According to Google Maps, it takes 912 hours to walk from New York to Los Angeles. It seems like an enormous distance, but (barring practicalities) you could achieve it in a year by walking 2,5 hours every day.

And after that, you’d have bragging rights for the rest of your life. It is a feat not accomplished by many.

I don’t want you to work across North America. I want to make a simile of negotiation and walking. It doesn’t need to be hard when broken down.

Anything can be accomplished if you can take it one small step at a time.

You are not going to be able to negotiate if you are unclear about your next small goal. A sales process usually have several interactions, and you don’t need to jump into bed with the meeting planner on your first date.

Set lots of small goals, instead of the big overarching book-paid-gigs one. Negotiations, where one or both negotiators enter the ring without knowing what they want, are not all that rare.

If you don’t start any interaction with a goal in mind, you can’t know what worked. So make smaller goals. Here are some ideas:

Feel free to add your own.

A goal does not need to be large, like ‘I want to walk away from this deal with a $5000 US contract’. If it is, you’re going to experience a lot of failing. And I don’t want that for you.

Set smaller goals, like getting your negotiation partner to talk a lot and reveal their desires and troubles. Or you could make it a goal that you managed to get them brainstorming on the perfect event.

Being able to do any of these is the building block of a long and prosperous career. We all got to get paid, but over-emphasizing the money at this early stage is a poor, short-term strategy.

Do it on your third interaction (or even later).

(This article was a shortened version of the content available for members at www.speakersloft.com)