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Brokerage firms are resorting to some old-fashioned salesmanship to win back their wayward customers. Steve Hasbrouck, national sales manager for Cleveland-based Prescott, Ball & Turben, tells his brokers to meet with their clients in person rather than make perfunctory phone calls. Says Hasbrouck: "They're much better off sitting down with the client and his family over a cup of coffee." Hasbrouck's brokers, like most in the industry today, inquire more carefully about their customers' financial needs, asking about plans for retirement or children's college education. Brokers need their old clients, and the customers know it. Now that small investors are playing hard to get, they may start receiving the attention they deserve.
CHART: NOT AVAILABLE
CREDIT: TIME Chart By Joe Lertola
From a survey by Sindlinger & Co.
CAPTION: BEAR SCARE
DESCRIPTION: Percentage of individual stockholders with plans to buy additional stock; color illustration of bear climbing over chart as men and women run away.