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Diversity is valuable and important, as societal development necessitates all individuals of various backgrounds and experiences being welcomed regardless of their differences. Jason R. Thompson, author of Diversity and Inclusion Matters, addresses the need for diversity in modern companies and how it can be encouraged at all corporate levels.

If you've ever struggled to persuade someone to agree with you, Chris Voss has your back in Never Split the Difference. A former hostage negotiator for the FBI, Voss breaks down the secrets of successful negotiations, making it simple for anyone to understand and apply, whether dealing with coworkers, family, or friends.

It is now rare to base buying decisions purely on personal recommendations; rather, consumers place significant value on online reviews (both positive and negative). However, consumers do not perceive all online reviews as equally valuable. Reviews can be objective, subjective, or a mix of both. Our research examines which type of review is perceived as more valuable for consumers.

When posting online content, sellers want to hold audience attention and make sure readers engage with and remember their content. It turns out that the strategies required to capture sustained engagement can be different from the those which will garner clicks and initial exposure. Our research examines the factors that contribute to holding an audience’s attention, especially with the use of emotional language and textual simplicity.

We spend more of our time than ever indoors—in cars, homes, offices, stores, and schools. Meanwhile, spending time outdoors remains invaluable to our mental and physical health. For those who work indoors, getting outside can seem like a luxury amid the demands and stresses of our hectic lives that we simply can’t afford. However, we believe there are effective ways for employees to reconnect and benefit from contact with nature outside of the work day.

The advertisement landscape is evolving. While positive advertising appeals often dominate, a new trend has emerged—the rise of audience-targeted negative advertisements, which, in contrast to traditional approaches, employ moderately negative messages directly targeting the audience. The emergence of these advertisements presents a unique opportunity for advertisers to connect with consumers in unconventional ways.

Salespeople and sales managers often understandably focus on interactions with the customer. We argue that selling also involves “secondary selling,” or interactions with secondary entities, namely objects and people outside the core salesperson-customer dyad. This research examines whether secondary selling has an impact on a customer’s receptivity to a sales pitch, purchase behavior, feelings about the salesperson, and satisfaction with the sales process.

Dan Ariely’s Misbelief provides valuable insight into the reasons why people fall into certain beliefs. With a combination of emotional, cognitive, personal, and social factors, it is possible for anyone to become a misbeliever. In the real estate industry, one can adopt some of these same strategies to get to the core of people’s beliefs and desires in order to best serve customer needs.

Humans are most often enriched by the vibrancy of having social connections. Simultaneously, however, these connections can also be detrimental to our well-being. In Healthy Boundaries, Chase Hill outlines how to identify when boundaries are disregarded by our families, friends, and coworkers and offers solutions that can enable us to live healthier, more fulfilling lives.

As consumers' perceptions of brand messages evolve, advertisers respond by revisiting their messages and investing more heavily, with North American advertising spending projected to exceed $370 billion by 2024. In this context, brand name, logo, and slogan's semiotic components gain strategic importance in enhancing brand equity. This paper focuses on slogans and examines slogan-related factors that enhance alignment with brand identity.

Have you ever noticed how platforms like Zillow and Rover prominently display profile pictures? Our faces are powerful communicators, even online. Facial cues act as potent first impressions, shaping judgments of trustworthiness, competence, and likeability. We investigated whether online profile photos have this effect, demonstrating how perceived facial characteristics influence consumer engagement with real estate agents.

Our research seeks to better understand consumer perceptions of sales pressure through the exploration of consumer entitlement, self-perception of high levels of product knowledge and persuasion knowledge, and awareness of sales persuasion tactics.  Hopefully, this understanding will help firms prevent situations in which consumers feel pressured to buy and instead will create mutually beneficial sales exchanges.

Due to its prevalence, depression has been called the “common cold” of mental health. Depression has direct negative effects on employees such as increased deviant workplace behavior and decreased productivity, and this relationship extends to the salesperson role. We studied how certain personal resources—work adaptability and family work support—along with supervisor support can mitigate the consequences of depression on salesperson performance.

Competitive salespeople are driven to achieve their goals, which is associated with high sales performance. However, competition can also be a threat to cohesion as salespeople may become more focused on individual success than the success of the team. We examine the challenge sales managers face of creating a work environment that fosters both competitiveness and cohesion in order to improve both performance and sales force retention.

Understanding one's own mind has never been more critical for well-being. Dr. Caroline Leaf's Cleaning Your Mental Mess serves as a guiding light through the landscape of mental health, offering readers a clear path to harness the power within each of us. This power allows us to shape our thoughts, emotions, and ultimately, our lives. 

Most people today are exposed to an overload of messages to which they are expected to attend and respond. With access to information instantly at our fingertips, we can find it hard to step back and really hear what someone is communicating. Patrick King’s book, How to Listen with Intention, addresses this challenge and provides helpful strategies for improving skills as listeners, communicators, and conversation partners. 

Salespeople often have a reputation for being competitive, and the prevailing view might be that having a competitive spirit is suitable and favorable in sales domains. However, research shows that not all people think about competition (or competitors) in the same way. In this paper, we examine how different competitive orientations affect salesperson behavior and performance in the workplace. 

Syntax is the grammatical formulation of words in a sentence and is vital to the memorability and persuasiveness of marketing messages. In a recent Journal of Marketing study, Atalay et.al. hypothesized that using messaging with a medium level of unexpectedness in the syntax, or syntactic surprise, would be effective in marketing messages. We examine their findings and draw implications to your real estate business. 

Frequent interruptions during work hours from spouses or children or frequent interruptions to family life from remote work can be significant causes of stress. Mental and emotional resources can be taxed by this overlap, resulting in lower quality of work and lower overall satisfaction for the employee. With this in mind, we conducted a study to see what types of breaks would best contribute to overcoming stress and resource drain while working remotely. 

It is hard to overstate the importance of online reviews. In today’s world where most product experiences start and/or end online, the experiences of others are more visible and more important than ever. In this research, we discover the most effective time to ask customers for reviews following a product experience. 

In a competitive marketplace, it seems clear that salespeople's performance can be influenced by those around them, but more often overlooked are the sources and specific manifestations of those influences. Our research aimed to address one factor of this phenomenon, namely personal identification with supervisors. 

Technology has transformed the way businesses market products and services, making it essential for marketers to stay up to date with the latest trends in digital marketing. In Digital Marketers Sound Off, Matt Chiera interviews some of the most successful and innovative digital marketers in the industry, sharing their experiences and offering insights into the strategies that have led to success.

Do you frequently find yourself second guessing past decisions or succumbing to negative thoughts? Are you unbearably stressed or anxious over various events? In the book Stop Overthinking, Nick Trenton outlines several key strategies to combat stress, rumination, and overthinking. 

The intent behind advertising is never just to spend money, but to engage consumers. Our research links the use of negations—which advise what not to do through words such as like no, not, can’t, don’t—to increased consumer engagement. Our paper examines how the use of negations impact consumer engagement, while also considering negations’ effect on how powerful brands seem. 

Having employees of various backgrounds and experience is vital to increasing access to markets, translating to a higher chance of marketplace success. Although industry has noticed the impact that a diverse workforce can have on an organization’s success, we studied whether consumers notice workforce diversity and whether diversity affects consumer response to the firm.

The ways in which gender affects negotiations and business interactions has been studied extensively and remains a topic of interest across various fields. Research has not, however, applied these ideas to the real estate industry, where the majority of agents are female. Our research aims to address this gap and answer how agent gender and interactions with agents of the same or different gender affect bargaining power in real estate transactions.

Our research investigates the impact of amoral management—a type of leadership approach that is devoid of ethical considerations, or simply, leadership’s failure to respond to situations that have ethical implications—on employees and organizations. We also examine the connection between amoral management and unethical behavior, which has implications in the real estate industry.

A firm's onboarding process acts as a foundation in new hires’ perception of the company and sets the stage for their future at the organization. Companies devote hours of time and millions of dollars each year to onboarding new employees and in trying to find the best way to induct new employees into the organization.  Our research examines different types of onboarding programs and determines which type best impacts the success of the salesperson.

In The Mental Toughness Handbook, Damon Zahariades provides practical advice and strategies for building resilience, perseverance, and self-discipline, skills that are more important than ever in the current climate. By developing mental toughness, we can learn to overcome fear and self-doubt, stay focused on our goals, and navigate the complexities of the world around us.

In order to be successful, agents need to be skilled communicators and master persuaders. In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini leverages insights from his 35 years of evidence-based research to explain the science behind persuasion, delving into what makes people say “yes” to a request or proposal.

The prevalence of technology has prompted more people to maintain calendars through a smart device as opposed to a hard copy calendar. But does using a mobile calendar provide the same benefits at the same level as a paper calendar? Our research found that not only do users of paper calendars achieve higher plan fulfillment, but they are more effective at developing higher quality plans by taking a broader, big-picture perspective.

Caffeine is a staple in Americans’ consumption habits, but some effects of caffeine consumption may influence the spending behavior of consumers. In this article, we explore how drinking caffeine before shopping affects retail purchasing behavior, and we draw conclusions as to how this can affect both buyers and sellers in real estate.

Part of an effective sales approach is to build trust with buyers; however, research suggests 70% of B2B salespeople overestimate customers’ trust in them. Our research aimed to evaluate the effects of salesperson trust overestimation on customer account revenue and word of mouth or the likelihood and quality of referrals.

In this study, we demonstrate that female leaders are more inclined to prioritize strong customer relationships compared to their male counterparts in similar roles. We believe this customer centric approach can enhance a company's ability to satisfy customers, ultimately leading to improved financial outcomes.

We live in a fast-paced and constantly changing world, and most of us have hundreds of things to accomplish in a short, 24-hour window before we must do it all over again. David Kadavy proposes a new approach to productivity that encourages success by focusing on managing one's mind rather than managing one's time.

Creating a workplace that employees love is foundational to any successful organization, and real estate is no exception. In his book, Clint Culver explains how through effective management, you can create an environment where your employees engage, grow, and never want to leave.

It is widely understood that a leader's daily emotional expressions can have a significant impact on employees' emotions and work performance. But what about the variability of leaders' emotional expressions across different days? Our research examines how leader affect variability impacts employee work engagement and performance.

Humor has been a popular marketing strategy throughout the years. In our research, we argue that if a brand wants to use humor, they benefit more from using clever humor versus merely being funny. When a brand uses clever humor, it is better able to connect with the audience, which can lead to more positive brand attitudes and greater brand engagement.

Consumers often believe that salespeople do not have consumers' best interests in mind and, thus, dread the idea of engaging in negotiations with a salesperson. In our research, we focus on the interpersonal relationship between the consumer and the salesperson and examine whether a favor request from a salesperson to the consumer will encourage engagement and the idea of negotiation.

While technology has undoubtedly brought many benefits to the workplace, it has also brought a new form of stress known as "technostress." By understanding how technostress negatively influences employee turnover, work-family conflict, and family burnout, firms can better manage potential stressors and create a more positive and productive work environment.

Year after year, companies allocate extensive resources toward developing and tracking incentive programs to effectively motivate sales employees. But, do these extrinsic motivators lead to increased sales? In this study, we examine how different types of motivation affect salesperson performance.

In Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy, Patrick Bet-David takes a deep dive into a practical methodology that can be applied to all areas of life, especially business. In just five simple moves, Bet-David lays out what you must do to differentiate yourself from the competition, attract and retain top talent, grow a company exponentially, and identify who you want to be and how you will get there.

If you are looking for a way to unleash your culture, motivate your team, drive better results, and attract more customers, then you are not alone. Aligning your culture with your brand to build a marquee culture can help launch your company’s performance to new levels. In Culture Built My Brand, Mark Miller and Ted Vaugh provide practical ways to transform your internal culture to fuel success and performance.

Emotional intelligence has historically been considered a key performance indicator, but our research finds that those with emotional calibration, or high emotional intelligence paired with high emotional self-efficacy (how one uses emotions), is a better indicator for sales success.

Humans are wired to seek out social interaction, and the Internet gives us endless opportunities to connect. But, contrary to the goal of bringing people together, recent research links increased social media usage to loneliness and perceived isolation. We studied social media use and examined whether it is how social media is used (passively vs. actively) that determines its effects on users’ perceived social connection and well-being.

Salespeople are often indoctrinated to love what they sell, but too much enthusiasm from the salesperson may cause the customer to feel pressured and form a tendency to avoid the salesperson and the brand altogether. While brand attachment is important in terms of salesperson effort and performance, it may be equally off-putting for customers.

Most people think of extrinsic motivators like salary, time off, and healthcare benefits when thinking about workplace motivation. We find, though, that contributing to something greater than themselves—or feeling a sense of purpose—is a huge motivator for employees, which can drastically impact the value individuals bring to a firm and to clients.

The constant hustle and bustle of daily life can overwhelm us to the point that we lose sight of the most important thing: ourselves. In The High 5 Habit, Mel Robbins explains that the simple act of high-fiving yourself in the mirror first thing every morning can help you take charge of your life by restoring confidence and positivity. This daily boost will help you escape negative thoughts, push through anxiety, and turn dreams into reality.

For females in the workplace or in leadership, it is easy to feel isolated, out of place, and exhausted after consistently managing perceptions. In her new book, Huddle, Brooke Baldwin examines the powerful concept of a huddle, which empowers women to replace these negative feelings with feelings of being seen, of deserving the position they hold, and of being ready to take risks and challenge the norms in place.

In consumer-based businesses, understanding how to effectively design marketing messages is key. Our research on power distance belief brings salespeople one step closer to understanding what is going on in the minds of different consumers which increases the power to persuade audiences through appeals tailored directly toward specific consumer mindsets.

Nearly all business exchanges are built around the practice of reciprocity—or exchanging things with others for mutual benefit—which paves the way for feelings of gratitude and indebtedness. This study specifically focuses on how the salesperson's feelings of gratitude and indebtedness impact seller-buyer relationship quality, relationship satisfaction, and customer word of mouth.

Social media is the fastest-growing advertising media class in the world and is an incredible tool that can be leveraged to grow business, even when promoting your business organically via non-paid promotions. In this research, we answer two questions: What is the optimal time to post? How are engagement and effectiveness of an organic post affected by the visual location of the web link in the post?

Word of mouth has become a pivotal factor in what shapes consumers' thoughts and actions. We break down two modes of communication and find that writing does not have the same effect as speaking. This research offers insight as to how and when to use each form of communication in order to maximize agent success.

The best predictor of long-term success in the workplace is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence, or EQ, is what takes leaders from average to extraordinary. Having a better understanding of how emotions influence behavior will enable you to make more intelligent decisions, overcome obstacles, and transform the way you lead.

So, you've been promoted to manager-now what? In this Insider, we examine The First-Time Manager, which is a resourceful guide to help ease nerves, learn the ropes, recognize new responsibilities, relationships, and risks, and make a lasting impact on your organization and others around you through your new management role.

The emergence of digital information platforms allowing consumer-to-consumer communications is changing how service ecosystems establish and create value for service innovations. The communications regarding these innovations have transitioned from pure "one-to-one" communication and engagement processes to "many-to-many" informational touchpoints. Our study assesses these information flows in service ecosystems and how they influence decision-making of digital innovations.

Organizational communication managers are tasked more and more with prioritizing employee communication due to an increase in remote work. Listening, one of the primary components of communication, which also influences employee turnover, has not received much attention in research or in practice. We conducted our study to learn more about the state of listening in U.S. companies and organizations.

Salesperson turnover is an important issue for real estate. Building on the familiar saying, "People don't quit jobs, they quit bosses," our study proposes a new concept, sales managers' leadership worthiness, and demonstrates that perceived leadership worthiness increases salespersons' trust in and identification with their managers, ultimately reducing turnover intentions.

Workplace stress can impact prenatal and postpartum health, which in turn, affects return to the workplace and subsequent productivity. This research reports on two factors that can mitigate stress pregnant women encounter at work: coworker support and supervisor support received during pregnancy—both of which can alleviate stress during pregnancy, leading to lower incidence of postpartum depression, faster physical recovery, and greater ease of transition back into the workplace for the mother.

Within the remote-work culture of real estate, it is not unusual to find a lone wolf salesperson, one who prefers to work independently when making decisions, setting priorities, and accomplishing goals. These lone wolf salespeople sometimes have a "sell at all costs" mentality, which can lead to ethical dilemmas. In this research, we explore the relationship between lone wolf sales tendencies and ethical behavior.

You never know when someone has an idea (but is too scared to say it) that could drastically change your firm. In Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know, Adam Grant examines how "thinking again" can help you find new solutions to old problems and spot problems that were not addressed in old solutions that will elevate your career and your firm.

While there are an overwhelming number of resources available to help one build sales success, experienced salespeople with proven performance outcomes may be the most effective sources of inspiration. In Sales Secrets, Brandon Bornancin shares advice and perspectives from 104 accomplished sales professionals to help novice and experienced salespeople succeed in what can be a long-lasting and lucrative career.

When it comes to buying products, we all tend to have favorite brands to which we are loyal. To better understand how brand relationships change, our research takes a deeper look at how consumers’ actions create, maintain, transform, and terminate brand relationships over time.

Numerous professions, including real estate sales, involve duties that can lead employees to experience social anxiety, which can be detrimental to a salesperson, especially when working directly with customers. This research explores strategies to mitigate social anxiety in order to boost sales performance.

Have you ever been told to turn off electronics and give your brain some rest from screen time right before you go to bed? You may have been told that it will disrupt your sleep schedule and have a negative effect on your well-being the next day. Our research illustrates that this is only sometimes true.

Real estate management and agents often work under high stress and performance pressure, leading to burnout in the workplace. Our research explores how goal-focused leadership, paired with non-discriminating behaviors and high cohesion among coworkers, can equip employees to avoid emotional exhaustion, even as they work longer hours and face other demands.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to start thinking like one. In Ozan Varol’s book, Think Like a Rocket Scientist, he challenges readers to risk failure, question the status quo, and engage in critical thinking as he shares invaluable insights from some of the greatest triumphs and catastrophes in human history.

It’s time to start winning the battle that has consumed your life—the battle against procrastination. In Do the Hard Things First, Scott Allan analyzes the bad habit of procrastination and teaches his audience how to reverse this practice in order to implement a new set of behaviors and develop a new identity.

Social media has become a core component of communication within our society, and as social media has positively impacted personal life, it has also positively impacted business. Our study focuses specifically on the relationship between social media usage, key selling tasks, salesperson performance, and peer social media usage as a relationship moderator.

Understanding how to reduce burnout is a key to keeping agents satisfied and motivated. Our research examines the impact individual facets of burnout have on job satisfaction, what impact skill discretion and hindrance demands have on job satisfaction, and whether burnout mediates the relationship between discretion and demands in relation to job satisfaction.

Marketing is all about understanding customer preferences and providing solutions that match these preferences. However, marketers’ perceptions of their target customers’ preferences can be biased through the so-called false consensus effect, whereby marketers project their personal preferences onto customers.

A brand's name is often the first interaction a brand or firm has with a consumer, and it has more power than most individuals or companies realize. Our research finds that linguistically feminine brand names enhance attitudes and choice and are correlated with better brand performance, as they activate associations with "warmth," based on the stereotype content model.

Consumers make countless decisions every day. Some situations require minimal decision-making effort, while others require more thought and effort to reach a decision. Our research finds that there are two situations, driven by a motivation to achieve cognitive closure, in which people will put more effort into the decision-making process in order to simplify the process in the future.

In his latest book, business leader Tilman Fertitta emphasizes that even when you think your business is performing at its best, there is always something lurking around the corner that could make your business obsolete. Fertitta warns that you should never, ever stop worrying about your business.

Did you know only about 10% of New Year's resolutions are achieved? Research cites the biggest reason people fail is a lack of self-discipline. In this Insider, we explore Daniel Walter's advice on how to increase self-discipline and move your ordinary to extraordinary.

While research suggests adaptive selling is a core ingredient of sales success, the question of how salespeople should alter their behavior in response to varying customer attributes has remained unclear. Our research and recommendations offer managerial insight to capitalize on the genuine benefits of adaptive selling to lead to greater success organization-wide.

What do you prioritize on a job candidate resume? Prior selling experience or a formal sales education? Our research examines the effects of both on newly hired salespeople's performance trajectories over time, along with the impact of manager coaching behaviors. Our results provide insights into the benefits and drawbacks of each hiring heuristic along with recommendations for how to coach new salespeople depending on which heuristic led to their hire.

The benefits of earned media–or zero-cost advertising through social media sharing–within the real estate industry are invaluable. Contrary to prior studies, our research finds that specific emotional expressions have distinct effects on social sharing, allowing firms to more easily pinpoint what emotions an advertisement should aim to evoke and thus what content is more likely to be shared.

Incivility, rudeness, and a general disrespect for others has risen steeply in the workplace in recent years, affecting not only employees, but also customers and third parties in contact with employees. Servant leaders, those who put the needs of others above their own, serve as a critical force in preventing group-level incivility through promoting a virtuous work climate.

The gender gap in pay in the real estate industry is larger than the average gap across industries, and there are also stark gender gaps in career advancement to top leadership positions in the real estate industry. This research explores how job flexibility increases, rather than detracts from, promotion aspirations among working mothers, an important implication for managers looking to recruit and promote female employees and chip away at persistent gender gaps.

Robots will eventually take your job! Truth is, they may indeed take it one day, but they also may help guide you into your next position. The Adaptation Advantage explains why it's hard for humans to change, how the world will continue to advance, and what individuals can do to make themselves adaptable in a constantly-changing world.

As firms seek to standardize job roles, they are losing out on some of the most creative and quirky aspects of their workforce. In Nine Lies about Work, Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall uncover nine lies that we encounter every day at work and seek evidence to discover the less popular truth about work.

Now more than ever, clients expect a uniquely tailored experience and product. This research aims to build upon already-utilized aspects of adaptive selling while increasing your understanding of adaptive selling and providing recommendations to further hone your own adaptive selling techniques.

Due to the nature of real estate, working beyond the walls of the office is accessible and frequently encouraged. But how does this balancing act impact others in your firm? We examine how an agent's family functioning relates to their interactions with coworkers, thereby shaping the coworker's job attitude and experiences.

The goal of your social media marketing should not be to simply increase social media impressions, but instead, to increase positive impressions. In this study, we examine the role of trust and commitment in driving positive relationships and customer engagement in social media.

When highlighting exceptional performance of real estate agents, firms often credit the success to either sheer effort or natural talent. The way in which you market your agents, though, can impact their relationship formation with clients and, ultimately, the success of your firm.

Why do some houses sell above listing price while similar neighboring houses do not? Is it because sellers underprice their property? Are some real estate agents particularly skilled at bringing in high value buyers, or does it just come down to luck?

Kristen Koehler, MBA Candidate People often tackle change by attacking the problem head on and pushing through obstacles no matter the amount of resistance. In The Catalyst, Jonah Berger explains why "roadblock elimination" is the most effective way to pursue change and how to become a change catalyst—someone who facilitates change—within your organization.

At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the world was faced with an unprecedented tremor that necessitated a transition to a virtual world, immediately altering sales as we knew it. In his latest book, Jeb Blount provides techniques that turn virtual communication platforms into powerful and effective sales tools, making virtual selling more human and helping organizations acquire a distinct competitive advantage that will extend beyond the lifetime of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Research confirms that 360-degree video ads increase social media click rates by 29% as compared to similar videos in standard format. Our research
identifies the optimal scenario and mechanisms in which 360-degree video ads outperform standard version videos, and we provide suggestions on how to create videos that will drive engagement in promising new ways.

Every successful firm knows that understanding consumer sentiment, both positive and negative, is essential for success. Our team conducted multiple studies to uncover tendencies concerning consumer-to-brand sharing and steps managers can take to receive unbiased information that is vital for a firm’s success.

In real estate, it is important to integrate employee-centered, symmetrical communication into change management in order to yield employees who are engaged in the change process. Our research examines how communication between managers and employees can impact employee engagement, commitment to change, and behavioral support for proposed change.

In addition to winning over potential clients, engaging in value-based selling leads to increased customer retention, growth, and salesperson performance. This study examines the influence of different motivational sources — self, supervisor, customer, and team — to uncover how to motivate and benefit from implementing VBS in your organization.

An apology by a service provider may help restore customer satisfaction to a certain degree, but our research suggests that using a statement of appreciation rather than an apology could increase customer satisfaction even further.

Loonshots are ideas that, at face value, appear to be entirely outlandish, but that have the potential for great success. In Safi Bahcall's Loonshots: Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries, we learn that the vitality of loonshots extends into the board room and is dependent upon careful nurturing and cultivation of these loonshot ideas.

Good leaders understand the people they are leading well enough to know their “language,” which they then use to influence employees’ or followers’ decisions and actions. Learning the language that influences others is particularly important for managers and team leaders and is the focus of Shelle Rose Charvet’s book, Words That Change Minds: The 14 Patterns for Mastering the Language of Influence.

Roughly 50 million businesses have a Facebook profile, and users share more than 2.5 billion comments a month on those business profiles. Consumer engagement with these businesses on social media is a significant marketing goal, and our study explores how businesses’ Facebook posts, both informational and emotional, affect customers’ electronic word-of-mouth.

Is it important for salespeople to like their managers? Research has established that people will do things for people they like, but does this have an impact on a firm’s sales performance? In this research, we examine several steps and practices that can increase your likeability as a manager, which can be a powerful driver of organizational sales performance.

The success of your business depends on how effectively salespeople can influence your clients. In real estate, it is vital to understand how salespeople influence customers and how they can improve those skills. Our research provides additional resources for salespeople to better understand the full set of sales influence tactics at their disposal.

Consumers are faced with more advertisements than ever, leading to consumer fatigue and ineffective marketing strategies. We explain how improvised marketing interventions—highly effective social media actions which utilize quick wit in real time in response to a situation or event—can help you attain a competitive advantage, even in an overly saturated environment like social media.