Research Report

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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 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. 

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.