How to Prepare for a Salary Review in One Week

Monday: Know your market number

Before you can ask for more, you need to know what "more" looks like. Spend Monday gathering market data for your exact role, level, and geography. Use salary aggregators, job postings with listed ranges, and any compensation surveys your industry publishes. Talk to recruiters if you can. Your goal is a specific range, not a single number, that you can defend with data.

Write down three numbers: the minimum you would accept, the number you are targeting, and the aspirational number you would love but could live without. Having all three prevents you from anchoring to the wrong one under pressure.

Tuesday: Document your wins

Your manager does not remember everything you have done. They remember the last two months and the biggest fire you put out. On Tuesday, go through your calendar, emails, project logs, and any metrics dashboards for the past year. Write down every meaningful contribution: revenue generated, costs saved, processes improved, problems prevented, projects delivered.

Be specific. "Improved onboarding" is forgettable. "Reduced new hire ramp time from eight weeks to five, saving roughly forty hours per new hire" is not. Quantify everything you can. Where numbers are not available, describe the impact in concrete terms.

Wednesday: Build your talking points

Take your market data from Monday and your wins from Tuesday and build three to five talking points that connect them. The structure is: "I have delivered [specific result], which puts my contribution at the [specific] level, and the market range for that level is [range]."

You are not building a speech. You are building a menu of facts you can pull from in the moment. Write each talking point on its own card or sticky note. Practice saying each one out loud until it sounds like a conversation, not a presentation. The goal is to sound prepared but not rehearsed.

Thursday: Practice the hard parts

Wednesday was about your pitch. Thursday is about their pushback. Write down the three things your manager is most likely to say to stall, deflect, or deny your ask. "There is no budget right now." "Your performance has not been at that level." "Let us revisit this in six months."

For each one, write a single-sentence response and practice saying it out loud. Your response to "no budget" should not be an argument. It should be a question: "How can we get me there by the next review cycle?" Practice the pause after you ask it. The silence is the hardest part to rehearse and the most important.

Friday: Plan the logistics

Decide when and how to have the conversation. If your review is already scheduled, you are set. If not, send a brief meeting request: "I would like to schedule some time to talk about my role and where I am headed. Would next [day] work?" Keep it short. Do not preview your ask in the email.

Choose a setting where your manager is relaxed and not rushed. Early in the week is generally better than Friday. After a win is better than during a crisis. And always do it live, not over email. Tone carries in person. It does not in text.

The weekend: Rest and visualize

Do not over-prepare. You have your data, your wins, your talking points, and your pushback responses. What you need now is to walk in calm and rested, not wired and over-rehearsed.

If visualization works for you, spend ten minutes imagining the conversation going well. Not perfectly, but well. Imagine your manager saying "no budget," and imagine yourself pausing, asking your question, and staying calm. The goal is to make the hard moment familiar so it does not feel like a surprise when it happens.

One week is plenty. Most people walk into salary conversations with nothing but a number and a hope. You are walking in with market data, documented results, practiced responses, and a plan for the moments when it gets uncomfortable. That is already more preparation than ninety percent of people do.