The mistake when negotiating a salary increase that will leave you another year as you were

For the majority, the best way to improve your domestic economy is to raise your salary. But we make a series of negotiating mistakes that will leave us, for another year, in the same place and with inflation eating our toast.

Therefore, today we are going to see the main error negotiating a salary, as well as other failures that will make us stay in the same place and, on top of that, more burnt out, because we will think that we are not properly valued.

First of all, let’s lay the foundations

Actually, The most common mistake when negotiating a salary is that we don’t even consider negotiating it on most occasions. We assume that it is the company that sets the tone in accordance with its internal rules and that these rule without the possibility of being altered.

But it is not so and the old proverb that in this life solo you will get what you are able to negotiate it’s true.

For this reason, most do not get a salary increase commensurate with their good work, because they do not even consider having room for negotiation. Obviously, 99% of companies, whose goal is to maximize profitability, they are not going to compensate us more on their own initiative.

It’s like the old joke from my dad where a guy complains every night in his prayers that he never wins the lottery, until God, sick of hearing him, says, “Could you at least buy a ticket?” Here is the same we’re not going to get a raise if we don’t negotiate it. They will give us the CPI every beginning of the year (hopefully) and we will still have to say thank you.

Clarified this, which is what actually prevents many salary increases, let’s move on to the important thing.

The biggest mistake when negotiating a salary increase

This ruling is not correctly balancing the rational and emotional aspects that influence a salary increase, before going to the negotiation.

Yes, it seems like one of those complex sentences that doesn’t say anything, but once I explain it, it will be perfectly understood.

Most negotiations, and as with many battles of all kinds, they are not earned in the “during”, but in the preparation phase. Not carrying out this adequate preparation is the main failure and this requires knowing that the salary increase will be made for both emotional and logical reasonsthat we should have worked before to ask for one more penny for our work.

• emotional in the sense that, as we saw when we talked about advice to ascend that was controversial, the positive impression we leave on the evaluator counts more, than the work done itself.
• rational in the sense that, even when emotion outweighs reason, the latter serves to justify the former, thus there must be objective reasons for that increase.

This means that We must be good at what we do or we can forget that they raise our salary.

If we spend the day pushing pencils with our fingers or holding the coffee machine, we will hardly add zeros to the payroll. This doesn’t necessarily happen because we’re a bunch at work, but because we will not have bargaining powerthat it is important to understand how it works and how it is acquired.

In all negotiations, and salary is no exception, has more power who needs the other less. If you are replaceable by anyone who passes by on the street and knows how to lean on the coffee shop, the company is the one that needs you the least. But if you are the only one who can crack the most important Excel or the one who keeps the stock running like a swiss watch it is the company that needs you and you have rational arguments that justify the increase.

So, to avoid the main mistake when negotiating our salary we must:

• Strengthen the emotional part beforehand, establishing friendly relations with whoever determines that salary increase. Recall the words of Stanford professor Jeffrey Pfeffer in those controversial promotion tips he talked about earlier: “The biggest mistake most people don’t make in their careers is believing that just doing a good job is enough.”
• Strengthen the rational part beforehand, making ourselves as essential as we can and using the “ultimate option”: always be open to changing jobs and actively search for it.

For reasons that are irrelevant now, in most cases workers are much more loyal to their companies than companies to their workers. That’s why most stop looking for a job as soon as they get a decent position. If we want more salary, this is a mistake for a simple reason:

Much of salary increases are produced to prevent an important worker from leaving the company. Just like your phone company doesn’t offer you anything until you leave with others, the company that hires you usually behaves in the same way.

There is no greater lever of pressure than another job and that is the situation where we will get more raises.

Once you understand what proper preparation consists of, and that this is the most important phase of the negotiation, let’s see more common mistakes when agreeing salaries.

Other mistakes we make negotiating salary

Terri R. Kurtzberg is a professor of business and management at the Rutgers Business School. Much of her career has been spent investigating these issues of negotiation, salaries, promotions and so on.

Many of the conclusions in his investigations are collected in a not very well-known book that is already a few years old, The Essentials of Job Negotiations. However, still highly recommended for the subject What are we talking about today?

And the most repeated failures that he has seen in his studies have been these:

Lack of preparation and general knowledge about the company and the negotiator

I am not talking about preparation in what we have seen (which is also), but in the rest of the important things that influence that salary increase, such as: the negotiating style of the person you will “face”, the needs of said company, the salaries that are handledetc.

Sending mixed signals during the negotiation

Many believe that, since a negotiation is won by whoever needs the other least, the premise is to remain cold as if we didn’t care about the position or the promotion. big mistake.

Here we are in a sales situation (you are selling the idea that it is positive to raise your salary), therefore, Enthusiasm or interest in the job and the company are key.

If they see that you don’t have it, they won’t raise your salary or, if you’re too essential because you’ve worked for rational reasons, but not emotional ones and you seem like a simple mercenary, It will be the company that will prepare the mowing of the grass under your feet. She will start looking at candidates to replace you, because she has a risk that makes her vulnerable: a person who does a crucial job, but who seems not to care about the business.

Giving too much information too soon

Do not close yourself to a figure and remember the greatest advice that we have given right here so as not to catch your fingers in monetary terms with something: if it is your turn to move a piece and throw figures first, throw an interval, not a specific number.

That way, there will be room for manoeuvre.

Asking too much just to “see what happens”

Yes, you have to aspire to the moon and the stars, but if you throw something unreal, the company not only wants to see you as a worker, but as a colleague that collaborates for a common purpose.

Do not go too far or the company will not look at you well and you will be losing points in the emotional part of the process (the most important, after all).

The antidote, again, is prior research and preparation, so as not to throw nonsense out of the blue, so that the emotional part is mortgaged.

Focusing too much on numbers and the short term

Compensation doesn’t have to be just monetary, and you may be able to forego part of your salary in exchange for other advantages, such as time, flexibility, or variable goals.

In the same way, you have to look at the long term and maybe give up a little now, in exchange for a better future.

Either way, the ideal is to have everything in writingbecause the paper weighs more than the words.

To lie

Negotiations are like poker and lying a bluff that does not usually go well. If you say you have another position waiting, it had better be so. If you state reasons for the rise, let them be true.

Any lie in a negotiation is discovered quicklyif not today, soon, so be careful.

As we can see, the main mistake when negotiating a salary is that the essential mechanisms of the process are not understood and we do not adequately prepare for them. In this previous phase is where the negotiation is won or lost and, with these tips, we will avoid falling into the main mistakes that the majority make.