily latte, only $3.99, you will get strategies that you can use time and time again to get top dollar over your entire career!

Still not convinced? I’m pulling out everything to show you how serious I am about helping you get paid.

FREE BONUSES!!!

FREE BONUS #1: Lifetime Membership to SpringRaise.com Private Coaching Club

FREE BONUS #1: REAL Salary Negotiation Letters

That’s right. We’ve included the actual salary negotiation letters that have resulted in thousands of dollars in increased offer salaries from the FREE e-book. Each is from a different situation and shows how to move a negotiation forward so you win.

FREE BONUS #2: Video Coaching Series

It’s better to hear it from the horse’s mouth. Not only do you get the salary sharing network private coaching club, but you also get access to my 9 part SpringRaise Coaching Series. I take you step by step through the situations where I’ve negotiated extraordinary raises. That’s 9 videos with more incredible content! This alone is worth $147, but it’s yours FREE with your purchase.

FREE BONUS #3: Updates and New Versions of Get Top Dollar!

That’s right. Any new content that we add in future versions of this guide, you get FREE. It’s not like college when you had to buy the new edition of each textbook just to line the professor’s pocket with your cash. We won’t do that. And we are constantly adding new content, so this is a real deal!

FREE BONUS #4: My newest product How To Get A Great Job (even in THIS economy)!

It’s a sneak peek at my unreleased guide. This will sell like hotcakes for $47 and it’s yours free. Give it to a friend who isn’t as fortunate to be in salary negotiation mode like you are. We all know people who are unemployed right now with this economic downturn. Help them be just like you by getting the job they want.

RISK FREE GUARANTEE!!!

Can I make this any more of a no-brainer? Yes, I can. This offer is RISK FREE! If you don’t think that Get Top Dollar and all these FREE bonuses puts you on the path to making more money for your hard work within 90 days of purchase, then I will refund you. Period. How can you pass this up?

That’s easily more than $1,000 in value for less than a cup of coffee, $3.99! So what’re you going to do? Let this opportunity pass? Or seize this moment?

Get the money you deserve. Change your life. Now.

Note: After your purchase you will be directed to our instant download page for Get Top Dollar!

No Gimmicks

No gimmicks here. We won’t give you a strategy that merely buys you time in an interview by saying “Hmm…” What is that? Is that going to get you more money? No way. We show you how to go into the interview empowered with information that gives you the real negotiating power – the power to know when an offer is strong or a low-ball.

No Taboo Topics

We discuss topics like your weight and how it affects your career, compensation, salary potential, and attainment. Are you a man or woman? Does that make a difference in how well you can negotiate? No subject matter is taboo here. You need to know what affects your potential in a salary negotiation and we give it to you straight.

Did You Know?

Did you know interviewers aren’t supposed to ask you about your marital status, whether you have children, or any family or personal history of illness in an interview? We show you how to avoid those subjects and the tricks interviewers use to try to get you to divulge. Not only can these stop you from being considered for the job, but even if you get the offer, they can depress your offer below what you should be paid.

Gain Confidence

We also give you the ultimate negotiating confidence – the knowledge of when to walk away from an offer, even if you don’t have another waiting. How many of us would do that when we need a job? Well, if you value your career, you’ll think hard about accepting a substandard offer because you’ll know what your market value is. You’ll know what to accept and when to pass. If a company wants you, they will find a way to get you in the door.

We talk to hiring professionals and reveal secrets on how they “manage human talent”. We talk to expert salary negotiators including telling our own stories so that you can see how to create a “springraise”. It’s all here.

We’re Here For You

No other salary negotiation site offers this much information. Springraise Salary Negotiation is new, progressive, and has the power to change your career. Plus, it’s backed by the world’s first and only salary sharing network, Springraise.com. Find other people just like you and compare your salary progression to theirs. Know where you stand.

It’s Time!

Take control of your salary, your career, and your life with Springraise. Let’s get started by learning some great salary negotiation techniques!

Salary and Bachelor's Degree

I always wonder about articles like this one from the Wall Street Journal’s Career Journal section entitled, The Declining Value of Your College Degree. What are they trying to say? That your college degree isn’t worth getting anymore? Don’t worry, just get your high school diploma, right?

Here’s the reality that is buried deep down in the piece:

To be sure, the average American with a college diploma still earns about 75% more than a worker with a high-school diploma and is less likely to be unemployed.

The reason I think these articles are written is because they are controversial. It’s almost always a ploy to get people to read more rather than a true treatise on the state of compensation. The anecdotal stories don’t necessarily roll up into the experience of everyone.

Springraise is built to answer many of these questions. This is precisely why we collect the education and compensation information that we do. As we scale to collect millions of profiles, we’ll be able to tell you the value of a bachelor’s degree, but YOUR bachelor’s degree. We’ll tell you how much a BA degree from the University of Michigan is worth versus one from Harvard. We’ll tell you how much a person who works in pharma sales should make with a particular background.

The great news? You have the power to make this all possible. Just add your profile to Springraise and immediately you can see how your career progression stacks up to others with our background. The more people we have, the better the data. It’s in your hands.

And by the way, if you are in college right now and read that article, think twice before dropping out.

Average Salary

The average salary is probably one of the most common numbers used in a salary negotiation. Like all averages, it is probably not used because it is the best number, but rather because it is the easiest number to calculate.

The average is figured out by creating some number of buckets of types of people out there and dropping each person into that bucket. The salaries in the bucket are added up and divided by the number of people in that bucket. What most people like about it is that it gives them one number to remember when they are thinking about what a person gets paid. We all know like any other average, there is a lot more to it than that one number. Just like the average price for a gallon of gas across the United States is nothing close to what I paid for gas this morning, the calculated “average salary for you” may be a lot less than what you really should get paid.

There are a few things to consider when thinking about average salaries.

1. There are not that many buckets and there can be a lot of people in them that don’t really compare to your situation. There may be a bucket called “Mechanical Technician with 3 years of experience”. This doesn’t at all consider the range of experiences, education, geography or even industry for the people in that bucket.

2. Average Salaries don’t adequately consider that those salaries are a part of an overall compensation package that may have included bonuses, stock options, healthcare benefits, etc. Your overall situation will likely be different from the averages and you shouldn’t be penalized because of that.

3. Average Salaries can lump together multiple years worth of salaries. This means that “today’s average salary” can be based upon salaries from people that negotiated their salaries 10 years ago. If you just think about what the world was like 10 years ago, you will instantly realize that things are very different so your salary negotiation should also be very different.

But here is the biggest problem – the average salary is for the average person. You are not the average person, you are much better than the average person. The fact that you have made efforts to study and understand the salary negotiation process puts you at the top end of professionals out there. Most people are comfortable sitting back and letting a job tell them what they deserve. You are going to go out there and make sure that you know and get what you deserve.

Salary and Education

Clearly salary and education are related. You got to have an education in this world in order to demand a reasonable salary and guarantee that you maintain a certain standard of living. An undergraduate degree is a must and a masters or better is becoming more and more in demand for the highest paying jobs.

So what should you do? What degree should you pursue? Do I need a masters degree? These questions are key and can be answered looking inside and out. First inside, you have to know what you want to do . At least have an idea what intersests you so that you can try it out and get paid for it. If you don’t like it, at least you have the solid education to fall back on to try something else. That’s the luxury of having that bachelor’s degree.

The same goes for a masters or professional degree. Go for what you want and the money will follow. Some careers are more lucrative than others, but believe me, money doesn’t buy happiness. It does buy great vacations, so if you can bear having a miserable job for those 2-3 weeks of awesome vacation a year, then go for it.

Check out this powerful video on how I was able to turn getting MBA into a 180% compensation increase from what I earned before getting the degree!

Looking outside, there are resources that can help you understand which careers are most suited for you and your goals. The first step is to have a goal. You’ll see that everywhere on this site. After that, it’s about analysis. Get your data together.

We’re biased, but we think Springraise.com is the best resource out there to get longitudinal career salary information. You can match your background and compare your career to others just like you. You can even see salary progressions of people on your career path, but further along, so you can anticipate how much you will make if you stay on the same path.

This type of scenario play is unprecedented and only available at Springraise.com. It’s free to join, of course, so check it out. You’ll find other people like you who want to connect and compare notes. Good luck!

Salary and Gender

Salary and gender go hand-in-hand. We all have heard of the statistics that women get paid less than men for the same job. That needs to change.

But to figure out where we are, we have to keep up on the research. There is a recent article in the Washington Post called “Salary, Gender, and the Social Cost of Haggling“. The point of the article is to enumerate how social dynamics dictate whether men and women should negotiate for raises and higher pay. So who’s better, men or women?

The answer is both. The goal in salary negotiation is often to maximize your compensation given your circumstances.

Men
What the academic researchers in the article suggest is that men often feel more comfortable asking for more money because they correctly believe that they won’t be penalized for doing so. That’s a cultural norm that leads to discrimination in overall compensation. Breaking that won’t be easy for any manager. Awareness is the key.

Women
Women, conversely, have the social recognition that their penalty for asking for more money is much higher than that of men. Therefore, they are maximizing their salaries often by NOT asking for more money. It’s this cultural norm that’s so troublesome. How can we both encourage women to negotiation while not penalizing them from the other side of the table? This double-edge leads to depressed salaries for women.

So what does all this mean to salary negotiation? I believe it indicates that when you can justify a higher starting salary or better raise, then you MUST try. On average, you will get more money (7.4% more according to the article). If you perform up to the value, then no one will think twice about paying your price. Asking for higher compensation without compelling justification can result in greater penalty because the perception of the hiring agent could be that you are driven first by greed rather than the goals of the company. Often companies see that as a red flag, man or woman. Prepare, prepare, prepare.

Salary and Weight

Yes. Salary and weight are connected. This can be a taboo subject. I’ve been reading up on social norms and discrimination lately (don’t ask why), and I came across some very interesting data regarding career ascension and weight. According to Carol Graham, PhD (U. Wisconsin, Brookings Institute), being obese negatively correlates with upward income mobility. This finding directly shows that being too overweight can cost us economically in addition to the physical toll on our bodies. The explanation is that there’s a stigma attached to being obese in high income positions. Therefore, whether it’s discrimination or low expectations of advancement among obese people, carrying too much weight can affect our ability to advance our careers. This is serious when you consider that 60 million people in the United States are considered obese by the CDC (BMI over 30).

I wonder if anyone has completed a study calculating lost lifetime income for every 1 BMI point above 30? I’m sure it’s on some health economist’s desk. That kind of data could begin to stem the tide of epidemic obesity has on the nation. It’s a question of providing the right motivation along with the right support and clearly there aren’t answers.

Over the past 30 years, the obesity rate has jumped so significantly, correlated with the plummeting price of high calorie food, fast food proliferation, and technological advances. You would expect a burgeoning waistline based on this rate of progress. Our jobs are more sedentary. How much time do you spend in front of a computer everyday? Ultimately it’s up to us to stay in shape, but now we have an idea that it can truly “cost” more to gain weight. On that note, I’m going for a run.

Salary Calculator

A Salary Calculator is a very useful tool for going into a negotiation but there are definitely a lot of pro’s and con’s with leaning too heavily on what you learn from a salary calculator.

Pros:

1. Salary Calculators are an easy way to get a quick datapoint on what you should be earning. They can be fast and easy to get access to (often free).

2. Lots of smaller companies that don’t have access to more expensive data or don’t have comparable hires to you will rely heavily on salary calculators. Although you may disagree with the number that they are thinking about, it is vital to know what they are thinking.

Cons:

1. Salary Calculators are based upon survey data in order to figure out the industry averages. Depending upon the depth of the research, the averages can often ignore a lot of the smaller companies. It is much harder to get data on companies with less than 100 employees (they often don’t report their data and the data can be harder to find). This means that salary calculators are not always based upon data that is appropriate for the company that you are talking to.

2. Salary Calculators are usually only based upon titles and years spent at a job. Often companies will inflate or deflate titles to make up for lower or higher salaries. We all know that an assistant manager position at a Fortune 500 company is a lot different from an assistant manager position at a two-year old startup. Salary calculators can lump all of this together and not necessarily give you the information that you need.

3. Salary calculators can be difficult to us in negotiations because there are so many of them out there and other than the summary data, you usually cannot get access to the underlying data or a sense of how accurate it can be. The other person across the table from you could have a different salary calculator based upon a different set of data as well.

You should definitely look for a salary calculator as another data point, but you still need to do the additional homework in order to figure out what benchmarks are most appropriate for your personal situation. Your goal is to walk into a negotiation with appropriate salary information that represents you. With that kind of information, you will have a lot easier time getting what YOU deserve.

Peer Salary

The peer salary question has always been a bit of a taboo subject in the workplace. Just like you wouldn’t ever want to go into a car dealership to negotiate buying a car without knowing the blue book value of the car, you don’t want to walk into a salary negotiation without knowing what your peers are getting paid for doing a similar job. Knowing what your peers make is important because:

1. What is a reasonable amount to ask for? This probably seems pretty obvious. It is probably a lot more difficult to ask for a higher salary than everyone else in your peer group. It also means that if you earn a lot less than everyone else in your peer group, it is almost a no-brainer that you need a salary adjustment…all you would need to do is ask.

2. Some companies will actually pay certain groups within the company more than their counterparts because the culture of the company evolved that way. For example, I have first-hand experience that there are technology companies that will pay a higher salary to employees with technical degrees even if they are working in non-technical areas of the company.

3. On the flipside, you should avoid asking for an amount that is *too* high. In a negotiation, you can blow your credibility if you ask for something that is way off of the scale and give the other person the impression that you are out of touch with the negotiations. Although targeting the right salary sounds like a difficult balancing act, it isn’t that tough if you start with a sense of what your peers make.

4. It is also important to know what your “future peers” make. People that are in the positions where you intend to be in a couple of years can be a great benchmark when you think about where you will be in a couple of years. This is a way for you to estimate where you will be in a few years and help answer the question “Is this what I actually want to do?”

5. Often employers will use the fact that people usually don’t know what their peers make against them. Sometimes in negotiations, manager only know what their direct reports earn. Some managers often pay their direct reports more of less than parallel managers in the company. By knowing what your peers make inside the company, you may actually have more information than your manager. Use this to help support your argument to get paid what YOU deserve.

It may be a little uncomfortable to try to figure out what you peers make, but it can be worth 10’s of thousands of dollars in your negotiation. Going into a negotiation armed with this information will help you maximize your outcome.

Salary Negotiation Tactics

Recently I posted a question on LinkedIn Answers asking what different tactics people have used to negotiate salary. Here are some of the shocking answers:

As I have a tendancy to quit jobs in the middle of recessions with no other job-in hand, my “negotiation” technique is usually a step before begging. Other than that, I make sure during the interview process that they know that I’m open, but give them an idea of what I’m thinking about ($ range). The difficulty is that you don’t really know what the job will entail before hand nor how much interest there is in the job.

OMG, I am horrible at this! I am consistently not getting my due when it comes to salary and packages. I think I am going to sit this blog out, but then totally read up on others’ advice!!!

I’ve heard that one tactic when you’re actually first talking with a potential employer is to make them say a number first. You’re not supposed to even talk numbers until you know they want you (ie. have offered you the position). Once you have that established, and they ask you what you need, you retort with “What do you expect to pay for this role?” or something along those lines. I’ve tried it. I haven’t always been successful with it because I’m just too darn accommodating in these situations.

We weren’t expecting these types of answers! “…negotiation is a step below begging”, “OMG, I am horrible at this!” “…I’m just too darn accommodating…” And there were more like these! People seem to be genuinely afraid to negotiate salary, or don’t have a clue as to how to do it effectively. Well, that’s what we’re here for at springraise.

So I decided to answer this one myself. True story below and a great tactic:

One trick I always used was to time my job searches during the performance management cycle, so when I’d get my raise from my current employer, I could use that number when asked by a new potential employer how much I made. That practice led to extraordinary compensation increases (35% and 51% the two times I used it).

This is a real tactic. If you’re interested in more, go to our Salary Negotiation Series and sign up to hear seven more real-world tactics that can land you more money when you change jobs or even at performance review time. Good luck!

Salary Negotiation Tips

Let’s face it. We all want to get paid the highest amount possible for doing our jobs. The jobs we do help our companies make a lot of money and without employees many of the great products wouldn’t come to market. How many of you feel like you’re adequately paid for the value you provide to your company? I didn’t think so. How then can you earn more money for doing what you’re doing?

1. Get in a hot industry

Easier said than done right? Well you know what the hot industries are , and if you don’t there are websites than can tell you. How do you get into that industry? We all have transferable skills. Map out your experience in what I call an “experience matrix”. Want a surefire way to know if you’re in a slow industry? Figure out if your raise was lower than the national rate of inflation. If you’re an above average employee and your raise was that low, then you’re in a slow industry.

2. Work smarter AND harder

When you work smarter at your job you become highly productive at doing what you have to do….but this frees up time…for pet projects that are risk free and may actually bring value. Doing things differently is what makes you stand out above your peers and bring more value to the company. Most companies actually do reward creativity and dedication.

3. Know your market value

Keeping an eye on what your peers make can let you know if you’re underpaid for your job. The best way to do this is to ask your peers (or use springraise.com, of course!). True, most managers don’t like their employees comparing salary notes, but that’s self serving. It’s a manager’s job to keep payroll as low as possible. It’s your job to get paid as much as possible, and knowing how much people make around you can help you. At my first job out of college after I’d been there a year, I learned that newly hired undergrads were getting paid more than I was-and that’s with the promotion I had just received! I used that knowledge to go to my manager to request more money. And I got it-a 16% raise.

These methods not only work separately, but also in combination. Think about if you’re in a hot industry, you’re outperforming your peers, and you know you could get paid more, then all of those things can work for you to get extraordinary salary increases. I was a management consultant in the mid 90s heyday and had worked smarter and harder than my peers. I also knew that I joined my company making slightly less than the average person at my level. Therefore, I got an 18% raise since I was seen as a top performer. Those kinds of raises only occur in hot industries where profits are strong and companies have to reward top talent in order to keep them happy and not look to jump ship.

To get those high raises, follow these techniques, and combine them when possible. You’ll find your compensation will explode and you’ll attain all of your career goals.

Salary Negotiation Email

Sometimes it’s necessary to write a salary negotiation email to clarify your position and ask for higher salary. While we at Springraise recommend you do as much negotiation as possible in person, over the phone, through a recruiter, or even an HR rep from the company you’re interviewing with–an email can be a powerful way to justify your request for more money.

If you must write a salary increase email, it must achieve two goals:

1. Justify your request for higher salary

2. Convey that you’re willing to walk away from the offer

It is cheaper for them to increase your salary than it is for them to keep looking for candidates.

Give me FREE Salary Negotiation Email Samples!

First Name:

Email:

You’re going to see other sites who propose long five paragraph salary increase emails. Don’t fall into that trap. Your justification can be short and to the point. Note, and this is VERY important: Don’t try to justify your salary increase by using only salary calculators. That will offend the person with whom you’re trying to negotiate. Why? Because salary calculators are unreliable and companies believe they already offered you a competitive package.

Your justification must have more meat to it, including your current salary, and whether you would have to take a pay cut. If you have the salary information for someone at that company at your entry level, then using that would be beneficial. This is extremely important in winning your negotiation.

Also, your justification should also include something that will benefit the company AND your manager directly. Give the manager something to look forward to when hiring you at your negotiated salary. Good luck!

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