Most people have had the experience of walking into a store and being approached by a salesperson. Sometimes the interaction feels helpful and informative. Other times it feels pushy, confusing, or overly long. What separates a sales conversation that builds trust from one that drives a customer away? And how much does the way a salesperson communicates actually shape whether someone decides to buy?
A study published in the EDUCATUM Journal of Social Sciences set out to investigate exactly that. The research team surveyed 100 people to understand how they perceive the communication skills of salespeople and whether those skills play a role in influencing purchasing decisions. The central finding: an overwhelming majority of respondents said that communication does affect their willingness to buy, their trust in a product, and their overall satisfaction while shopping.
Who conducted the study and why
The study was led by Tian Hui Ling, along with co-researchers Thanusha Logendran and Logenthini Mariappan, all affiliated with Raffles University in Johor, Malaysia. The team identified a gap they wanted to explore: while businesses often emphasize product features and pricing, less attention is given to how the interpersonal skills of salespeople contribute to closing a sale.
The researchers framed their investigation around several connected questions. How important are communication skills in persuading customers? What do customers think about the way salespeople interact with them? What barriers get in the way of effective communication during a sale? And what steps can salespeople take to become more persuasive?
How the survey was designed
The research used a quantitative approach, meaning it collected numerical data through a structured questionnaire rather than through open-ended interviews. The survey was divided into two main sections. The first section gathered demographic information about the respondents, including their age, gender, mother tongue, English proficiency, education level, and shopping habits.
The second section used a Likert scale, which is a common survey tool where respondents rate how much they agree or disagree with a statement on a scale, in this case from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree” across five levels. This section asked respondents about their views on the importance of communication in sales, their personal experiences with salespeople, barriers they had encountered, and what they believed made a salesperson more effective.
The 100 participants were chosen randomly. The sample skewed young and female: 74% were between the ages of 18 and 25, and 76% were women. Most respondents (65%) identified Chinese as their mother tongue, followed by Tamil (25%) and Malay (10%). The majority (80%) reported an intermediate level of English proficiency, and 75% had completed education at the STPM or diploma level. STPM is a pre-university qualification in the Malaysian education system, roughly comparable to completing advanced high school courses elsewhere.
What the responses revealed
The results painted a consistent picture: respondents broadly agreed that how a salesperson communicates matters a great deal. When asked directly whether communication affects their purchasing decisions, 94% said yes. An even higher proportion, 96%, said communication influences their satisfaction while shopping. And 97% agreed that communication skills are important for future business operations.
On more specific questions, the pattern held. About 90% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreed that persuasive communication skills address customers’ needs, values, and desires. A similar percentage agreed that communication plays a significant role in shaping their trust when buying a product. Roughly 90% agreed that salespeople with effective communication skills come across as more tolerant and friendly.
Confidence emerged as a particularly notable theme. When asked whether a salesperson needs to appear confident for customers to want to buy, 93% either agreed or strongly agreed, with 61% choosing “strongly agree,” the highest strong-agreement rate across most items in the survey. Respondents also largely agreed (91%) that demonstrating expertise leads customers to have more faith in a company’s values.
The pressure problem
Not all findings were positive. The survey asked whether respondents had ever felt pressured by a salesperson to make a purchase. A full 70% said yes. This is a striking number, suggesting that while communication skills can build trust, they can also be experienced as coercive when applied too aggressively.
When asked about specific negative experiences, 63% agreed or strongly agreed that messages from salespeople are often too long and feel like “grapevine,” a term the survey used to describe communication that feels indirect or like gossip rather than straightforward information sharing. However, responses were more divided on some other criticisms. For instance, when asked whether salespeople focus more on a product’s price than its benefits, 43% disagreed, while 38% agreed or strongly agreed. Similarly, 45% disagreed with the statement that salespeople give orders rather than help clients, though about 32% did agree.
Barriers that get in the way
The study also explored obstacles that hinder effective communication during sales interactions. The researchers highlighted three categories from their literature review: language barriers, psychological barriers, and attitudinal barriers. Language barriers arise when the salesperson and customer do not share the same language or when the words used are not easily understood. Psychological and attitudinal barriers refer to emotional states, such as a lack of confidence or resistance to new information, that can interfere with how messages are sent and received.
The survey data supported these concerns indirectly. When asked whether poor communication leads to misunderstandings and a lack of knowledge about a product, 98% of respondents agreed. And 92% agreed or strongly agreed that poor communication skills frequently lead to misconceptions and a need for additional product expertise.
What this could mean for businesses and salespeople
The findings suggest several practical takeaways for anyone in a sales role or managing a sales team. First, respondents clearly associated good communication with trust, satisfaction, and a willingness to buy. This implies that investing in communication training for sales staff could have a tangible connection to customer perceptions. Skills like active listening, clear and concise messaging, appropriate body language, and a confident tone were all areas where respondents showed strong agreement about their importance.
Second, the data on feeling pressured is worth noting. If 70% of customers report feeling pushed into a purchase at some point, that suggests a fine line between persuasion and pressure. Salespeople and their managers might consider how their approach is perceived from the customer’s side. The study’s respondents indicated they value ethical and effective communication, with 95% agreeing that such communication helps avoid deception.
Third, the ability to compromise appears to matter. When asked whether salespeople need the ability to make concessions to achieve business goals, 91% agreed or strongly agreed. This points to negotiation skills as a valued component of the sales interaction, not just one-way persuasion.
Important caveats to keep in mind
There are several limitations worth noting. The sample size was 100, which is relatively small and makes it difficult to generalize the findings to broader populations. The respondents were heavily concentrated in one age group (18 to 25) and one gender (female), which means the results may reflect the views of young Malaysian women more than consumers overall.
The study also relied entirely on self-reported survey data. People’s stated beliefs about what influences their purchasing decisions may not perfectly match their actual behavior in a store. Someone might say they value confident communication in theory but respond differently in a real shopping situation.
Additionally, the survey used yes/no questions for some items and Likert-scale questions for others, but the analysis was limited to reporting percentages. The researchers did not perform statistical tests to examine relationships between variables, such as whether respondents’ age, gender, or shopping frequency was associated with different views on communication. This means the study describes patterns in responses but does not establish whether communication skills actually cause changes in purchasing behavior.
Despite these limitations, the study adds a data point to the broader conversation about the human side of sales. In an era where much shopping has moved online, face-to-face interactions between salespeople and customers still happen frequently, especially in retail environments like shopping malls. Understanding what customers expect from those interactions, and where things go wrong, remains a relevant question for any business that depends on its frontline staff to close a deal.
