We're going into a settlement meeting with no plan
No sense of what to concede, what to hold, or what each head is actually worth.
What's happening?
The meeting is in the diary and the preparation so far is a file and a feeling. The other side will arrive with a number, a walk-away point and a list of concessions they have already priced. Your plan is to see what they say. Rooms like that tend to settle near the prepared side's figure, not because they argued better on the day, but because the whole discussion happened around their number.
Negotiation is arithmetic before it is theatre. Every contested head needs three figures walked in the door: the opening position, the realistic target, and the fallback below which the answer is no. Concessions need pricing in advance, so that when something is given away it is traded for movement somewhere else rather than donated to the atmosphere. Without that, every generous gesture is unpriced, and generosity compounds.
The matrix is the one-page version of that discipline: your position, their position and your fallback on every contested clause and head, visible at a glance while the conversation moves. It also answers the question that decides meetings, which items can move, because movement on the cheap items is what buys the expensive ones.
The solution
Every head priced before the room, not in it.
If you would rather it were done for you, Settlement Negotiation Support is the service that does it.