CONFERENCE CALL-----HELP!!!

To be quite honest all that will happen is you'll sit there and pretend to take some useful notes without opening your mouth for anything other than to breathe...

Bring industry research, any discussion materials that had been prepared for the meeting, and take notes.

You will not be asked to participate in the call. You know nothing, and you should not even dare to speak.

Sit down, write, and pretend to look engaged.

After it is over, have 1 or 2 intelligent questions for your MD and you will be fine.

Ya I have sit down for a couple con calls all you need to remember is stfu and act like you are very interested.

Thanks for your all advice, definitely will "shut up and drive"

Interesting. Sounds like you poor bankers never get in front of a client at the junior levels. Consulting is certainly a bit different.

When in doubt... play conference room bingo. Make sure that there is no client in the room (and that he's on the other end of the speaker), and you've got a few other people there. Pass out index cards to other analysts and the entire idea is to hit Bingo with these buzzwords. As soon as someone gets bingo, they slam down on the mute button on the phone and yell Bullshit!

It makes a great meeting even better, especially when everyone starts cracking up. Try it, everyone's gonna love you.

In consulting, you are taught at the junior level to speak in BS to clients when you don't know for sure, make up strategies for a company that you've known for 2-3 months, and in the end leave them with a long, drawn-out plan that probably won't work because it's easy to write out a strategy on a cute white board, but far more difficult to implement it.

Begs the classic question, "What is it that consultants actually do?"

Depends on the project. I recall a recent face-to-face meeting in which I walked an MD, VP, and associate of a large mid-market PE firm through my market sizing and growth forecasts for the industry of the company they were looking at. I wouldn't call it BS when you provide new information that changes an investor's perspective on how aggressive they should be in bidding.

I think it was the MD who said, "We had no idea [the main competitor] was this big. This is some great information."

There is BS shitty consulting work and there is also good work.

Yeah, the good work is called "banking"

basically you just want to take notes, act interested while keeping a serious look on your face, and be quiet except to fake laugh at any dumb joke your MD may say.

You will not be asked, and should not speak. Sit there, listen, try to learn something, and write down anything you don't understand to ask your MD about after you get off the call if you have the opportunity. You probably aren't expected to really know what is going on at this point, so don't try and pretend you do by reading industry research, your MD will know you are spitting bullshit and you will probably be better off just asking questions.

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Well there is a massive difference between a junior banker,lets just assume analyst 1.5 (ie not just a week in) - analyst 3 and a summer intern...

As for being in front of clients it depends who you work for, some senior people are way more willing to take juniors along to meetings than others, even if you just sit there.