I actually present tomorrow, but the event kicked off today with Morgan Stanly's CIO giving a keynote and some breakout sessions. I came "this close" to skipping out and I am happy to say I did not.
I expected the Morgan speech to go like this... "We are a giant company.. play your cards right and you, little vendor, could get a tidy chunk of revenue out of us. Now dance for us. blah blah blah. " I have to eat crow here, Jonathan Saxe, the Global CIO, kicked off the whole meeting with complete transparency. He broke out of how they spend money in I.T. and the kinds of problems they need to solve. They were very candid about what works, what doesn't work and how to navigate a financial services company. They even gave a generic session on selling to Wall Street. They candidly told us home many vendors were followed up with last year and how many got contracts. I can't say I have ever been dealt with that transparent/honestly by a company that size.
This feels like cheating on a test. Morgan Stanley has given us all the questions. I'm looking forward to sharing our answers with the rest of the class.
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