THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 2, 1996 TAG: 9610020595
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SERIES: SALES JOBS IN HAMPTON ROADS
Sales is among the fastest-growing professions in Hampton Roads and
the state. This is part four of a five-part series on salespeople.
Today, a stockbroker shows that personal relationships matter as much
as anything in his business.
SOURCE: BY LON WAGNER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 122 lines
Chris Doyle sees the share price on his computer. Moovies stock is inching up. It's above $8.
He knows Ira Steingold, a client, is dying to unload it.
Doyle spins his Rolodex to Steingold's name and punches in the number.
``Listen,'' Steingold says, ``What are we doing with my Moovies stock?''
``I want you to hold onto it,'' Doyle says. ``This stock's going higher.''
Doyle should want him to sell. He and his firm would collect a $130 transaction fee. But Doyle's trying to get Steingold to sit tight.
He explains that his Norfolk brokerage, Wheat First Butcher Singer, thinks Moovies' share price will hit $20. Steingold agrees to hold on. Doyle hangs up.
``If it goes down to $6 now,'' he says, ``I'm an idiot.''
Doyle, 35, is a stockbroker - or officially an investment officer - whose livelihood rests on convincing clients that he's not an idiot. That he can be trusted. That his financial advice is worth their money.
Doyle thinks long-term. He wants to be Steingold's stockbroker for life. So he'll give up a one-time sale to gain Steingold's trust.
When a purchasing manager for a shipyard spends $1 million on equipment, it's the company's money. When parents buy a mutual fund to save for their child's college tuition, that's their money.
Doyle wants a client to build a portfolio with him, gradually adding investments as the years roll by.
Some brokers don't share his view. They goad clients into selling stocks too soon, then buying other stocks. Each time, the brokers collect a fee. It's called ``churning,'' and it's given the industry a black eye.
Doyle is patient. He knows the transactions will come - if the clients believe his advice is sincere.
Stocks and mutual funds are the products he sells, but Christopher T. Doyle is the package they're wrapped in.
He studied political science at Wittenberg University in Ohio, and came to Virginia in the mid-1980s to work on Richard M. Bagley's campaign for the Democratic nomination for governor.
Bagley lost. Doyle needed a job.
He knew two things about stocks: Some family friends had been brokers and he'd been given stocks as a boy.
He applied for a stockbroker's job at Wheat First. Get some sales experience, they told him. He got a job selling advertising for WTAR radio, and Wheat hired him 10 months later.
Not the ideal background for a stockbroker, admits Thomas E. Love, Doyle's boss. But anyone can learn the nuts and bolts of investing, Love says. Doyle also has the patience to ask questions to learn what the client needs.
Doyle's a conservative investor, so he attracts cautious or older clients.
That's OK, since he seems like a guy grandmothers would describe as ``that fine young man.'' He's taped three pictures onto the window of his 14th-floor downtown Norfolk office: one of his son, another of his son with the dog, and a shot of him and his wife.
He's got sandy blond hair and wears those high-quality, starched cotton shirts that wrinkle by noon.
Doyle asks clients a lot of personal questions. How old are the kids? Where do you want them to go to college? Are you planning to buy a house?
``Hey, it's wedding-band time,'' one client calls to tell Doyle, ``so I need to sell some stock.''
Naturally, the clients ask a lot of questions back. On any day, his clients might learn: Doyle thinks Clinton's got the election wrapped up. His wife is Anne and she's from Danville. Their son, George, is 27 months old.
He's taking flying lessons, learning to sail with Anne, helps raise money for Operation Smile and drives a Mercedes.
``You know that guy Richard Jewell?'' Doyle asks a client who was in Atlanta for the Olympics. ``He's from Danville, Virginia. That's where Anne's from. I've been telling everybody he's Anne's ex-boyfriend.''
Doyle wants his clients to know him. He goes fishing with Jim Sadler. Picks up mail for another client when she vacations in Florida. Spends a weekend at another client's Outer Banks condo.
``He's a big part of my future,'' says Sadler. ``I want to retire in my 50s, not my 60s.''
Doyle's picks have increased Sadler's retirement account by 37 percent last year, and 32 percent so far this year.
The better the clients know Doyle, the more likely they are to stick with him even if he recommends a stock that turns out to be a loser. Or discourages them from buying something that turns out to be the next Microsoft. Which happens.
A couple of years ago Doyle's mother called and wanted a piece of a company called Biogen. He told his mom to stay away from it, it's a bio-technology company and those are risky. Someone her age belongs in a safer stock, like Coca-Cola, he advised.
She insisted. She bought. Stock tripled.
Doyle favors stocks in bedrock companies. Philip Morris. McDonald's. Norfolk Southern. But during the past year he's encouraged many clients to buy two fast-moving stocks: one up, one down.
ACC Corp is a Rochester, N.Y., long-distance company that Doyle started buying for his clients around $18 a share.
On this particular day, Doyle's phoning clients to tell them ACC - after climbing to $63 - is going to split. For every two shares they hold, they'll get a third share, and the price will be cut to around $41.
``Sixty three and a half,'' Doyle tells a client who asks ACC's price. ``You're out of it, though. You told me to sell you out at 58. I sold you out last week.''
Doyle pauses for the response. Then tells the guy, ``Just kidding.''
Then there's Metrocall, a Virginia Beach pager company. Doyle started buying at about $17 a share, and it's plunged to half that. Doyle's clients have lost $67,000.
Most of them let the Metrocall mistake slide. One client doesn't.
``A good friend of mine told me that's where I needed to be,'' the client chastises Doyle.
Doyle's up front with him. Tells him they should've run six points ago, but might as well hang on now. ``I may not always make the right decision, but I thought it was right at the time,'' he says.
And that's something even his mother understands. MEMO: TOMORROW: Closing the deal counts in home-improvement
selling.TOMORROW: ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
LAWRENCE JACKSON/The Virginian-Pilot
Over lunch, Chris Doyle and a client discuss a portfolio. Doyle
wants long-term clients, the kind who gradually add investments as
the years roll by. To do that, he must earn their trust. by CNB