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Salespeople will be more successful when they understand that the point of selling isn't selling. A salesperson's job is to help his or her customer make a better buying decision.

During the housing crisis, many homeowners continued to ask unreasonably high prices for their homes. This reluctance to lower asking prices created an excess supply of more than 6 million homes.

Do you know that what people say about you on the Internet impacts your business? Having a strong online presence is becoming increasingly important. So, how do you accomplish that?

Professional services sales encounters are a two-way street between the client and the service provider. Such encounters require input from both parties to mutually find the best fitting professional service for the client.

In his book So, You're New to Sales, Bryan Flanagan lays out every detail, step-by-step, that is necessary for the novice to become a professional agent.

Decision making is all too often an aversive experience. In fact, work in cognitive neuroscience shows that decision making is often interpreted in similar ways as actual pain.

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

The buying center is comprised of various individual influences that shape the buyer’s purchase decision. Since a successful selling process is about enabling the buyer to make a quality purchase decision, understanding how to productively manage the buying center’s influences and efficiently guide the decision-making process can be critical to the final buy or no-buy outcome.

Failure can have a profound impact on a salesperson’s effectiveness. Research has shown that failure affects a company’s bottom line through salesperson performance and turnover.

It is well documented that real-estate markets fluctuate over time, but since the financial crisis, real-estate markets have begun to fluctuate across geographic regions as well. One leading contributor to this disparity is public policy that seeks to encourage entrepreneurs and business leaders to locate in a state, or a specific community within a state, over another.

Every relationship has moments that define the expectations and feelings of the individuals in that relationship. Business relationships are no different. Specific events act as fundamental building blocks of those business relationships and are essential in shaping the relationship development.

Standing out from the competition by initially capturing the attention and the imagination of the buyer can oftentimes decide the fate of a sales call. Sometimes referred to as the attention getter or the opener, the theme offered at the beginning of a sales call is vitally important.

People develop attitudes and opinions toward many different things, but we know that not all attitudes guide our behaviors.

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.

Common wisdom and psychological research alike advise that it is critically important to make a good first impression: the human mind is adept at drawing inferences about others from even the slimmest amount of information about their actions or appearance, and these impressions can impact decision-making.

If I were to propose a trade to you, the two statements “My X for your Y” and “Your Y for my X” may appear to be completely equal. However, in a real world negotiation, those two proposals are perceived diffe­rently.

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

A salesperson’s or agent’s toolkit is a set of tools designed to be used together for the purpose of earning a win-win value-adding purchase decision. During an interactive professional sales exchange, several tools are needed to shape and achieve this desired outcome.

To be a master storyteller, a real estate professional must master the customer conversation. In the book "The Three Value Conversations," authors Peterson, Riesterer, Smith, & Geoffrion focus on how to master the customer conversation.

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.

It is said that people hate to spend money, but that they love to buy. But why? Why do we buy what we buy?

Our decision-making processes utilize two systems in our minds that function very differently, yet work together to help us analyze situations and draw conclusions. Dr. Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow explores the interaction between the automatic system and the conscious system...

For real estate professionals, the word value comes up in professional conversations everyday. However, value can oftentimes be very narrowly defined from the firm’s perspective, prompting the agent to miss opportunities to connect the broad definition of value to the real estate purchase experience...

For most people, sales agility is a new term. Top sellers are agile learners who know what it takes to dive into a new situation and figure it out quickly...

Is there a connection between neuroscience and selling real estate? By exploring key functions of the brain's decision-making processes, Simon Hazeldine has discovered a way for sales professionals to increase the likelihood of closing a sale.

Communication, the effective conveying of information, is a critically important buyer-seller activity to achieve successful interpersonal sales performance.

Sellers want to find a good home for their most cherished possessions and may be willing to sacrifice personal profit to ensure that this objective is met. Their willingness to accept an offer can depend on whether they agree or disagree with how the buyer plans to use the product.

Predicting consumer behavior is crucial to success in any business, including real estate. Our research identifies that a key way to predict consumer behavior is through a consumer's level of what is called lay rationalism, which refers to the weight a consumer gives to feelings versus reason in the decision-making process.

Have you ever imagined yourself in an exotic vacation location, experiencing all the benefits of a luxury resort? Real estate agents use strategies while persuading buyers to invest in a house. The implicit belief behind these sales strategies is that consumption-related self-imagery is a powerful persuasion tactic.

How do you convince potential clients that what you’re selling is best?  How do you bridge that gap between real estate salesperson and my real estate agent?  Ron Willingham says it is in how authentic you are with your potential clients.

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.

Acknowledgments and thank yous are given every day in nearly all professions, from real estate to acting to retail shopping.  Though such thank yous are common, people rarely put much thought into how various forms of such acknowledgements might be received differently. 

As much as we might like to think that we are wildly different than everybody else, our DNA is actually 99.9% the same as everyone else’s. We’re 99.9% average. As odd as it may seem, our individuality and personality only makes up .1% of us.

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...

As cognitive beings, we possess a unique ability to recognize and understand non-verbal communication. We have the ability to study and analyze the non-verbal signals of our friends, family and clients, and then use that information to communicate more effectively with each other...

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...

It’s a fairly common experience - that desperate moment when you search the crowd for whoever said your name. We are constantly clued into our names, especially when it’s added to personalized greetings or comments. People use our names as a way of engaging with us and getting our attention...

The effectiveness of salespeople depends on how they interact with customers. Sales organizations recruit and train salespeople so that they can identify and satisfy customer needs in the long-run...

Bridging current academic research and the real estate practitioner audience, the Keller Center Research Report plays uniquely in the knowledge marketplace. Our Keller Center team identifies cutting-edge rigorous research with interesting implications for the real estate market...

On April 30, 1943, at the height of World War II, a fisherman stumbled across a corpse floating in the water off the coast of southwestern Spain. The body was that of an adult male, Major William Martin of the Royal Marines...

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...

This article is written to help “unmask” the qualities of high-performing salespeople in the context of task and time management preferences to help managers and agents achieve the greatest business outcomes. Understanding an agent’s task and time preferences can help increase...

Do you have a balanced work and family life? For many, this question is difficult to answer because the definition of “balance” varies. Regardless of the definition, it is clear that the demands of work can impact an individual’s...

Previously, providing information was a key way that salespeople created value for clients. Now, sales professionals must adapt the value creation process to address changing client needs by...

Efficiency, process improvement, and value creation are not just buzzwords in today’s business world; they have become the foundation for real, sustainable competitive advantage. However, the path to achieving or improving upon these fundamental concepts is not always clear...

When looking to add new agents to your agency, finding individuals who can add value immediately is important. Additionally, finding the right person who will fit your job and your agency will increase the probability of...

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...

Understanding how to push your products, services, and ideas to catch on is essential for success. To do so, users need to discover how to...

For realtors and other providers of professional services, customer referrals are one of the most important sources of new business. As service providers, we want customers saying...

Real estate professionals must understand that it is important to focus on each of the four dimensions of Market Orientation. While maintaining a strong focus on customers, it is equally important to...