What really leads to salary growth? This week, I gave myself the space I needed to completely step back and think about it. I had a lightbulb moment. I’d been too fixated on negotiation alone as the key to success. Yes, negotiation is absolutely key for salary growth, but it’s not the only thing, I realised there are 2 more ingredients that go hand in hand with it. I’ll explain…

About 5 years ago, I negotiated my first raise for £6k. That was a huge moment of elation for me, and it led me to my absolute faith in negotiation as the key to salary growth. That hasn’t changed. And there’s enough in negotiation alone to fill 100 newsletter (look out for next week for our first dive into negotiation). But what I realised this week was the deeper story behind that raise, which started about 1 year prior.

I’d just come off the back of multiple failed attempts at getting rich quickly. I’d tried stocks, crypto, and a bunch of other random rubbish (I can save you some time, it doesn’t work!). I eventually gave up on scheming and came around to a new way forward. I was going to start applying myself at work, and I was going to do the best job I possibly could. So that’s what I did. I learnt what great looked like for my role, in the eyes of my manager and the business. Then I worked hard to hit all of those markers. This is the first step to transformational salary growth, Perform.

I became great at my role, but that wasn’t enough, I needed a stronger foundation before starting negotiations for a raise. My manager needed to know that I was ambitious, that I wanted more responsibility, and that I had the potential to achieve my ambitions. So I told her what I wanted clearly and regularly, more money and a promotion. Then, I showed my potential by improving my performance past where it needed to be for my role, I proactively identified problems then solved them, and I looked for opportunities to expand my role with more responsibility in areas that others were neglecting. I call this step, Develop.

Now reflecting, I realise that these 2 steps were absolutely critical to my successful negotiation. Strong performance and high potential are exactly what every business is looking for, and they gave me an incredibly strong foundation to negotiate from. All I had to do next was turn these steps into a great business case, and it should be a no brainer from there! This is the final step, Negotiate.

I tried applying it to my role, and I can see exactly where my gap is right now: I tried negotiating a promotion to Director but I didn’t get it. Now I can clearly see that my performance needs to show that I’m at that level already, before I can take a bulletproof case to my boss, so that’s where I’m focussing my efforts. Try it yourself:

So that’s the simple 3 step framework that anyone can use to grow their salary, or to figure out why they’re stuck… And when I looked back over my career, I figured out that I can attribute £93,704 in salary to this framework over the last 5 years. And counting!

Now you might be thinking: How do I improve my performance? How do I show my potential? How do I negotiate a raise? How do I grow my salary?

If those are the questions on your mind, The Salary Boost Newsletter is the answer. Each week we’ll improve together as we drill down into the deeper levels within the Perform -> Develop -> Negotiate framework, whatever I’m focussed on that week!