By Mike Tamulevich, COO, Marketplace Homes
People talk about top performers a lot, and most of what gets said is fluff. Resumes stack up buzzwords. Interviews are full of frameworks and personal brands. None of it tells you whether the person across the table can actually do the job when it counts. Strip all of that away and what is left is much simpler than anyone wants to admit: a top performer is someone who is confident in what they do, and who does it the same way every time.
That is it. Not a fancier algorithm. Not a better pitch deck. Confidence and consistency.
A Lesson From My First Firm
I learned this early, back when I was starting out in the wire house world at Merrill Lynch. A VP of Investments sat me down one day and told me something I have never forgotten. He said if the two of us were ever pitching the same client, he would win the business every time.
It was not because he had a better product or a sharper analysis. It was because he was confident in what the client actually needed, and when the client pushed back, he did not fold. He reinforced his position with facts and data and held his ground. He told me exactly what a new advisor would do in that same moment: bend. Shift the recommendation to match whatever the client seemed to want to hear, just to keep the conversation comfortable.
That single conversation shaped how I think about performance ever since.
Comfortable Is Not the Job
In this business, and in most businesses worth being in, you are sometimes going to deliver news people do not want to hear. A market shifted. A number did not come in the way someone hoped. A plan needs to change. The easy path is to soften it until it is not really true anymore, just to avoid the discomfort of the moment. The top performer does not do that. They show up with the same conviction whether the news is good or bad, back it up with facts, and let the client respect the honesty even when they do not love the answer.
That is the gold standard: showing up every single day with the confidence to advise, not just to please.
Mistakes Are Part of the Job
We work in an industry that is rarely perfect. Deals fall through, timelines slip, a builder’s schedule moves, financing hits a snag nobody saw coming. Anyone who tells you they run a business without mistakes is not being honest with you. We do not expect our team to be perfect, and we do not expect them to never make a mistake. What we expect is that they learn from it.
The standard I hold our team to is simple. If you do not know the right way to handle something, ask. If you are not sure what to do in the moment, do the right thing for the client or the resident in front of you and sort out the process afterward. Asking a question or making an honest mistake while trying to do right by someone is never a problem here. What does not fly is guessing your way through something you should have asked about, or letting pride get in the way of picking up the phone and saying I am not sure, help me get this right.
Coachable Beats Know-It-All
None of this means you need to walk in the door with all the answers. Nobody does, no matter what their resume says. The trait I value just as much as confidence is being coachable. You do not need to know everything on day one. What you need is the willingness to learn from the people around you who are there to support you and make you better.
I have seen plenty of people come in with polish and confidence built on nothing, and the moment feedback shows up, they get defensive instead of getting better. That is a dead end. The people who actually turn into top performers are the ones who take correction without taking it personally, who ask questions instead of guessing, and who treat every piece of feedback as one more rep toward doing the job the right way, every time. Confidence without coachability calcifies. Coachability is what turns early confidence into the real thing.
What We Actually Look For
This is why, when we build our team, we are not hunting for the most impressive résumé in the pile. We are looking for people who are consistent and confident in what they do, and who stay coachable while they get there. Someone who does things the right way every time, and who is still willing to learn, will beat someone with a longer list of credentials and no backbone, every single time. Jargon does not close deals or keep clients. Conviction does, and it has to be backed by real facts, not bravado, and paired with the humility to keep improving.
If you want to know whether someone will be a top performer, do not ask them to describe their process. Watch what they do the day it would be easier to bend.
Transactions are the result; relationships are the reason.