Real Raise

 Who’s Giving You A Raise?

Kathy:
Hello and welcome back! I’m Kathy Dailey, here with David Hubbard.In our last lesson, we discussed what to do to get your employer to want to give you a raise. The next step in our simple and easy process is to pin down exactly who will be involved in the raise process, and how the raise process works in your company.

David will also address a little bit about negotiation tactics since that will help you understand why we’re doing some of the research that we’re doing.
David:
Going back to concepts from earlier lessons you will remember our concept of ‘They have to want to give you a raise’. We need to find out who the they is in ‘They have to want to give you a raise’.

Who are they?

Who will be involved? Who are the key decision makers? Who are the people that have to rubber stamp or sign off on you raise?

We want to identify these people because they are the ones that you are going to want to align with in order to get a raise.

And what is the process that the company goes through? I am not referring to the normal annual review / annual increase process. That would be the way your competitors try for raises. I want you to find out the process for ‘special circumstances’.

Remember, real raises are very rarely given out at company initiated periodic reviews. They come up as special circumstances where companies take advantage of special situations, like you wanting a raise or a promotion.

So, some of you are thinking: ‘I work for a tiny company. There are just two of us. In my case, it is a no brainer to figure out who is involved.’

If you work for a small company, it may very well be that there will be only one person involved. That makes it easy for you on this lesson. It could be that your boss is the owner and makes all the decisions.

You might even be thinking you don’t have to listen to the rest of this. I want you to listen anyway. Here’s why. I’ve heard from a lot of people who thought their boss would be the only one in on the decision.

However, when the critical moment came around, they heard something that went like this. ‘You are making an excellent case for a raise and I am giving it my full attention. I’ll get back to you after I talk to my _____fill in the blank___. Accountant, attorney, wife, board of directors. So, if you can find out who they’ll have to talk to ahead of time, your job is going to be that much easier.
Kathy:
Another reason to listen to the rest of this lesson is that, chances are, at some point in your career, you will have multiple people involved, just like the rest of us.

Here’s a common scenario: you have a boss. And, your boss has a boss.

It could be that your boss has most of the authority, makes the decisions on things like raises and runs the decision by her boss for final review. Or maybe the authority lies with your bosses’ boss. You boss gathers information, makes recommendations, etc. and his/ her boss makes the decision. Or sometimes the human resources department is involved. Or there is some other group involved in all salary decisions.

What is up with all this bureaucracy and red tape, when all you want is a competitive salary?

That is a great question.

Quite simply, you are up against a brilliant, systemized negotiation ploy. I say it is systemized because the company has thought it through and set it up ahead of time. They have anticipated in advance that your manager might want to give you a raise and they have create a series of policies and practices to trip you up.
David:
The negotiation ploy they are using is to have the decision making and approval authority spread out among 2 or more people. You have probably used yourself in the past. It is the same ploy you should use before making any major purchase like a car or a house.

It goes like this: ‘Gee, it sounds like a good idea to me but I need to check with my __spouse___, kids, parents, whatever…

I am pointing out what they are doing because I want to make a couple of points.

When you run into roadblocks like this, you have 2 choices. You can be frustrated and annoyed or you can learn.

What can we learn from companies that do this?

That they are organized and prepared ahead of time. The company has already anticipated your behavior and your boss’s behavior - that you will want a raise and your boss will want to give you one.

After anticipating your actions, they came up with a nice easy strategy and a method of dealing with it. And that simple negotiating technique is brutally effective. I don’t even want to think about how devastating it has been to your competition.

It frequently gets executed like this:

You get all prepared for convincing your boss that she /he should give you a raise. You set up a conference and present your case. You have documentation and it looks good.

Your boss listens attentively and agrees with you on most points.

Your spirits soar, you are elated. It’s working! Your boss wants to give you a raise. You won.

One small technical detail needs to be ironed out. It just needs approval by ____ vp, director, hr, etc.

Time goes by; it’s still in approval. You don’t want to rock the boat after your big win. You don’t want to make waves.

Finally, word comes back that ‘they’ can’t give you the raise because ________ it’s not in the budget, it wouldn’t be fair to others, blah, blah, blah…

And of course, your boss sure is sorry and everyone is sure the company will make it up to you next year and they appreciate your patience, etc.

So, in this course we don’t have time to go into all the negotiation tactics. But there is only a finite number of them. If you take the time to prepare, you can be ready with the counter-strategies.

But, I strayed from my topic.

How will you find out who will be involved in your raise decision? Ask.

Ask others who have gotten raises and promotions in the past.

Ask co-workers - carefully.

Ask your boss’s peers - carefully.

Ask Human Resources - again, carefully.

Take the answers you get with a grain of salt. Depending on who you ask, and how you ask, you will get some very biased answers. You will get some uninformed answers. You may even get made up answers. But, you will get some accurate information you can use to be prepared.
Kathy:
Ok, after you find out who is involved, what do you do with that information?

The next step is to find out what might be valuable to them and make sure you are in alignment with that. Remember when we talked about creating value a few lessons ago?

In a perfect world we would look at creating value for our companies and expect our companies to reward us. That doesn’t work. Who is to say what is valuable to the company? And besides, companies don’t give raises people do.

We can do the next best thing. We can do things that are perceived as valuable by the people who can give us raises. But we need to find out what those things are.

So find out what would be seen as valuable. If your boss is looking for a promotion, help him get it. You could be the one to fill his spot.

But don’t just assume. What is valuable to you might not be valuable to them.

If your boss wants to stay put in his position a few more years until retirement and there you are trying to go for your boss’s postion, you are not creating perceived value.

Percieved threat maybe.

Find out as much as you can about the various agendas of all the key people involved in your raise.

How do you find out? Ask. Carefully, discretely, tactfully. Be sensitive.
David:
While you are conducting this research, find out as mush as you can about the ‘special circumstances’ raise procedure. Quiz people who have left the company.

Go out for drinks after work and solicit stories of raises and promotions.

Ask about their experiences outside the company and see where the conversation goes if you ask questions like, ‘Do you think it’s easier to get a raise here than it was with your last company?’

Listen for what negotiating ploys the company uses. Take notes - afterwards when you are by yourself.

Gather all the information you can. Every bit helps.

Are raises given only when you get an offer elsewhere? Are raises never given if you get an offer elsewhere? This is important to know.

Just like in the other lessons, we have:

(you guessed it)

An excersise.

If you get on the website realraise.com/studyguides you can pick up a pdf file for this lesson.

It is really simple. There is one page where you can write down everyone that might be involved in your raise. Then there’s another page where you can fill in their agendas that you can help them with or at least support in some way.

Print this out, fill it in and add it to you course notebook.
Kathy:
Well, we’ve wrapped up another lesson. Be sure to go to realraise.com/studyguides and download and print the companion pdf file for this lesson. As always, listen often to the lessons, and we look forward to joining you again soon!