Tell me more: How salespeople encourage customer disclosure

Abstract

This paper explores salesperson-customer interactions to identify actual behaviors that result in enhanced customer disclosure and classify them as disclosure tactics, and to explore whether certain tactics are more likely to lead to salesperson-customer relationship advancement.

This qualitative research uses conversation analysis to identify salesperson disclosure tactics that result in customer disclosure, using twelve video-recordings of authentic B2B initial sales meetings between a salesperson and customer.

Findings showed four disclosure tactics that salespeople use to get customers to disclose information: embedded expertise claims, tailored references, demonstrations of preparation and customer-orientation and benevolence. These tactics appear more often and are executed differently in sales meetings that successfully advance. The research addresses an unexplored area of specific salesperson behaviors and their connection to customer disclosure and relationship advancement in the exploration phase. Additionally, we fill a gap than cannot be addressed with traditional survey or interview data, and bring conversation analysis to this particular area.