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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Arjun Azavedo, MBA Candidate In his book, The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle draws from a unique range of anecdotes and experiences to display how finding similarities in diverse groups can aid in effective leadership and communication.

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?

To remain competitive, salespeople must provide excellent service while still reaching their sales quotas. When these two ideas converge, sales-service ambidexterity is achieved. But how can sales managers encourage their sales associates to reach this medium?

It is widely recognized that political skill enables employees to secure valuable resources within their own companies and to promote positive outcomes with customers. In this article, we examine the effect of political skill in the sales context and draw conclusions for real estate professionals.

In this article, we study the relationship between ethical leadership and employee deviance and turnover intentions, considering the role of hindrance stress from the leader and the job. Our findings show that ethical leaders who also impose additional demands are perceived to miss the mark in providing proper social support are likely to have deviant or withdrawing employees.

Buyer and seller markets are now comprised of multiple generations that not only see the world differently, but also value vastly different lifestyles. While the differences between generations provide obstacles to overcome, it is also important to recognize the accessibility, innovation and collaboration these differences provide for the workplace.

What kind of relationships do you have with those who report to you and with your own boss? We study these relationships in conjunction with empowering leadership to suggest that the better these relationships are, the better position leaders are in to positively influence their employees.

Research shows that men and women network differently and benefit differently from networking. In our research, we examine different types of networking benefits for female and male real estate professionals which allows us to offer suggestions for more effective networking.

Stigma is inherently problematic for any worker but is particularly detrimental for real estate agents and other sales representatives. Stigma can be detrimental to agents because job performance and personal well-being depend greatly on favorable interactions with customers.

Firms often prioritize frontline employee job satisfaction, hoping that satisfied employees will lead to satisfied customers. In real estate, this implies that improvements in agent satisfaction are expected to increase client satisfaction. According to our research, these agencies may be missing an important opportunity.

The need for fantastic sales professionals is greater today than ever before. Increasingly, clients demand sales professionals provide exceptional customer service that coincides with meeting those desired results. To this, motivation is key.

Have you ever felt insecure in your career? Have you ever doubted your ability to fulfill your job duties? If so, you are certainly not the only one in your field experiencing these emotions. While most are unwilling to admit their insecurity or discuss their self-doubt with their peers, insecurity is common among sales professionals.

Forgiving a transgressor plays a monumental role in team or group dynamics. At a team level, forgiveness can impact the cohesiveness of the team or collective action.

The modern real estate agent's business relationships today transcend obvious interactions with customers and now also include the internal business team and external business partners. The successful agent must skillfully manage these three relationships to complete the transaction.

Many people are driven to perform and succeed, especially when that drive comes from competition to outperform others. Competition and personal performance can be beneficial traits to people in performance-driven professions. But, how do people alter their drive to compete when they become members of a team?

In the book, A Beautiful Constraint, the authors, Adam Morgan and Mark Barden, take us through a series of real-world examples that show how constraints can positively impact a project and, in turn, help develop successful sustainable solutions.

Salespeople with higher levels of emotional intelligence (EI) are better salespeople, right? After investing a great deal in the training of EI, firms are starting to wonder if those investments are well spent.

It’s no secret that a positive outlook can have dramatic impacts on a person’s day-to-day activities. In fact, according to the Mayo Clinic, positive thinking can result in increased life span, lower rates of depression, and better psychological and physical well-being.

Salespeople’s roles are far from failure-proof. In fact, approximately 50% of salespeople fail to reach their annual sales targets.

For sales professionals in real estate and other industries, life in the digital world presents numerous challenges. Since mobile devices are the norm, work extends far outside the boundaries of the office and expectations are high for immediate response.

For real estate professionals, success is measured by performance – how many homes you sell or how many customers you reach. One thing, however, is certain – the real estate industry is complex and requires strong motivation to remain successful.

One of the most important issues associated with building a high-powered real-estate organization is hiring the right people. According to the 2012 Economic Census there were just over 86,000 offices of real estate agents or brokers in the United States. How can your agency rise to the top of this crowded field?

There's no doubt that trust impacts an organization's reputation and culture. Building and growing trust in the workplace can lead to great success for an organization, rooted in employee satisfaction and genuine, authentic interactions among supervisors, employees, and customers.

The old adage tells us that the customer is always right, but does the customer always feel in control?

Sales professionals make judgments of their customers' preferences and tastes throughout the selling process – at times without being conscious they are doing so. These judgments enable effective selling.

The average worker would agree that breaks, although not necessary, are helpful in making a workday more manageable and possibly enjoyable. Research has shown the benefits of evenings, weekends, and vacations on employee health and performance, but surprisingly little research has investigated breaks during the actual workday itself.

Recent academic research shows that two types of salesperson or agent behaviors play important roles in creating successful sales organizations. The question motivating our research is: what can the people who lead sales groups do to further encourage these behaviors?

Complexity threatens organizational competitiveness. Nearly 70% of executives attribute rising costs to excessive complexity, and many firms are aggressively combating complexity...

Michael L. Mallin, PhD Sales managers have a vested interest in hiring, developing, and retaining sales professionals who have a propensity to be proactive since research shows proactive behaviors among salespeople as a key factor in generating higher levels of sales performance.

Companies spend over $3,300 per hire on recruiting and the cost of not recruiting well results in poor performance, dissatisfied employees and high turnover. Little research has addressed sales force recruiting at this stage of career and the motivations of a millennial salesforce in their job searches.

When entering the work force, new employees face a learning curve associated with their new positions. Real estate agents face the task of establishing themselves as a credible assets in the community and understanding the dynamics of working with clients.

When it comes to the art of selling, there are two sharply opposed views: some view salespeople as individuals who are born with the "right" attributes, who can easily sell different products and move from firm to firm with little difficulty, no matter what is being sold.

With the advancement in storage technology and the rise of Internet and social media, more and more information is becoming readily available to both customers and agencies. Today, customers are able to get almost all the information they need to make a purchase decision through websites both of the focal company and their competitors, feedback and ratings of other customers and users, through blogs, online product reviews and social media...

Salespeople constantly seek ways to communicate persuasively. Storytelling is a type of communication that you and I use every day. It is so common you may not even think about it when telling or hearing a story. Stories are such an important part of the fabric of human communications that failing to use them effectively in sales can be a serious handicap...

The real estate industry is fiercely competitive. Since the 1990s it has not only been a competition between individual agents but one between agents and realtor teams...

Are extraverts are the best candidates for sales positions? Despite the proliferation of this assumption in numerous sales organizations, studies have shown that there is a weak and inconsistent relationship between extraversion and sales performance. In fact, recent studies indicate that...