📈 Asking for a pay rise: checklist

This is about preparation, not a script to recite. Two things carry the conversation: what's changed since your last review, and what you're actually asking for.

18 items

1. The market rate for your role, from two or three sourcesA recruiter who knows the field, a salary survey, or people in similar roles who'll actually tell you. One source is an anecdote.
2. A list of what changed since your last reviewScope, responsibility, results — not effort. Working hard is not the argument; doing more, or doing it better, is.
3. Three achievements with numbers against themRevenue, savings, time, headcount. Vague impact is the easiest part of the ask to dismiss.
4. The actual number you're asking for, decided in advanceA range invites the bottom of it. Pick a number and a fallback, and know both before you're in the room.
5. Your manager's constraints worked out in advance
6. When the pay round or budget cycle runs
7. Whether they can approve it alone or need to ask up
8. The right moment chosen, not just any TuesdayAfter a result has landed, not during a reorganisation or a bad quarter. Timing does half the persuading.
9. A meeting booked specifically for this, not squeezed into a one-to-oneA named agenda item signals you're serious and gives them time to prepare an answer rather than a stall.
10. The case written down, even if you don't read from itWriting it forces the vague feeling of deserving more into specific sentences you can actually say.
11. A calm opening line rehearsed once"I want to talk about my pay, based on what's changed this year" says the whole thing in one sentence.
12. Ready for a straight no, and what you'll ask in return
13. What would need to be true for this to happen?
14. A written note of what was said, sent afterwards
15. A non-pay alternative in your back pocketTitle, equity, training budget, or a defined date to revisit. Not everything valuable arrives as salary.
16. Your notice period and other options quietly checked beforehandNot as a threat to use — as your own honest sense of what you'd do if the answer is no.
17. Written confirmation of whatever is agreedA verbal yes that never shows up in a contract or a payslip has a way of quietly not happening.
18. A date set for a follow-up if the answer is "not now""Not now" without a date attached usually means never. Pin it to a month, not a season.