
The matchmaking secrets for high-performing teams
Advertisement
Boosting productivity by building high-performing teams is a key survival strategy for companies in tough economic times, and few sectors have faced tougher conditions over recent years than the real estate industry. But how exactly do you mix and match staff with different characteristics and performance levels to create more effective teams, especially when managers have to assign jobs on the spot or have no effective way of assessing the qualities employees possess that are critical to teamwork, such as soft skills?
A new study has introduced a quantitative approach for making the best matches between real estate agents with widely differing latent characteristics and performance levels to build teams with the greatest likelihood of completing property deals.
Entitled Heterogeneous complementarity and team design: The case of real estate agents, the study was conducted by Mandy Hu Mantian, Associate Professor of the Department of Marketing at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) Business School, in collaboration with Yan Xu of Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Chu Junhong of the University of Hong Kong, and Andrew Ching of Johns Hopkins University.
Advertisement
It found that real estate firms could boost the number of deals they successfully conclude on sales and rentals if they restructure the agent teams following the quantitative approach. As real estate agencies typically earn a commission based on a percentage of the property's sale price, even a small increase in successful deals can translate into significant revenue.
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


South China Morning Post
4 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Taobao's daily on-demand orders soar as China's instant e-commerce war heats up
The Taobao figures were released a day after rival Meituan reported record orders for its instant delivery service Alibaba Group Holding is seeing a rapid acceleration in the volume of on-demand delivery transactions, the latest sign of growing rivalry with Meituan and in China's instant e-commerce market. Combined daily orders on Taobao Instant Commerce – the company's latest push into on-demand delivery – and food delivery app reached 80 million, Taobao said on its official WeChat account on Monday. Daily active users on Taobao Instant Commerce surpassed 200 million. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The figures were released a day after Meituan, Alibaba's bigger rival in the on-demand delivery sector, announced it had achieved record orders for its instant delivery service. On Saturday, Meituan said daily transaction volume covering food and retail goods had reached an all-time high of 120 million, briefly crashing its servers in certain areas. The Alibaba figures reflect the rapid progress achieved by Taobao Instant Commerce, which was launched in late April as the company's answer to Meituan's Instashopping and food delivery service. The service reached 10 million daily orders within its first week and 40 million within the first month. A group of Meituan food delivery couriers wait for new orders on March 22, 2025 in Chongqing, China. Transaction volumes have accelerated over the past few weeks as e-commerce players started to offer more discounts and subsidies to boost consumption during the peak summer season. It took the platform nearly a month to grow daily orders from 40 million to 60 million, but just 12 days to gain another 20 million. Alibaba, which is seeking new growth beyond its traditional e-commerce business, has been betting big on on-demand delivery. It just announced a consumer and merchant subsidy programme totalling 50 billion yuan (US$7 billion) that will run over the next 12 months. Newsletter Saturday China Future Tech By submitting, you consent to receiving marketing emails from SCMP. If you don't want these, tick here {{message}} Thanks for signing up for our newsletter! Please check your email to confirm your subscription. Follow us on Facebook to get our latest news. Last month, it announced the merger of and its online travel agency Fliggy into its core e-commerce operations, describing the move as a 'strategic upgrade from an e-commerce platform to a comprehensive consumer platform'. 'Synergies between food delivery, instant commerce and traditional commerce are [the] next focus,' Jefferies analysts said in a research note on Sunday about Alibaba's latest order figures. Alibaba reiterated that its strategy was to avoid 'involution', referring to increasingly intense competition that leads to diminishing returns, a phenomenon seen across various parts of Chinese society in recent years, raising concerns from the central government. The rapid growth of Taobao Instant Commerce has elevated the market size of China's instant delivery sector, boosting the total daily order volume across different platforms from around 100 million in May to 200 million, Alibaba said.


The Standard
4 hours ago
- The Standard
Hong Kong stocks rise as Middle East tensions ease
The Hang Seng Index added 185 points, or about 0.77 percent, to 24,362 points by noon. SING TAO


South China Morning Post
5 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Taobao's daily on-demand orders soar as China's instant e-commerce war heats up
Alibaba Group Holding is seeing a rapid acceleration in the volume of on-demand delivery transactions, the latest sign of growing rivalry with Meituan and in China's instant e-commerce market. Combined daily orders on Taobao Instant Commerce – the company's latest push into on-demand delivery – and food delivery app reached 80 million, Taobao said on its official WeChat account on Monday. Daily active users on Taobao Instant Commerce surpassed 200 million. Alibaba owns the South China Morning Post. The figures were released a day after Meituan, Alibaba's bigger rival in the on-demand delivery sector, announced it had achieved record orders for its instant delivery service. On Saturday, Meituan said daily transaction volume covering food and retail goods had reached an all-time high of 120 million, briefly crashing its servers in certain areas. The Alibaba figures reflect the rapid progress achieved by Taobao Instant Commerce, which was launched in late April as the company's answer to Meituan's Instashopping and food delivery service. The service reached 10 million daily orders within its first week and 40 million within the first month. A group of Meituan food delivery couriers wait for new orders on March 22, 2025 in Chongqing, China. Transaction volumes have accelerated over the past few weeks as e-commerce players started to offer more discounts and subsidies to boost consumption during the peak summer season. It took the platform nearly a month to grow daily orders from 40 million to 60 million, but just 12 days to gain another 20 million.