#155 – GST XIX: How Small Words Have Big Impacts in Negotiation and What This Means for Sales w/ Professor Elizabeth Stokoe

06 March 2025

We finally return to GST XIX this week on The Sales Transformation Podcast as we revisit our keynote talk from Professor Elizabeth Stokoe from the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science of The London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Professor Stokoe is an expert in conversation analysis, and in this session guides us through some of the results of her research and how it can relate back to sales. If tiny word choices can have big effects on crisis negotiations, can how we talk have an impact on sales conversations as well? 

Please note that during this talk Professor Stokoe played clips from real conversations, including those with people in distress. Although they were anonymised we have taken the extra step of completely distorting them to protect the people in question’s privacy. We hope this does not disrupt your enjoyment of this episode too much, and you can see transcripts of these sections on the YouTube version of this episode. 

  

Highlights include:  

  • [02:27] – Studying conversation “in the wild” 
  • [18:15] – Is communication really mostly non-verbal? 
  • [28:03] –  The surprising difference between “talk” and “speak” 

 

NOTE: This talk contains visual elements. You can watch over on our YouTube channel for the full experience! 

 

 

Connect with Philip Squire on LinkedIn 
Connect with Elizabeth Stokoe on LinkedIn 

 

Join the discussion in our Sales Transformation Forum group.

 

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