The Salary Script
What to say when the offer comes, when you want a raise, and when you have another offer: three scripts with the blanks marked, and the sentences to avoid. Part of The Humanual Toolkit. Free to read, print and photocopy.
Most people accept the first number they are offered. The first number is almost never the top of the range, because the person making the offer negotiates salaries for a living and has budgeted for you to ask. This page is the asking, written out, so that the only thing you have to supply is your own number.
Fill in the dotted parts before the conversation. Say it out loud five times. It will feel absurd the first four.
Before: three numbers and one sentence
- The market rate. What this role pays at this level in this city, from at least three sources: posted salary ranges for comparable jobs (required by law in a growing list of places), a salary survey for your field, and one human who does the job. Write down the range and the midpoint.
- Your floor. The number below which you walk away, or stay put. Decide it before the conversation, when you are calm, not during it, when you are not.
- Your ask. A single specific number, above the midpoint, above your floor, and defensible from the research. Not a range. If you give a range, they hear the bottom of it. Not a round number if a precise one is credible: 87,500 reads as researched; 90,000 reads as a wish.
- Your one sentence of evidence. The specific thing you bring that the posting asked for: “my five years running exactly this kind of migration,” “the license you listed as preferred,” “the client relationships I would bring across.” One thing, said once.
The offer script
When the offer comes
“Thank you. I am excited about this opportunity. I would like to discuss the compensation.”
Then, and only then, your case
“Based on my research into market rates for this role, and considering my experience in the specific relevant thing, I was hoping for something closer to your number.”
Then stop talking
The silence is theirs to fill. Every word you add after the number lowers it.
If they say the number is not possible
“I understand. Is there flexibility in other areas: additional leave, a signing bonus, flexible working, a professional development budget, or an earlier salary review?”
If they meet you partway
“Thank you, that helps. Could we put the review at six months rather than twelve, so we can revisit the base once I have shown what I can do?”
If they hold firm and it is above your floor
“Thank you for looking into it. I would like to accept. Could you send the offer in writing with the start date, salary, leave and anything agreed just now so I can sign it?”
Total compensation is not the number on the payslip. Leave, flexibility, a training budget and an early review are real money that happens not to be denominated in currency, and they are often easier for the other side to give than base salary, because they come out of a different budget line.
The raise script
The books tell you to have this conversation at your next review. This is the conversation. Book it yourself; do not wait for the review to be scheduled around you.
Two weeks before, in writing
“I would like fifteen minutes at our next one-to-one to talk about my compensation. I will send a short note beforehand so you have what you need.”
The note (five lines, no adjectives)
What you were hired to do. Three things you have delivered since your pay was last set, each with a number. What the role now pays in the market, with the sources. The number you are asking for. The date you would like it to take effect.
In the room
“Since my pay was last set I have delivered X, Y and Z. The market rate for this role is now range. I am asking for your number, from date. What would need to happen for that to be approved?”
That last question is the whole script. It turns a yes-or-no into a plan, and it makes your manager tell you who actually decides. If the answer is “not this cycle,” ask: “What would I need to show by the next one, and can we write that down now?” Then write it down now.
If you have another offer
To your current employer, only if you would actually leave
“I have been offered role at number. I would rather stay. Is there a way to bring my compensation to your number?”
Never invent an offer, and never use a real one you would not take: if they say “congratulations, we will miss you,” you must be able to go. If they match it, ask yourself why it took a rival to find the money, and keep your résumé current anyway.
What not to say
The fears, in order of how often they come true
- “They will say no.” Sometimes. Then you are exactly where you were, and you know the ceiling. That is information you did not have.
- “They will think less of me.” The person across the table negotiated their own salary. They expected this conversation; the surprise is when it does not happen.
- “They will withdraw the offer.” A polite, researched ask from a candidate they have just chosen out of everyone they interviewed does not undo the choosing. An offer withdrawn over a courteous question was an offer from somewhere you did not want to work.
The number you accept today is the baseline for every raise and every future offer. Ten minutes of discomfort now compounds for a working life. Volume 4 explains compounding; this is the part where it is on your side.
Pay-transparency laws (posted ranges, bans on asking salary history) now cover much of the US, the EU from 2026 under the Pay Transparency Directive, and several other jurisdictions; check what applies where you are. The scripts are written for an employee negotiating in English in a country where negotiating an offer is customary; in some workplaces and cultures the same asks are made in writing, or through an agent, and the substance is unchanged.
Other pages, printable
New pages are added as they are finished, and the index is always the current list. The Toolkit indexThe five volumes