Competing Job Offers

The very best way to ask for a raise at a job is to be able to factually tell your boss.

I have just received an offer from another company and they have offered me x salary or 20 or 30 percent more.

I like our company.

I’d like to stay here.

Can you match this offer.

I’m not asking you to double my salary but if you can match the offer I will gladly stay.

That is a powerful powerful message.

Now I’m not suggesting you make this up.

Bosses can often have a goods like most people have a sense when people are lying to them and sometimes it’s easy to check out the more specific you can be the better.

Unless you feel like your boss’s relationship with that other organization is so strong that he could or she could call them up and get your offer rescinded.

And that doesn’t happen very often.

Be specific.

Now you can’t do this unless you are putting out feelers occasionally talking to headhunters occasionally circulating a resume.

Most people don’t like to do that.

They are complacent in their job.

But if you can get another job offer now you’ve got competition for your services you have created a marketplace.

Because here’s the thing about bonuses.

It’s very easy just to tell an employee who wants a raise.

You know now’s not a good time.

Let’s talk about it again next quarter.

It’s always easier.

Again no matter how profitable the organization is no matter how much your boss respects you likes you and wants to keep you the status quo is always going to be the easiest thing now and that’s why they would say let’s talk about your raise later next month next quarter.

But this also works in your favor.

If you have another job offer because of that boss is all of a sudden thinking.

If Smithers has to leave I’ve got to start a whole job search.

I’ve gotta talk to recruiters I’m going to have to interview people.

It’s gonna be during my vacation now.

Guess what the status quo is the status quo is trying to keep you there.

It is costly for organizations to have to hire new people and recruit new people and let them and interview them and fly them in depending on where you are in your career and the size and scope of the job.

So if your boss does like you and you are being perceived as doing a good job then so much of what we’re talking about here today is predicated on those two things then your boss now has ammunition.

He or she needs to go to his boss to justify giving you the race because your boss can say to his boss you know I don’t like it but we’re gonna lose this Smithers guy because he’s got a better job offer for one hundred thousand at Microsoft.

And truth be told I don’t really want to give him a raise until next year but it would take a six months to find somebody else.

It would cost us fifty thousand dollars in time and energy and headhunter fees.

Let’s just give him another twenty thousand that’s how that or that whole conversation could go in your favor.

So if you are really aggressive and quite serious about getting a job raise there’s nothing better than having competing offers.

Show your organization that you are in demand.

This is a marketplace.

I mean your name.

You and I may quibble with it but there is a reason why top football coaches even at the college level make 6 million dollars a year because people are bidding for those services.

They value those services and they’re willing to pay for those services.

There’s there’s a marketplace for football coaches who actually win on a consistent basis.

If there’s something you’re doing in your workplace and your job where you are winning however that’s defined in your industry.

Then you only help yourself in terms of your compensation short term and long term.

By letting the marketplace know of your services and the way to do that is sometimes by circulating and getting competing offers.

Now if you talk to headhunters or you go on a few other interviews and you don’t get any nibbles and headhunters as well.

The industry is really tight.

You got a job keep it.

You may have to go back to one of our earlier lessons on timing and realize now might not be the best timing so all of these factors feed in on each other but nothing I repeat nothing is better for getting yourself a raise than already having another offer for that raise.

Now your boss Hey congratulations.

That’s good.

We can’t match it.

Hope you enjoy your new job.

You have to be prepared for that outcome because you just never know all the dynamics going on with your organization your overall profits may be going up your overall revenues may be going up but your particular department could have just been told you’ve got to cut expenses by 15 percent.

You have to cut headcount.

That does happen even within successful profitable companies.

So your boss might have been looking for a way of getting rid of headcount may have even been looking for a way of getting rid of you if you already have another job with the raise you wanted then you’re in excellent shape.

So circulate with people within your professional community.

Put feelers out that return recruiters calls meet with people if they want to talk about jobs or just to talk about the industry.

All of these things will play and to strengthen your hand when it comes time to ask for a raise and ideally you already have one or even more offers on the table do that and it’s going to be much much harder for your boss to say no to your raise request.