{"title":"The Anatomy of First-Time and Subsequent Business-to-Business “Cold” Calls","authors":"Bogdana Humă, E. Stokoe","doi":"10.1080/08351813.2020.1739432","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"ABSTRACT This article examines business-to-business “cold” calls between salespeople and prospective clients. Drawing on 150 audio-recorded interactions, we use conversation analysis to identify the overarching structural organization and constituent activities in first-time and subsequent “cold” calls, a distinction that emerged from participants’ orientation to their relationship history or lack thereof. The article reveals how structural features of telephone conversations, such as identification sequences and “reason for calling,” are adapted to achieve local interactional results and that these conversational microstructures are consequential for the outcome of the telephone call and, ultimately, a company’s bottom line. Data are British English.","PeriodicalId":51484,"journal":{"name":"Research on Language and Social Interaction","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.0000,"publicationDate":"2020-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1080/08351813.2020.1739432","citationCount":"5","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Research on Language and Social Interaction","FirstCategoryId":"98","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/08351813.2020.1739432","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"COMMUNICATION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 5
Abstract
ABSTRACT This article examines business-to-business “cold” calls between salespeople and prospective clients. Drawing on 150 audio-recorded interactions, we use conversation analysis to identify the overarching structural organization and constituent activities in first-time and subsequent “cold” calls, a distinction that emerged from participants’ orientation to their relationship history or lack thereof. The article reveals how structural features of telephone conversations, such as identification sequences and “reason for calling,” are adapted to achieve local interactional results and that these conversational microstructures are consequential for the outcome of the telephone call and, ultimately, a company’s bottom line. Data are British English.
期刊介绍:
The journal publishes the highest quality empirical and theoretical research bearing on language as it is used in interaction. Researchers in communication, discourse analysis, conversation analysis, linguistic anthropology and ethnography are likely to be the most active contributors, but we welcome submission of articles from the broad range of interaction researchers. Published papers will normally involve the close analysis of naturally-occurring interaction. The journal is also open to theoretical essays, and to quantitative studies where these are tied closely to the results of naturalistic observation.