Service with a Smile or Salesperson Mirroring? Understanding the Flow of Emotional Contagion in Sales Encounters

This study examines the directionality of emotional contagion in sales interactions, addressing a critical gap in understanding whether emotions flow primarily from the salesperson to the customer, from the customer to the salesperson, or bidirectionally. While prior research emphasizes customer-driven emotional flow or bidirectional alignment, this study challenges these assumptions by employing categorical Cross-Recurrence Quantification Analysis (CRQA) to assess temporal emotional synchronization in sales dialogues. Leveraging automated sentiment analysis and multi-agent AI evaluation for performance metrics, the research analyzes 166 sales interactions to quantify emotional influence dynamics. Results reveal that salespeople predominantly lead emotional exchanges, exhibiting stronger and more stable influence compared to customers, while bidirectional or customer-driven effects were unsupported. Surprisingly, experience levels did not alter this directionality, suggesting emotional leadership is inherent to the sales role rather than skill-dependent. Performance outcomes showed that stable emotional alignment enhances perceived communication and persuasion, whereas inconsistent mirroring slightly reduces persuasiveness. Emotional stability moderated these effects, indicating highly regulated salespeople rely less on contagion and more on controlled emotional strategies. Theoretically, these findings redefine emotional contagion as a deliberate sales tactic, advancing adaptive selling theory by framing salespeople as proactive "emotional architects." Methodologically, the study pioneers CRQA and AI-driven dyadic analysis, offering scalable tools for real-time emotion tracking in sales training. Managerially, the results advocate for training programs to prioritize emotional leadership over passive mirroring, with AI metrics enabling targeted coaching. This research transforms emotional contagion from an incidental process into a measurable competency, with implications for enhancing customer engagement, trust, and sales performance.