Take a look around, the cost of everything is increasing and business taxes are going up at the same time. Something has to give. So that is it? Penny dropped yet…?

It’s you, and your pay. Businesses don’t have the money to give us the pay rises we need to get back in line with inflation. Or worse, there’s a nagging fear of the dreaded ‘R’ word. And that fear of redundancy leads to acceptance of lower pay. I can feel that attitude creeping into myself. And I don’t like it, it saps motivation and kills ambition. So this week’s newsletter is as much for me as it is for you. It aims to flip that attitude of stagnation and acceptance and build a new platform for ambitious salary growth. Even in these tough times.

It’s not the fault of business owners, being a business owner right now is hard. But when you come round to your annual pay review, guess what every business is looking to do, minimise and cut costs. So what are they going to do? Give you the minimum salary increase that they can. Common practice is a flat 2-3% rise. That’s not putting a dent in years of inflation at ~10% and a doubling of most of our costs!

So in the age of dead pay reviews, what can we do? The most important thing I’ve seen and done is take control. If there’s one thing you remember from this email it’s that. Don’t assume you’ll get what you want, you won’t. You have to go and get it. If that sounds hard, keep reading…

Last week I told you about how I negotiated my first raise 5 years ago. After I’d got over the initial anger from the discovery that I was underpaid, I started to think about what I was actually going to do about it. I knew I needed to speak up, but how?

I opened up a document and started writing, splurging a big mess of reasons why I believed I should get a raise. And it was a mess. But I started to clean it up, removing duplicates and consolidating them into 3 clear sections. These are the 3 sections that were the foundation of my £6k pay rise. And I’ve used them again and again to consistently achieve £10k pay rises.

With these 3 sections, I’ve achieved £10k pay rises again and again. If you struggle to fill out the document, good! Now you know where you need to focus your efforts to guarantee success in your next pay review. Don’t have any new responsibilities? Ask for some! Or start doing what needs to be done but nobody else will. Don’t have a strong ROI? Focus your efforts on a project that drives ROI for the business! Paid higher than all your benchmarking? Ask for a promotion instead of a pay rise!

You can download The Salary Case Hack template completely free, just hit the button below and share your best email. Interested?