Ah, the number one question working professionals ask negotiation coaches and teachers: how do I ask for more money?
Most people hear that and think salary. What we'll talk about here certainly applies to salary. But it's the same skill whether you're asking your boss for a raise, asking a client for a higher fee, pushing for better terms on a renewal, or talking a vendor down on a rate.
Here's what I've noticed. In all of those situations, nobody walks in gunning for a fight. The opposite, really — most people dread the conversation. They just don't know how to run it well, so they reach for instincts that feel right and quietly work against them.
The good news is that asking for more is a skill, not a personality trait.
And the fastest way to learn the skill is to watch someone get every part of it wrong. So let me show you one of the greatest cautionary tales in Hollywood history.
In 1980, Suzanne Somers played Chrissy on Three's Company, ABC's top-ten hit. She wasn't the headliner — the network always saw John Ritter as the lead — but she was a genuine star, and entering season five at $30,000 an episode, she wanted a raise and a piece of the profits. A fair thing to want. But her side turned that fair request into a career-ending fight — and each mistake they made points straight at the move you should make instead.
Let's walk through it.
Start by showing up yourself.
If it's your raise, your fee, your deal, sit in the chair and make them say no to your face — it's much harder to refuse someone in the room than a name on a memo. Somers did the reverse: she sent her husband, Alan Hamill, as her manager, with a lawyer, to see Ted Bergman, the executive running the show. She wasn't there at all. A proxy and a lawyer walking into a routine ask is a message — "this is a threat"— and the conversation tenses up before anyone says a word.
When the first offer comes in low, get curious instead of hot.
Bergman opened at $5,000 more an episode. The thing to say is almost embarrassingly simple: "That's a start — help me understand how you got there." You have two ears and one mouth; use them in proportion, because the more they explain, the more they hand you to work with.
Instead, what Hamill said was, "that's ridiculous." And when you call a number ridiculous, the other person doesn't hear "bad number" — they hear "you're ridiculous." Now it's a fight, and fights don't pay raises.
Then bring a number, but tie it to something outside your own appetite.
This is the heart of asking well. It could be an inside comparison: "Ritter's the lead at $150,000. Is Chrissy worth half of him? A third? Even at a third, that's $50,000 — and she's sitting at $30,000 today." Or it could be an outside one: "Jaclyn Smith pulls $75,000 on Charlie's Angels." Either way, you've handed the other side a number they can actually defend to their bosses.
What Hamill did was demand $150,000 an episode plus profits — Dallas and MASH money for an actress who wasn't top-billed, attached to no concrete reasoning — so Bergman swatted it away in seconds. In your world, the evidence you need is something like the market rate, the comparable salary, the results you've booked since your last review. Reason toward the number; don't just announce it.
When the other side pushes back with a real constraint, solve it with them rather than walking.
Bergman explained that a co-star's "favored nations" clause meant any raise to Somers would ripple across the whole cast. The right answer engages that: "I hear you — I don't want to make this show too expensive to produce either. Let's find a bracket that leaves us both a little unhappy and basically satisfied." Hamill instead got insolent, stood up, and walked out with his lawyer. The instant you gather your things and leave, the discussion is over — and the discussion was the only thing that was ever going to get you paid.
And whatever you do, stay credible.
After not getting her way, Somers called in "injured," then refused to let the show's doctor verify it. The moment you claim something and won't let the other side check it, you've spent every dollar of trust you had. Bergman decided she was holding him hostage. So they wrote her part down to a one-minute phone call at the end of each episode, didn't renew her, and beat the $2.5 million lawsuit she filed — winning, while spending roughly $280,000 in fees and damages to do it. That's money that could have funded the raise. The last thing she ever said to him, at the arbitration, was "this is all so silly. I just want to go back to work."
Notice what every one of those moves has in common.
Bergman had a boss, like everyone does, and for every raise he granted, he'd have to justify it upstairs — especially with that clause forcing a matching raise for a co-star. Showing up, getting curious, bringing evidence, staying in the room, and keeping your credibility all do the same quiet thing: they hand the other side what they need to say yes. The way to successfully ask for more money is to stop trying to beat the person across the table and start arming them with ways to say yes.
So before your next ask, picture the room you're not in — the one where your counterpart has to defend the deal to their boss. What would they need in hand to walk in and win it for you? Build that. Then go have a discussion.
Remember: negotiation is life.
– Gene
