Prepare open questions deliberately
Di Stasi, Brooks and Quoidbach studied negotiations and follow-up experiments. Open questions were linked to eliciting information; experimentally instructing or preparing participants to ask them improved personal negotiation outcomes.
For sales practice: Before a call, prepare a question that reveals priorities or current processes: “How do you handle this today?”
Evidence and limitations: Negotiations and chat experiments are not cold calls. The study does not establish a particular increase in appointments or revenue.
Test calm preparation as a routine
Nguyen, Eun and Park studied 54 healthy women performing working-memory tasks with emotional distraction. In the laboratory, slow, deep breathing was associated with more favourable performance and regulation patterns than fast, shallow breathing.
For sales practice: Settle before a calling block, then observe concentration and conversation quality.
Evidence and limitations: A small, all-female laboratory sample. It does not establish a better appointment rate or validate a particular breathing reset.
Make customer orientation visible in the conversation
A survey of 229 B2B sales professionals in Indian IT and consulting firms linked altruism, customer orientation and interaction ability with sales performance. Opportunistic behaviour weakened one of these relationships.
For sales practice: Understand the customer’s context, build on their answers and assess relevance against their needs.
Evidence and limitations: A cross-sectional survey and statistical model, not causal evidence that one phrase improves performance.