Disalignment as a Practice of Sequence Management in Catering Business Investment Consultation

Abstract

As science and technology continue to advance, telemarketing has become increasingly prevalent. Observations reveal that clients regularly produce sequentially disjunctive turns that generally deviate from the salesperson’s promotional agenda during telephone consultations. This clearly affects the normal interaction between the salesperson and the client, potentially reducing the likelihood of collaboration. Based on corpus data, we first present the overall sequential structure of business consultation calls, which helps salespeople clarify their interactive tasks. Additionally, this paper summarizes the interactional functions of disaligning responses, such as skipping particular phases of interaction, controlling the topic of interaction, and doing disaffiliation. This study aims to help salespeople better understand client needs, take control of the conversation, foster harmonious interactions, and ultimately achieve business cooperation.