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.

摘要

本文研究了销售人员和潜在客户之间的企业对企业“冷”电话。利用150个音频交互记录，我们使用对话分析来确定首次呼叫以及随后的“冷”呼叫中的总体结构组织和组成活动，这种区别是由于参与者对他们的关系历史的了解或缺乏关系而产生的。本文揭示了电话对话的结构特征（例如识别序列和“呼叫原因”）如何适应以获得本地交互结果，以及这些对话的微观结构对于电话的结果乃至公司的底线至关重要。数据为英式英语。