Every time a new financial year rolls around, most of us are hoping for a pay rise. Whether we’ve worked especially hard and are hoping to have those efforts recognised, want our loyalty to our company rewarded, or simply need more money to keep up with the cost of living, there are many valid reasons to be hoping for a salary bump come July.

Though many people think that pay rises are only accessible via a promotion or through taking on extra responsibilities, that’s certainly not true of all industries. Often, pay rises are offered for doing the job you have exceptionally well, going beyond the remit of the position or when the company has had a successful year.

But just as Rome wasn’t built in a day, pay rises aren’t awarded on a whim. So if you were among those lucky enough to score a pay rise recently, congratulations. If you weren’t, I’m genuinely very sorry.

Getting turned down for a raise can really knock the wind out of your sails and sour how you feel about your job and your workplace. But with that disappointment comes three primary options: you can stay in the same job but change your behaviour, you can look for another job, or you can start laying the groundwork for next year’s promotion now.

For fairly self-explanatory reasons, I don’t recommend the first option. Over the years, I’ve seen many people respond to pay rise rejection by emotionally checking out and doing only the bare minimum as a form of protest.

The logic is that if the company hasn’t financially rewarded your hard work and efforts, why should you go above and beyond for them? While feeling this way is entirely understandable, and I’m in no way recommending working well above your pay grade for free, I’ve never seen this stance have the long-term desired effect, mostly because it’s viewed by management as you having a tantrum.

When you go to your boss with another offer, you have to be prepared that they may let you go.

Holding this position also means you’re likely bringing a negative attitude into the office and increasing the workloads of your colleagues, and those things will be noticed by your bosses. It also doesn’t put you in a good position to get a raise next year, or be considered for promotions into the future.

The second option, as I mentioned, is to look for a new job and secure a higher salary by moving to a new company. The main pro to this option is, of course, more money.

But another perk is that you can potentially use the offer as leverage with your current employer. If they value the work that you do and recognise your talent, another offer lets them know that they can’t be complacent.

However, there are two things to consider with this approach. The first is that your current employer may want to keep you, but can’t match the offer you’ve received. So before you go to them, it’s worth having a list of non-financial benefits you’d be open to.

For example, let’s say your new job offer is for $20,000 more, but your current employer can only offer you $10,000. Are there non-cash options you’d consider to make up a package, like working from home an extra day, undertaking training?

Having some ideas of what this kind of package could include before you go into negotiations will help your employer see that you’re serious about staying at the company, and allows them to try and find a solution.

The second thing to consider is that when you go to your boss with another offer, you have to be prepared that they may let you go. So if you are planning to use another job offer as leverage, know that they could call your bluff, so you should be fully willing to go through with leaving when you approach them.

Then we get to the third option, which is laying the groundwork now for pay rises that will be issued next year. Across most companies, HR will go to bosses each year with a designated amount that can be used for discretionary pay rises.

Let’s say there’s a pool of $50,000 and 20 employees in the company. It’s extremely rare for a company to evenly spread that budget out and see everybody get a $2500 bump in their pay.

Instead, a good boss will have spent months keeping an eye on who is performing well, and will divvy that amount out to five or 10 people when the time comes.

And it’s this reason that it’s such a huge mistake to think that pay rises happen on that one day you have a conversation with your manager. Because in fact, those decisions are being made months ahead of time, and that conversation is merely the formality.

Now, let’s say you didn’t get approved for a pay rise this financial year. Now that a few weeks have passed since you received that news, it’s time to follow up with your manager, and really drill into how you can improve your chances between now and next July.

Start by asking what they would need to see more of from you, and then specific examples of what that would look like in practice. While this conversation might come with some unpleasant feedback, if you can push through that what it will give you is a clear understanding of where the goal posts are and how to reach them – and that is essential.

In this conversation, you also shouldn’t be afraid to make it clear that the reason you’re asking is that you are hoping to be eligible for a pay rise next year.

Now that you have that list of what you need to be doing, let it be your north star. Check in with it on Monday mornings, and on Friday afternoons take five minutes to make notes from the week of any wins or successes you had.

From there, schedule another check in for January and take the highlights from those notes along. At this point, you’re halfway through the financial year, and you can show them how you’re progressing, what you’ve done, and check in on those benchmarks they set. Ask them if they’re happy with your performance and if there’s more you can be doing between then and the time of pay rise decisions being made.

Hopefully, when next July rolls around, you’ll be among those being congratulated.

Victoria Devine is an award-winning retired financial adviser, a bestselling author and host of Australia’s No.1 finance podcast, She’s on the Money. She is also founder and director of Zella Money.

• Advice given in this article is general in nature and is not intended to influence readers’ decisions about investing or financial products. They should always seek their own professional advice that takes into account their personal circumstances before making any financial decisions.