How to Ask for a Promotion… and Get It

The most important thing you need to realize before asking for a promotion is this: Your employer is not really interested in you and why you think you deserve a higher-paying position.

He’s interested in himself. And he’s interested in his business – the problems and the challenges his company faces every day. He may be in need of someone to help him, but he doesn’t care about how wonderful that person is. He just wants to know: “Can this person solve my problems?”

If you think of your objective as a direct-marketing problem, it will be relatively easy to achieve.

Direct marketing is the science of creating positive responses with sales copy. By using its proven secrets, you dramatically increase your chances of getting the kind of response you are looking for.

The direct marketer knows that, to make a sale, she can’t waste her prospect’s time by talking about herself. Everything she says in her sales pitch must be focused on the prospect’s problem and how much better his life will be after buying the product she’s selling.

This is exactly what you have to do when you make your case to your boss. In this case, you are the “product” you’re selling. You have to let him know that you understand exactly what his problems are and that you have solutions for each and every one of them.

[Ed. Note: Mark Morgan Ford was the creator of Early To Rise. In 2011, Mark retired from ETR and now writes the Palm Beach Letter. His advice, in our opinion, continues to get better and better with every essay, particularly in the controversial ones we have shared today. We encourage you to read everything you can that has been written by Mark.]