Let’s talk about money

Asking for a raise is never easy and every one of us hopes that this will happen without us asking specifically for it. In reality, there are many situations in which we have to go and ask for the raise that we want.

The most difficult part for most of us is to express our arguments in a coherent way that will convince our manager. However, bringing the right arguments at the wrong moment will definitely not get us more money at the end of every month. 

Timing – the right moment

To know when it's the right moment we should always consider the internal rules. Is the company giving raises once a year, or after performance appraisals, or after a certain experience accumulated in the company? Knowing what the practices in our company are, we will also know how to choose your moment. If the company is offering raises only once a year, in January, it wouldn't make too much sense to go to your manager with this issue in May, for example. The best time to speak about this is 3-4 months before the moment when the increases are made or before the evaluation period so that the manager will have time to take some actions.

Besides the time of the year, it is also important to choose the right day and moment of the day. It would not be too wise to bring up this subject in an extremely busy day or when you know that our boss has many things on his mind. We need to set a meeting with our boss especially for this purpose. The last thing we want is to discuss with him spontaneously or in a meeting that is completely about something else.

Reasons – arguments reinforced with results

When it comes to arguments, we should take our time and do some homework. Arguments like, I know my colleague is earning more, my expenses have increased or it's been a year since the last increase won't be of much success. Objective arguments are the ones who will give you what you want. More responsibilities, revenue brought to the company, more knowledge for the company, improvement of some systems in the company, extraordinary performance that impacted the results if the company, successful projects are just some examples of arguments that will be taken into consideration by the management.

Plan – always have one

Knowing what we want and what we will do in case of a negative answer is also part of the preparation of our case.  Therefore, we should not go into the discussion without having in mind a reasonable amount of money we want as an increase. Obtaining information on what the market pays will help a lot. In case that we have a negative response, it might be a good idea to ask the manager what do we need to do in order get that raise and when would that be possible. This way we will know how to set our expectations.