Healthy Influence – Persuasion Blog

You work hard and you are underpaid, dammit.  You deserve a pay raise and here’s how you get it.

Walk into you boss’s office right now, RIGHT NOW!, and tell you boss, “the PersuasionGuy at Healthy Influence just told me that I work hard AND am underpaid.  He told me to tell you:  Give me a raise!”

Then hold out your hand to collect the big bonus your boss will give you.  And then the boss will say, “And I’m ordering an immediate 50% increase in your pay!”

. . . isn’t that what you really want to read?  You want magic with no heavy lifting in an air conditioned office – not a cubicle, dammit – and no spy software on your work computer so you can surf or search what you want.

Well, as my first Rule of Persuasion states:  There are No Laws of Persuasion, and if there were, Why Would I Tell You?  Thus, if you want to use persuasion to get a pay raise, you’re gonna have to stop looking for a Fairy GodBlogger to wave his Magic Persuasion Wand.  You’re gonna have to work for this.

Ready?

1.  You don’t get pay raises with Cues on the Peripheral Route.  Of course, somebody may get dumb lucky one day by wandering in and catching the Boss in a distracted frame of mind, handing her a little piece of candy, and getting a big pay raise in return (Reciprocity:  When the sources gives you something, give something bigger back in return!).  But, as a regular persuasion strategy, it will fail most of the time.

2.  Remember the Rule:  It’s about the Other Guy, stupid.  When you think about strong Arguments for your pay raise, you usually think about them from your point of view – how hard you work, all the “extra” things you do no one notices, all the times you didn’t say or do what you really wanted to say or do.  But, those Arguments are compelling to you, not necessarily your Boss.  Think like your Boss.  Create Arguments from your Boss’s point of view.

3.  Make sure your Boss is High WATT when you deliver the strong Arguments for your pay raise.  If your Boss is distracted, bored, annoyed, anything except focused upon you and what you are saying, stop.  Say something like, “I appreciate you taking the time to listen with me about this important business decision.”  Or, “We can talk about my work at another time and solve another problem now.”  Or, anything that throws the dimmer switch for your Boss and gets High WATT heat.  Don’t deliver strong Arguments to a Low WATT processor.  It won’t work.

4.  When your Boss considers your strong Arguments for a pay raise, make sure your Boss really thinks about them.  Ask your Boss, “I’ve not missed a day of work this quarter, how does that help our Bottom Line?”  You want your Boss to have that long conversation in the head, thinking on and elaborating upon your strong Arguments.

Get it?

You get a pay raise by delivering strong work performance Arguments to a High WATT boss who then elaborates over those Arguments.

If you don’t want to do this, you can always just stomp into the Boss’s office and declare:  “The PersuasionGuy told me to tell you to GIVE ME A RAISE!”

Wouldn’t it be nice if the world worked this way?

P.S. You might want to compare the persuasion play for pay raises against the plays for getting tips, here and here.  While both situations involve you getting money, the situations are very different and demonstrate the Rule:  All Persuasion Is Local.