Fast-talking, Loud-voiced and Silver-tongued: Patterns of Prosody and Sales Performance
Abstract
Prosody or the way in which we speak carries significance. It has the power to shape perceptions of speakers such as the degree to which they are influential, charismatic or trustworthy. Much of our understanding of prosody explores the link between a speaker and his or her perceived characteristics. Using a unique dataset of 351 phone calls collected from 99 sales reps and potential customer’s phone calls, we extend our understanding of prosody by building measures of prosody for both parties and link these to sales outcomes. We suggest that base patterns of prosody, similarity in prosodic styles and mimicry of the prosodic style of the customer by the sales rep is associated with sales success. We find that the effects of prosody are more nuanced such that the customer’s prosody is more predictive of sales success. This suggests that sales successful may be better indicated by customers’ vocal prosodic features rather than by the prosodic features of sales reps.
Original Publication Citation
Reeves, C. J., Oldroyd, J. B., & Nissen, S. L. (2023). Fast-talking, loud-voiced, and silver-tongued: Patterns of prosody and sales performance. Academy of Management Annual Meeting, Boston
BYU ScholarsArchive Citation
Nissen, Shawn L., "Fast-talking, Loud-voiced and Silver-tongued: Patterns of Prosody and Sales Performance" (2023). Faculty Publications. 7401.
https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/facpub/7401
Document Type
Presentation
Publication Date
2023
Language
English
College
David O. McKay School of Education
Department
Communication Disorders
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