You've done your homework, methodically assessed your skills and experience, consulted salary surveys, and carefully determined how much you're worth. Unfortunately, your painstaking analysis yields a troubling result: You're underpaid, and only a raise will set things right. So, how do you broach the subject with your boss, much less negotiate a successful outcome?

In case the mere thought of asking for a raise makes your stomach jump, here are some tips to help you prepare for a meeting with your boss and, we hope, walk away with a smile on your face and a fatter wallet in your pocket.    

Preparation Is the Key

Successfully negotiating a raise is all about selling yourself to a skeptical audience. So, it behooves you to ensure the product you're selling - namely your record of accomplishment - is the best it can possibly be.

Keep in mind that establishing a record significant enough to make your boss take notice requires an investment of time and effort on your part. And, you must understand that it may take you a few months of highly focused effort to craft such a record. As the old cliché goes, Rome wasn't built in a day.

Penelope Trunk, author of Brazen Careerist: The New Rules for Success, says the preparation process should start six months in advance. Trunk recommends sitting down with your boss and deciding on a list of large goals that your boss agrees will exceed your current job description if you meet them. The key is to demonstrate that you're doing more than you're getting paid for, she says.

Of course, reaching the end zone depends on your ability to get these significant goals accomplished in a relatively short period of time. The trick is selecting challenging but achievable objectives. If you're too ambitious in your goals, you'll only be frustrated and look worse for the wear.

Presenting Your Case

In most companies, salary negotiations begin and end during the annual performance review. This is your most significant "official" opportunity to command your boss's undivided attention and present your case for the raise you deserve. But, warns Trunk, "…if you are starting your negotiating strategy a week before your performance review you are really late."

The problem, she says, is your boss has been strategizing your salary since the last budget meeting, when all the salaries were set. By the time your performance review rolls around, he already has a pretty good idea of how much money he plans to allocate to you. Says Trunk: "You need to do as much preparation for your salary negotiations as your company does."

The Boss Doesn't Buy It. Now What?

No matter how strong you think your case might be, you should expect to encounter some resistance. After all, one of management's primary goals is to operate at or below budget, and labor costs are a significant chunk of what companies spend in a given year. By giving you a significant raise, your boss will run counter to the patterns established during the last few budget cycles, especially if your salary has been abnormally low from day one.

To help counter resistance, Trunk advises talking in terms of the bottom line. "Talk with your boss in terms of what your boss and your company care about, not what you care about," she says. And, she adds, if you don't affect the company's bottom line or accepted a lower salary when you were first hired, you're not in a strong position to make the argument you deserve a raise.  The idea is to make the case your current level of accomplishment justifies a significant compensation correction, even if that means revising a department's budget to accommodate your request. The only way to do that is to show your efforts are making a significant impact on the revenue or the cost-savings side of the equation.  

Whatever you do, don't bring your personal life into a salary negotiation. Work is transactional: the company pays a certain rate for the work you do, and if you want to earn more money you need to do work the company pays more for. "Your personal life is outside the company's equation," she says.  So, for example, the fact you may be in the midst of a personal crisis and simply need more money won't get you far.
 
Unconventional Advice

Bear in mind Trunk's observation that, as far as the company's concerned, a raise isn't an important thing for you to be spending your time on. Instead, you should ask for things - such as training or projects - that will give you the skills you need to move your career in the direction you want. "Skill-building through project placement is free to the company, very meaningful to employees and easy to negotiate," she says.

At the end of the day, developing new skills may ultimately result in a higher salary, simply because they lead you to discover new ways to increase revenues or achieve significant cost savings - exactly the types of tangible results that management looks for when deciding which employees to reward with the biggest slices of the salary pie.

Always keep in mind that just because your actions speak loudly doesn't mean management will take notice and act accordingly. Document your accomplishments and demonstrate why you deserve recognition.