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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.

As market turbulence increases, strain occurs that impacts the customer-salesperson relationship. We examine how a strong foundation of both business and personal trust between the buyer and the seller is essential to building a relationship that can withstand unstable times.

Jacob Brenton, MDiv/MBA In Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business, entrepreneur Paul Jarvis discusses a variety of perspectives on how small business owners and entrepreneurs can redefine success in business, focusing on quality over quantity.

Corrie A. H. Penraat, MBA Candidate In Robert Iger's Ride of a Lifetime, he shares the lessons he learned leading more than 200,000 employees as CEO of The Walt Disney Company for nearly 15 years. Through this journey, he explores the principles necessary for effective leadership in any business venture.

Robert Rietveld, PhD Candidate, Willemijn van Dolen, PhD, Masoud Mazloom, PhD, and Marcel Worring, PhD Do your Instagram posts contain emotional or informative appeals? This research defines the difference and examines which type best influences customer engagement on social media.

Richard G. McFarland, PhD and Andrea L. Dixon, PhD Salespeople are subjected to high levels of stress on a day-to-day basis, which often leads to burnout. In this research, we examine how interpersonal mentalizing skills and oscillating between actively addressing stressors and giving yourself a break can reduce the chances of burnout occurring.

With tight deadlines and sales goals to meet, agents often face temptations to behave unethically in order to get ahead. Our research suggests that unethical behavior actually decreases overall sales performance and that emotional exhaustion increases the likelihood of those unethical behaviors.

Images are likely a key component to your social media strategy, but are you using the right images in the right manner? Our research quantifies the impact of image content and makes recommendations to help increase your client engagement on social media.

Change is inevitable for long-term organizational sustainability, but change management is commonly viewed as a difficult endeavor. Our research identifies and examines two key factors that can increase the odds for success for your firm's change initiatives.

How can you increase sales with no new software, gimmick, or miracle? Our research examines how psychological resourcefulness, characterized by optimism and resilience, will help salesperson performance and the bottom line.

Referrals are an important source of new business for real estate agents, but our study shows that most businesses are not implementing referral incentive programs in the most effective manner.

Whether specializing in the mature market or simply employing lead generation strategies, agents are likely to encounter older adult home sellers. This study examines why older adult couples, who intend to age in place until death, may ultimately elect to sell their home and move into a congregate setting.

In today's socially conscious environment, social responsibility is an increasingly important strategy for business. Our study answers the question of how corporate social responsibility (applied in many businesses today) can lead to financial profitability.

Reaching consumers on Facebook through organic or non-paid advertising has become a challenge. Our research finds a three-part social media viral framework to help you write more engaging posts to reach more buyers.

If you can get 1% better each day for one year, you'll end up 37 times better by the time it's all said and done. In Atomic Habits, James Clear, one of the world's leading experts on habit formation, outlines the framework for getting 1% better every day.

How can companies best manage rapid and constant change in technology? We explore The Technology Fallacy, which suggests that managing technological disruption is not about managing technology at all—it is about managing people.

Your Twitter followers can be some of your best brand ambassadors, but are you actually capturing their attention with your tweets? Our study analyzes whether the occurrence of topic-related words at the beginning of the tweet affects your number of retweets.

Profits are essential to managing a business, but can an emphasis on the bottom-line impact employees? Our research examines how supervisors with high bottom-line mentality garner negative perceptions from employees, leading to decreased employee performance.

Does your firm have a greater responsibility outside of your legal obligations and goals? As corporations grow a sense of social responsibility, our research investigates the impact of philanthropy, environmental sustainability, customer respect, and worker respect on customer loyalty.

Living a happier life takes work. We examine Shawn Achor's seven principles that can lead you to have a "happiness advantage" in your personal life and your real estate career.

Like all infinite games, in the game of life, the goal should never be to win, but instead to perpetuate the game. This article summarizes how to adopt the five essential practices necessary to adopt an infinite mindset in order to perpetuate the infinite game of business.

A customer’s problem is the opportunity for the salesperson to create value for customers. This research investigates how the buyer-seller relationship is affected by the effectiveness of the salesperson’s ability to coordinate internal resources.

The market for ambient scents is growing rapidly, and research reveals that pleasant ambient scents have a positive influence on consumers’ brand perceptions. We further examine how repeated subconsciously processed ambient scents enhance your potential homebuyers’ evaluation of their service experience.

Do you use charisma to convey messages in a convincing manner to charm your clients? Our findings show that specific, learnable, and culturally appropriate displays of charismatic behavior can enhance client impressions and ultimately increase sales.

Internet addiction is regarded as a growing health concern in many parts of the world. Our research examines how social media can drain resources in the workplace and how employees react to social media posts by their colleagues, ultimately impacting job performance.

Even as U.S. companies spend more than $900 billion on building sales forces, salesperson turnover has reached 27%, and average tenures are as short as two years. This article addresses how your firm can help new agents successfully gain entry into a network of interconnected contacts.

Although much research has been focused on a salesperson’s externally directed behavior, we found that political skill and intrinsic motivation have effects on adaptive selling and sales performance. In light of this evidence, we recommend that every sales manager assist his/her salespeople with developing these intrapreneurial abilities.

With the quick availability of online listings and resources, some buyers may feel they no longer need the specialized services of a real estate agent. Have you considered how the content and design of your web site might help you reclaim competitive advantage, while connecting with potential clients on a deeper level?

Today, email is the standard method of business communication, but traditional emails are not always effective at allowing your personality to shine through. In Rehumanize Your Business, authors Ethan Beute and Steve Pacinelli examine how adding a personal video element to your emails can help generate leads and increase sales.

In their book Conversational Marketing, authors David Cancel and Dave Gerhardt share why online conversational marketing creates a better, more natural, and more profitable sales climate.

Studies have shown that service-related jobs, like those in real estate, can have negative impact on employees, including burnout and decreased motivation, leading to higher employee turnover. Our research examines how agencies and managers can lessen these impacts on their employees and decrease turnover within their organization.

Entrepreneurs typically enjoy higher levels of job and life satisfaction. However, in contrast to the benefits, entrepreneurs may also experience high stress and longer working hours, while also fearing lower income. In this study, we examine how autonomy mediates the relationship between entrepreneurship and personal well-being.

When you post social media content is just as important as what you post. In this article, we examine the impacts of social media posts based on time of day, emotionality of your content, and the results of boosting posts.

Most people think genius is an unmerited inheritance for a few lucky people, but what if genius could be learned? Moreover, what if it could be learned quickly? In Ultralearning, Scott Young arms his readers with the principles for becoming self-made experts in a skill set they want to develop in less time than is expected.

Virality is the new ad currency. The key driver of virality is sharing of videos, but what drives sharing among your followers? Our research reveals that sharing is not a matter of luck or art, but it can be ascertained by scientific research. In this article, we examine what type of videos you should create to maximize sharing of and virality of your ads.

Improving sales force morale can be a valuable strategy to enhance job performance and reduce employee turnover. Despite the benefits that can come from high morale, little is known about what factors impact it. We examine what market demands impact morale and what resources you can leverage to boost morale in your organization.

Candidate In today’s real estate environment, it isn’t often you get a chance to just be still and breathe. The demands of multitasking and meeting deadlines under extreme pressure never seem to stop. In Sandy Abrams’ Breathe to Succeed, we learn how breath, self-awareness, and small changes in our daily routine can be a big part of our overall individual wellness solution, which can, in turn, lead to increased creativity, positivity, and productivity.

With modern technology, you may think we are connected with each other more now more than ever. Yet, in many ways, we have never been so disconnected. Our research set out to learn more about the psychological effects of smartphone use on well-being.

Your clients are more informed now than ever when making purchase decisions. Our research offers insights on applicable adaptive sales techniques based on the consumers’ perceived informedness about high-involvement purchases.

At every firm, there are employees who will adhere to a strict ethical standard and those who value performance above all else. Our team examined what happens when there are disparities in ethical practice and job performance between employees and how ethics may have unintended consequences on the social landscape of your office.

Do you have the right social strategy to reach the right people? In his book One Million Followers, author Brendan Kane examines concepts and processes that are simple and require no major investment—but that have proven to build social media followings in the millions.

As a real estate agent, you're familiar with managing your own business. In this Insider article, we explore Cliff Lerner’s Explosive Growth strategies to help you grow your real estate business and stay ahead of the competition.

Customers referred by other customers are the best kind. Our research conclusions shed light on why referred customers are more valuable and can also help firms and real estate agents maximize the benefits of customer referrals.

Social media has become increasingly important in driving sales. Our research suggests that understanding who receives your outreach is just as necessary as what you post.

Understanding the attitudes and emotions behind work environments is paramount to leadership success. In this article, we examine Simon Sinek's Leaders Eat Last and explore how building a "circle of safety" can benefit your real estate firm.

According to Shark Tank's Daymond John, grit and determination are invaluable to business success. In this article, we examine the real estate applications of Rise and Grind to help you successfully grow your business.

Humility is necessary to reach the heights of success. Recognizing there are gaps in your knowledge, being open to that realization, and working humbly to learn more is a hallmark of intellectual humility and a starting point for greatness for you and your team.

People understand ideas better when they are close and connected to a source of information. This research suggests using easy to handle media, appropriate detail, and physical distance may help captivate audiences and increase your outreach effectiveness.

Voice and tone are powerful ways to differentiate connotation, importance, and legitimacy of your messaging. Finding the right balance will make your social media campaigns that much more effective in connecting with customers and reaching the right audience.

Many U.S. employees believe working from home—or at least away from the office—can bring freedom and stress-free job satisfaction. But our recent research says, not so fast.

Through five studies, we explored the impact of using I, we, and you pronouns on purchase behaviors and customer satisfaction in sales and service interactions. What we found challenges conventional wisdom and practice when it comes to talking to customers.

Stress is a national epidemic and is especially problematic among real estate professionals, manifesting in the second highest rates of anxiety and depression among all occupations. Ultimately, your business depends upon your ability to manage your stress, and our research points to some novel ways to help.

Relationships are multidimensional and have external social factors acting on them to make them stronger or break them down. Therefore, it is imperative, especially in buyer-seller relationships, to utilize both similarities and differences between individuals to strengthen the relationship.

Networking can be a difficult issue for real estate professionals, and navigating that reality is key to successfully expanding professional ties to produce benefit for a firm, client, or project. This research examines how individuals' mindsets about networking affect their motivation to engage in networking.

A critical success factor in the salesperson-customer relationship is cooperation. The purpose of this research is to analyze how salespeople’s actual cooperation efforts influence how customers perceive cooperation, and how customer-perceived cooperation influences relationship outcomes.

Have you ever found yourself in a difficult situation because you went along with what your peers asked of you? In situations like this, assertiveness is the key to getting unstuck from other people’s routines and unlocking your own motivators to do what YOU want for the reasons YOU deem important.

As a real estate agent, you’re likely familiar with networking—but how can you stand out when everyone else is familiar with it, too? In his book, Show Up: Unlocking the Power of Relational Networking, author David France provides personal stories and applicable advice to help improve your networking strategy.

Research from the Keller Center for Research shows how empowering leadership actually helps reduce employee cynicism and boosts productivity.

It's not unusual to put in a 60-80 work week, with many of those hours worked at home after hours. But have you considered how your working from home may affect your spouse's work productivity?

Xuehua Wang, PhD and Hean Tat Keh, PhD There are many possible applications of cross-selling for real estate, all of which have the potential to add value for the client and the agent. This article examines why some consumers are more susceptible to cross selling and how you can create a win-win for yourself and the buyer.

Zachary R. Hall, PhD, Ryan R. Mullins, PhD, Niladri Syam, PhD, and Jeffrey P. Boichuk, PhD Understanding the changing dynamics of customers and competitors in your market is a cornerstone for maintained success. This information, known as market intelligence, helps improve decision-making, especially in real estate. But how do we utilize it in an agency context to bolster sales?