My negotiation strategy is solid — so why do I still lose ground?

You walk into the room with a plan. You know your numbers, your floor, your walk-away point. That is good. Most people walk in with nothing. But a plan built last night cannot bargain with a person sitting across from you today. Watch yourself in the next negotiation. When they say something you did not expect, do you hear it — or do you wait for your turn to say your next line? A fixed strategy turns a conversation into a monologue with pauses. You stop reading the other side because you already decided what the deal looks like. The fix is not to drop your plan. It is to hold it the way you hold a map — useful until the road changes. You can still want what you want. You just have to choose, moment by moment, whether the path in front of you still leads there.