An Exploratory Investigation of Voice Characteristics and Selling Effectiveness

Robert A. PetersonRobert A. Peterson holds the John T. Stuart III Centennial Chair in Business Administration and is the Charles E. Hurwitz Fellow at the IC Institute, The University of Texas at Austin. A former editor of the Journal of Marketing Research and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, he has published more than 150 articles and books on marketing and sales management, marketing research, and consumer behavior topics.

Michael P. CannitoMichael P. Cannito is associate professor in the School of Audiology and Speech Pathology at the University of Memphis. His primary research interests are in the area of neurological bases of normal and disordered speech production, especially the acoustics of normal and abnormal prosody. He has published in Brain and Language, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, and Journal of Communication Disorders, among others.

Steven P. BrownSteven P. Brown is assistant professor of marketing at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. He received his Ph.D. from The University of Texas at Austin. His research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and other journals.

Abstract

An exploratory investigation of selected voice characteristics of 21 direct salespeople revealed that rate of speaking, average pause duration, and fundamental frequency contour were significantly related to a measure of output sales performance. Although a sample of 26 housewives (who constituted the target market for the product being sold) was able to distinguish among the speaking rates of the salespeople, there was no relationship between either the housewives' perceptions of the salespeople based on their voice characteristics or between perceptions and output sales performance. Relative to a comparison group of 13 nonsalespeople, the salespeople spoke more rapidly and produced fundamental frequency contours that fell more.

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