Salesperson Communication Style: The Neglected Dimension in Sales Performance

This article reports two studies which investigated the relationship between communication style variables and sales performance. Norton\u27s (1978) communication style construct was used as a guiding framework. Study 1 examined 74 real estate agents\u27 self-reports of communication style, performance and the general sales practices they used. The precise dimension of communication style was found to be strongly associated with effective sales performance in a real estate organization. Study 2 experimentally tested whether different combinations of the precise and friendly sub-constructs affect sales performance. Four groups of students viewed videotapes of a sales interaction and the experimental findings confirmed those obtained in the field study