DISCLAIMER
I am not making this public to brag or to make anyone feel bad or jealous. Negotiating my salary is just one of many habits I applied over the past decade regularly, so I acquired some experience in what worked and what didn't. Depending on the context, this experience may or may not benefit others. I regard the consequential increase of my salary rather a side effect of my actual overarching self improvement strategy, than the result of merely smart ninja-negotiation tactics. My foremost desire was -and still is- to become the best possible version of myself. But that itself is a topic for another post.
In this series of posts I will share some details of my salary, its development over time and some further specifics that I hold necessary to demonstrate my point. So in case you should feel offended, jealous or bad in any way about gaining insight on that kind of information, this is your opportunity to exit this post here and now and to skip to the next one right away.
Negotiate Regularly And Show Your Motivation
Why should you negotiate your salary regularly? Simple: no matter the outcome, it will signal to you(!) and to others that you are willing and ambitious to move ahead. Motivation means movement. If you are not motivated, you are not moving. If you are moving, your skills, your aspirations, your goals are moving with you. Secondly, with each and every single negotiation, your negotiation skills will improve. Yes, you can read tons of books and watch millenia of tutorials online. These might give you some inspiration. Nevertheless your most essential skills are only carved by steady and repeated execution.
As a consultant I was often asked about my salary. Since I regularly (re)negotiated my contract, a part of the compensation in terms of money paid was always one of the top items open for debate. Within the nine years from 2011 to 2020, I was able to more than double my salary to a fixed five digit monthly figure (in EURO) plus bonus plus benefits. In any of the negotiations along the way, whether within a company or for a potential new role, I always applied the same set of strategies and refined them over time by testing various approaches.
In Whatever You Do: Be A Ninja
The secret to the success of my strategy however, if there is one at all, was my absolute conviction to get as good as I possibly could at whatever I was doing. Also, I had the courage -as well as the curiosity- to find out what my experience and engagement might be worth to others - and just as importantly: what it might not be worth. Although the development of my salary, which I regard only as a fraction of the compensation package for my work, is only one part of the entire story and can hardly convey the entire picture of how I was able to successfully negotiate lucrative contracts, I will share some of my most important salary negotiation strategies.
I will release this series over the next few days and weeks. Here's an outlook to the topics that I intend to touch upon:
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