You’ve got­ten through the inter­views. You’re excit­ed about the posi­tion and they final­ly make the offer. You want to take it right away, but you won­der if you should try to nego­ti­ate.

You absolute­ly should try to get the high­est start­ing salary you can — and you can with one sim­ple sen­tence.

When you get the salary offer, thank the oth­er per­son and rein­force why you’re the right choice for the job. Then pause and say these four words: “is there any flex­i­bil­i­ty?”

Then, stop talk­ing.

When we’re ner­vous, we may keep talk­ing and say things that aren’t help­ful and ruin our case. If you don’t stop your­self, you might say some­thing like, “Of course, I love the job, and I’ll take it no mat­ter what the salary is”.

Instead, just wait for the oth­er per­son to talk, even if it feels uncom­fort­able. Just wait. If you’re talk­ing to a recruiter their answer may be that they don’t know. If they say that, all you need to do is respond with a sim­ple, “Would you please check and get back to me?”.

Stay pos­i­tive and let them know how excit­ed you are, but don’t accept until they let you know if the salary is nego­tiable. You have the most salary lever­age before you start a job — use it.

I gave this advice last year to some­one who was extreme­ly uncom­fort­able with the idea and ques­tioned if it was real­ly okay to ask for more mon­ey. I was quick to tell her yes, it is okay to ask and you need to try. She decid­ed to say the four words — “Is there any flex­i­bil­i­ty?— and got an extra $5,000.

Some­times the recruiter’s response will be imme­di­ate­ly pos­i­tive when you ask. This hap­pened to some­one I was help­ing a few months ago. She was apply­ing for a gov­ern­ment job and did­n’t think that there was any flex­i­bil­i­ty, but she decid­ed to try. As soon as she asked, the inter­view­er said, “Of course there’s flex­i­bil­i­ty.” This led to a 15% increase in start­ing salary.

When the per­son was telling me about it lat­er, she shared that it was kind of annoy­ing. She said that if there was flex­i­bil­i­ty, why did­n’t the inter­view­er just tell her? Why did she have to ask?

Yes, that would make it so much eas­i­er, but the fact is that inter­view­ers don’t feel it’s their job to tell you that there may be more mon­ey avail­able. It’s your job to nego­ti­ate. From my years in cor­po­rate Human Resources, I know that in most sit­u­a­tions there is a salary range. The inter­view­er will offer you what they think you will accept. Often, there is addi­tion­al mon­ey avail­able, but you won’t know unless you ask.

Yes, it can be very uncom­fort­able to ask for more mon­ey, but isn’t worth being uncom­fort­able for a few min­utes in order to have a high­er start­ing salary? A few dif­fi­cult min­utes could be worth thou­sands to you.

Remem­ber, no one is going to hand you extra mon­ey. If you don’t ask, you won’t get it.

This article first appeared on Fairygodboss, the largest career community for women dedicated to helping them achieve their career goals.