Fredrik Eklund
Most commercial teams are not losing to better products. They are losing to better sellers, and to rivals who have learned to build a personal brand that opens doors before a pitch begins. Leaders want their salespeople, founders, and client-facing executives to act like owners of the relationship, not order-takers, yet sales culture in most organisations still rewards process over presence. The problem is not motivation. It is a missing operating model for how individuals actually win trust, attention, and the close in markets where every competitor looks credible on paper.
Fredrik Eklund is a Swedish-born New York real estate broker, bestselling author of The Sell, and keynote speaker who teaches sales teams, founders, and client-facing leaders how to build a personal brand that closes deals in crowded markets.
Full Profile
Why organisations work with Fredrik Eklund
- He has built and scaled one of the highest-grossing residential real estate teams in the United States, with $4.6B in sales in 2022 and $3.77B in 2023, so his advice on client acquisition and closing is grounded in operator-scale results rather than theory.
- The Sell, his New York Times bestselling book with Penguin’s Avery imprint, gives audiences a named, testable ten-step framework for personal selling and pitching, which turns the keynote into a tool the team can use on Monday.
- A decade on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York gave him unusual fluency in performing under pressure and building a personal brand in public, a capability most commercial leaders are now being asked to develop themselves.
- He speaks from a dual-market perspective, having built businesses in both Stockholm and Manhattan and having worked previously at SEB across London, Singapore, and Tokyo, which plays well with global sales audiences who want more than a US-only view.
- His core argument, that everyone in a client-facing organisation is already in sales whether they realise it or not, lands with audiences beyond the sales team itself, including founders, partners, and professional-services leaders.
Biography highlights
- Co-founder, with John Gomes, of the Eklund Gomes Team at Douglas Elliman, reported as the top-producing residential real estate team in the US in recent years.
- Author of The Sell: The Secrets of Selling Anything to Anyone (Avery, 2015), a New York Times bestseller also released in Sweden and the UK.
- Original cast member of Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York from its 2012 launch through 2022, across nine seasons of MDLNY and two seasons of Million Dollar Listing Los Angeles.
- Co-star of Bravo’s Bethenny and Fredrik spin-off with Bethenny Frankel in 2018.
- Recipient, with John Gomes, of Douglas Elliman’s 2021 ICON Award for cumulative career sales of over $15B.
- Background in finance at SEB in Stockholm, London, Singapore, and Tokyo, and studies at the Stockholm School of Economics, before relocating to New York to build his real estate career from scratch.
Biography
The Eklund Gomes Team at Douglas Elliman closed $4.6B in residential real estate in 2022 and $3.77B in 2023, figures that place it near the top of any serious ranking of US real estate teams. Fredrik Eklund co-founded that business with John Gomes. The scale matters because it is the evidence base for everything he says on stage about sales, client trust, and building a personal brand in a market where every competitor looks equally credible on paper.
Eklund arrived in Manhattan in his mid-twenties with a finance CV from SEB in Stockholm, London, Singapore, and Tokyo, and no real estate contacts. Within a year he was nominated for Rookie of the Year by the Real Estate Board of New York. The through line from that start to today’s team is a clear operating idea: in commoditised markets, the product is the seller. The Sell, published by Penguin’s Avery imprint in 2015 and a New York Times bestseller, sets out that idea as a ten-step framework covering authenticity, pitch construction, negotiation, and closing.
A decade on Bravo’s Million Dollar Listing New York, from its 2012 premiere through his departure in 2022, turned Eklund into one of the most recognisable sales figures in American business media. It also taught him something less obvious that keynote audiences value. Senior people in client-facing roles, founders, partners, and relationship leaders, are now expected to carry a visible public profile. Eklund has been practising that craft, on camera and at scale, longer than most.
For corporate audiences, the argument lands most sharply on two questions leaders are already asking. How do we train our best people to behave like owners of the client relationship rather than executors of a process, and how do we build the kind of personal credibility that moves a deal before the pitch starts. Eklund answers both from inside a live commercial operation, not from a classroom.
Key speaking topics
- Personal selling and the close
- Personal brand for commercial leaders
- Client acquisition in commoditised markets
- Sales culture and high-performance teams
- Entrepreneurship and business building
- Negotiation and pitch craft
- Real estate and luxury markets
Ideal for
- Sales kick-offs and revenue leadership offsites, particularly in financial services, real estate, professional services, and luxury sectors
- Partner, MD, and client-facing leader events where personal brand and relationship ownership are on the agenda
- Founder, entrepreneur, and growth-stage audiences building a commercial operation from scratch
- After-dinner and awards-night formats where a high-recognition keynote with commercial substance is wanted
Audience outcomes
- A named ten-step framework from The Sell that teams can map directly onto their own pitch, pipeline, and closing process
- A sharper sense of what “personal brand” means in practical, revenue-linked terms, rather than as a social media activity
- Specific tactics for opening, holding, and closing a high-stakes client conversation in a commoditised market
- A harder view of what separates a top-tier sales operation from an average one, drawn from inside a team that has closed billions in annual volume
- Energy and confidence that translates into action the following week, not a feel-good moment that fades
Talks
A keynote built on Eklund’s core argument that whatever the job title, anyone who depends on client trust is already selling, and the people who understand that win more of the deals that matter.
Key takeaways:
- Why sales skill is now a leadership skill, not a specialist function
- How to audit and sharpen the personal brand that enters the room before you do
- What high-performance sales teams do differently on the first, middle, and final contact with a client
A keynote drawn from his New York Times bestselling book, translating the ten-step framework into tactics for pitch, negotiation, and close.
Key takeaways:
- A practical ten-step model for preparing, pitching, and closing in competitive markets
- Authenticity and positioning as sales tools, not soft skills
- Negotiation habits that protect price and preserve the relationship