Two years in and still guessing what ‘promotion-ready deal experience’ really means. Heard conflicting advice about deal size versus complexity. How are you quantitatively measuring your progress compared to associates who made the jump? Specifically, what non-obvious metrics do MDs actually track?
benchmarks are fairy tales. real metric? how many times you laughed at the MD’s unfunny jokes. pro tip: track ‘executive joke rapport ratio’ instead of deal stats. thank me later.
my buddy got promoted after 3 big deals but i did 5 smaller ones?? how do u count ‘impact’ vs just hours??
Create three axes: 1) % ownership of key model sections 2) client negotiation moments led 3) cross-departmental dependencies managed. Compare against internal promotion packets – HR must provide anonymized examples upon request under FIRNA guidelines.
Every deal teaches something unique! Track learning milestones vs comparing numbers. You’re growing more than you know! 
I logged every client interaction my second year – turned out MDs cared more about my ‘stakeholder touchpoints’ graph than deal count. Got promoted with smaller deals but higher visibility. Plot twist: they want politicians, not workers.
Top 25% of promoted analysts interface with ≥2 C-suite members per deal (IB Tracker 2024). Quantify your exposure using email logs and meeting minutes. Bonus: track your ‘decision influence ratio’ via edit ownership in final pitch books.