Rapid Intel Gathering — 10-Minute Pre-Negotiation Research

Half the people who walk into a salary negotiation have done almost no research—yet the ones who do even ten minutes of homework often walk out thousands of dollars ahead. You’re at the elevator, phone in hand, with ten minutes left: what you tap next can tilt the whole conversation.

Most people enter money conversations with only a hazy sense of “what feels fair.” In this episode, we’re going to replace that hunch with something sharper: fast, targeted intel you can gather in the time it takes to wait for a coffee.

You don’t need a full afternoon deep-dive; you need a repeatable 10‑minute routine that surfaces three things: what the role typically pays, how your specific market compares, and what the person across the table tends to respond to. That last piece is where many otherwise prepared professionals still wing it.