Subtle influence: revealing the tactical functions of ingratiation in business-to-business sales meetings

Ingratiation in personal selling is widely framed as a strategic, rapport-building influence tactic, yet it can also support short-term objectives that remain poorly understood in business-to-business (B2B) sales interactions. This study examines the interactional realization of ingratiation in naturally occurring sales meetings, drawing on 17 video-recorded B2B encounters and a qualitative mixed-methods design integrating video-based content analysis and conversation analysis. We show how salespeople deploy different ingratiation techniques to accomplish four short‑term tactical functions: solution promotion, recovery from interactional mistakes, customer reengagement, and requests for action or commitment. A key finding is that ingratiation in our dataset occurs not through explicit flattery or conspicuous favor-rendering, but through low‑intensity, subtle behaviors that blend into the flow of talk yet strategically shape the next actions available to participants. These behaviors are not merely courteous; their sequential placement and interactional consequences reveal how they prepare proposals, remedy missteps, reopen conversational paths, or facilitate customer compliance. By demonstrating how influence is accomplished through fine‑grained verbal and nonverbal practices in real time, this study extends existing conceptualizations of ingratiation and highlights the value of naturalistic, interaction‑focused methods for understanding the micro‑practices of sales influence in B2B settings.