ANOTHER GREAT REASON

Yesterday’s Sales Tip about being a stock-holder reminded me of another great reason to own stock in a company.

Early in my career, I discovered a wonderful resource for information about most big companies. It’s called an Annual Report and it gets mailed to every one of the company’s stockholders, no matter how few shares they own.

Long before the internet made access to data so easy, purchasing just one share of a company’s stock granted me access to all kinds of information about a corporation, its executives, its future plans, and even some of their weaknesses. Instead of fighting to find market intelligence about a competitor, I could buy a single share and actually be invited inside their corporate headquarters to personally attend the annual shareholders meeting. Owning one small fraction of the company was the difference between being locked out or welcomed.

Of course, search engines and financial web resources makes much of this un-necessary today. In the course of a few keystrokes and some intelligent assumptions about where to look (“media center” is usually a treasure trove), you can have all the information you need to contact the people who can say “yes” to your offer.