Browse Archives by Keyword

Many teams remain stuck in inefficient systems and habits that limit real progress. In Reset: How to Change What’s Not Working, Dan Heath offers a practical approach for breaking through stagnation by identifying small, strategic shifts that can unlock outsized results. He shows how to “restack” existing resources around what truly matters by cutting waste, aligning work with motivation, and empowering teams to act with ownership in order to create meaningful, lasting change without requiring more resources.

Disruption is inevitable in today’s real estate market, but it can also create opportunities for growth and innovation. In this research, we explore how adaptive selling and creativity help sales professionals navigate challenges like economic uncertainty, technological change, and shifting buyer behavior. Surprisingly, our research also reveals that micromanagement, often viewed negatively, can actually support agents during chaotic market conditions when used strategically.

Why do some agents embrace coaching while others resist it—even when they are highly motivated to succeed? Our research suggests the answer may have less to do with effort and more to do with how coaching is actually delivered. This article explores how managerial vulnerability—leaders openly admitting mistakes, uncertainty, and lessons learned—can make agents more receptive to feedback and more willing to improve.

What you share outside of work may say more about your professionalism than you think. New research reveals that meaningful hobbies and leisure activities—like hiking, woodworking, or cooking—can actually enhance how competent and capable clients perceive you to be. For newer professionals in particular, these personal details can help build credibility and connection when experience alone may not yet speak for itself.

Competition is part of every sales environment, but not all rivalry leads to success. In this article, we explore how envy can either motivate sales professionals to improve or drive destructive workplace behaviors that hurt performance and culture. Discover the difference between benign and malicious envy—and how agents, managers, and brokerages can channel competition into growth, collaboration, and stronger results.

Salespeople spend hours each week seeking advice—but in competitive environments, that advice isn’t always freely given or equally helpful. This research reveals how individual and team incentives quietly shape who seeks advice, who shares it, and when it actually improves performance. Drawing on data from hundreds of salespeople, our findings expose a paradox: incentives designed to motivate success can unintentionally limit collaboration, which is a critical component of sales success.

Sales success is deeply tied to self-esteem, yet most traditional self-esteem measures overlook the realities of modern sales roles. This research offers a new, sales-specific self-esteem model that captures how identity, task confidence, and relationship dynamics shape success. Real estate firms can use these insights to strengthen agent engagement, boost performance, and build a more resilient sales force.

Salespeople face relentless pressure, and new research shows how that stress directly impacts their mental health, performance, and well-being. This study reveals which organizational resources—and access to mental health care—most effectively protect sales teams from burnout while boosting engagement and results. The insights provide a practical framework for firms and managers to build a healthier, more resilient, and higher-performing salesforce.

Why do we put off simple tasks, even the ones that take just a few minutes? Our research reveals that procrastination isn’t just about poor time management, but rather, people rarely consider how long a task will actually take when deciding whether to delay it. By making task duration clear and concrete, we show that individuals are more likely to take timely action—an insight with powerful implications for sales and real estate.

Loneliness isn’t just a personal struggle—it’s a hidden business risk. When salespeople feel isolated, their performance suffers, and the ripple effects can damage customer relationships and revenue. This research uncovers how loneliness fuels insecurity, rejection sensitivity, and counterproductive behaviors—and what managers can do to break the cycle.

Dan Sullivan and Dr. Ben Hardy’s book, Who Not How, details the benefits of expanding your horizons through teamwork. The fundamental idea posed in the book is a mentality shift from “How can I accomplish this?” to “Who can help me achieve this?” The authors encourage readers to find the Whos—those who can accomplish what you need more effectively than you can on your own. 

Salesforce turnover is a major challenge for organizations that leads to increased organizational costs. In this research, we examine if there is a connection between a salesperson’s role focus—whether attracting new sales and new customers (hunting) or maintaining and developing existing business (farming)—salesperson career aspirations, and salesperson turnover intention.

Remote work requires supervisor and subordinate interactions to occur via technology, and as a result, there is uncertainty regarding how companies can foster ethical values and work environments when interactions are virtual. Our research aimed to investigate the impact of remote supervision on ethical sales leadership and employee outcomes. Specifically, we sought to understand the extent to which ethical sales leadership can be perceived when supervised remotely. 

Emotional exhaustion in the workplace is an increasingly prevalent concern and often emerges from lengthy exposure to job stressors, such as high workloads, tight deadlines, and the persistent need to manage  emotions while adhering to job demands. Although the effects of emotional exhaustion on our home and social life are important to understand, our research focuses on how emotional exhaustion increases or is mitigated at the workplace and throughout the workday. 

Interpersonal aggression is a relational process where the perpetrator acts in an antagonistic or hostile manner towards a victim. It is a serious issue for the work environment, affecting employee psychological and physical well-being, job satisfaction, and performance. Despite widespread understanding of this issue, research still hasn’t determined all antecedents for enacting aggressively at work. In our study, we hypothesize that one’s attachment style and competitive orientation determine whether or not one acts aggressively toward others. 

An important question for organizational citizenship is when and for whom is receiving help beneficial? In organizations, “help” is a prototypical citizenship behavior that can improve relationships among coworkers and contribute to organizational-level outcomes. Despite the general positive perspective regarding helping in the workplace, there are downsides, especially from the recipient’s perspective. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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. 

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. 

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.