John Thomas’s 40,000-square-foot offices on the 23rd floor of 14 Wall St., the pyramid-topped former headquarters of Bankers Trust, are decorated with a statue of a bull, big-screen televisions and a vending machine stocked solely with Red Bull. Some brokers rub the statue for luck as they walk in at 7:30 a.m., then practice their sales pitches with one another while speakers blast music from the “Rocky” movies.
Everyone wears suits. Brokers who show up with stubble are sent to the bathroom, where a bow-tied attendant dispenses razors, cologne and candy.
Belesis, bald and muscular, sometimes seeks to inspire his predominantly male staff with speeches about how they’re entering a “war zone” before the calling starts in earnest. He walks the floor, patting people on the back and calling them “buddy.” Some days, executives from small publicly traded firms pitch their stocks to the brokers.
Cars, Watches
Working from printed lists or index cards, junior brokers dial again and again as they hunt for potential customers. The senior brokers shout and talk about weight lifting, cars and watches. The junior brokers, who are told to make about 500 calls a day, don’t have computers and are required to stand. Their bosses tell them that standing makes them sound more animated, and their pitches more compelling to customers.
“Some of them will talk to you, some of them will get upset that you’re calling them,” said Adam Bednarz, who worked for John Thomas in 2011 and is now a student at Pace University in New York. He said he respects Belesis. “To me a stock broker, all it really is is a glorified salesman,” Bednarz said.
Some senior brokers told new recruits not to call women or people whose names sounded as if they were black, Latino or Muslim, because they’re apt to be poor or difficult to sell to, said three former employees, one of whom is black. The brokers were accustomed to rejection, said Gwiazda, who now writes a financial blog called Gweezy Capital.
Canine Sidekick
“It was all, ‘Ahh, you f---ing muttley, you f---ing hang up on me again,’ ” said Gwiazda, parroting his former colleagues’ complaints. “This was like an echo in my head.” Muttley refers to the canine sidekick of accident-prone villain Dick Dastardly in Hanna-Barbera cartoons.
Bursky, the John Thomas lawyer, disputed those accounts. The brokers don’t use high-pressure tactics or scripts and they’re allowed to sit, he said. About 30 percent are minorities, showing the firm doesn’t discriminate, said Pitts, the company spokesman. Wayne Kaufman, 59, the brokerage’s chief market strategist, said there’s nothing wrong with cold-calling.