How to get paid much more—your 7-step plan

Published: February 2024

Our readers often ask us how to get paid more, so we’ve collected the advice we give in this article.

We know it works because it’s the same strategy we’ve used to grow Conversion Rate Experts—and greatly increase the earnings of many people and companies.

We’ve found that the principles we follow apply to almost everyone.

A upwards graph showing an increase in revenue.

In this article, we reveal the principles and provide a 7-step plan you can start using immediately.

The principles behind the plan

Understand that an employer is looking at two things: the value you create and how much you cost. Obviously, they will only pay for your services if you deliver more value than you cost.
So there are two ways to get paid more:
1. Get paid more for the work you are already doing.
2. Create more value and prove you’ve done so—so you can easily justify a greater cost.
In our experience, the best career strategy is to focus on creating more value and proving you’ve done so. Here’s why:
1. It’s easier. It’s possible—particularly for a marketer—to create ten times as much value as a co-worker.
2. You build up your superpowers. In hyper-achieving, you learn the skills of hyper-achievers.
3. You have more fun. Success is exciting.
4. Your market value doubles. Your employer then has a lovely problem: they have to pay you more to keep you because you deliver amazing value. A good employer will be happy to pay you what you are worth. You become indispensable.
5. You get an impressive story to add to your resume. Amazingly, many people’s resumes have no quantifiable evidence that they have ever created value. There’s a serious shortage of people with proof that they can grow a business.
The key is to trust that you’ll eventually get paid what you are worth, which tends to happen in the long run. Many people are reluctant to make the effort unless they have a guarantee that they’ll get paid more. That’s like refusing to practice guitar until you’re booked for the Super Bowl halftime slot. Success doesn’t happen that way. Unfortunately, as the corny motivational poster says…

A motivational quote: “The only place success comes before work is in the dictionary.” — Unfortunately, the guinea pig speaks sense.

The seven-step plan

Here’s our seven-step plan for doing the above:

Identify what would represent incredible success for your employer (or client). What are the main problems they want to fix? What would be their dream outcome? For many businesses, the answer is to increase sales.
Establish a metric, a way of measuring your contribution toward that goal. For example, the metric could be overall sales for a particular part of the business. This part is essential. If there’s no clear way to measure success, find a meaningful goal you can easily track. (Salespeople tend to get paid highly because the financial impact of their work is easy to measure.) Plot a graph of the current performance, and draw a line showing what it would look like if you more than doubled the metric in the next 12 months. If your target feels delusional, that’s a sign that you are doing it right.

A graph with a target on it. — Create a graph of your vision. And look at it every day.

At the start of every day, spend at least 30 seconds looking at the graph. Envisage how great it will feel to hit it. (If you’re a rationalist, this part of the process may feel superstitious. Trust us that it is grounded in psychology and elite performance—especially sports.) Remember how important the graph is. If you achieve it, it will become the cornerstone of your resume. After a few days, the graph will start to feel less delusional.
You will notice that you start coming up with ideas for making your vision real. In our experience, such ideas often pop up within minutes of waking, or when you’re doing something that preoccupies your conscious mind—showering, gardening, meditating, or driving.
1. You will also begin to spot opportunities that you might otherwise have missed.
2. And you’ll become more impatient with distractions—in the same way that someone who really needs the toilet is hard to distract.
Focus. Ensure that your daily plans include actions that will make the target real. Do everything you can to ignore things that distract you from hitting your target. (To learn more about hitting targets, read our article: How the world’s best companies build unbeatable focus.)
Spread your vision. The more people you persuade to join in, the more likely you will be to succeed. It’s better to win as a team than to lose alone. Assemble your winning team.
Don’t assume that others will calculate the ROI you’ve generated. Next time you are due for a discussion about your pay, show the value you’ve created so far (in monetary terms) and the value you plan to create next. Alongside those numbers, your cost should appear tiny. Expressing your value this way makes you appear less like a cost and more like a no-brainer investment.

Following this plan has worked wonders for us. Good luck on your journey.

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