The Science of Business Conversations

Understanding the choreography that drives business outcomes

Choreography is the sequence of steps and movements in dance. Watching a tango instructor provide step-by-step commentary reveals the hidden structure beneath what appears to be fluid motion. They break down the dance into individual moves, name each technique, explain execution quality, and show how moves connect to form sequences. As one partner performs a specific move, the other must select their response to keep the dance flowing.

Just as dance instructors need choreographic language to analyze and teach, business professionals need a systematic way to understand and improve their conversational effectiveness across every customer interaction.

The Universal Patterns of Business Conversations

Consider these examples from completely different business contexts, yet governed by remarkably similar conversational principles:

Example 1: B2B Software Lead Qualification Call

A prospect reaches out about project management software after downloading a whitepaper. The sales development representative's goal is to qualify the lead and schedule a demo with an account executive.

Example 2: SaaS Customer Onboarding Session

A new customer joins their first implementation call with a customer success manager, having just signed up for a marketing automation platform.

Despite different industries, participants, and objectives, both conversations follow predictable sequences of conversational moves:

Opening & Context Setting → Needs Discovery → Solution Mapping → Objection Handling → Next Steps Commitment

These conversations represent two different business outcomes, yet the same analytical framework applies to both. This isn't coincidence—it's the systematic nature of human communication in business settings.

When conversations don't follow these optimal patterns, outcomes suffer predictably. In our qualification example, if the SDR jumps straight to solution mapping without proper needs discovery, the prospect feels unheard. In onboarding, if the CSM doesn't adequately handle initial concerns about complexity, the customer's confidence erodes from the very first interaction.

From Academic Theory to Business Practice

This systematic approach builds on decades of academic research in Conversation Analysis—a field studying real interpersonal communication at the intersection of psychology, linguistics, and social sciences. Elizabeth Stokoe and Rein Sikveland's groundbreaking research with UK mediation services exemplifies this discipline's power.

The researchers analyzed hundreds of calls where mediators offered dispute resolution services to people considering court action. When prospects objected that "the other party won't cooperate," some mediators responded with remarkable success using a specific phrase: "Is that something you would be willing to do?" rather than "Does this sound helpful?"

The "willing" framing emphasized the caller's moral identity as reasonable and open-minded, contrasting them with their unreasonable neighbor. Mediation services incorporated this insight into training, significantly increasing acceptance rates.

The opportunity lies in applying this academic foundation specifically to business outcomes across the entire customer journey. While traditional conversation analysis focuses on understanding social interaction, the business application focuses on optimizing interactions—studying not just how conversations work, but how they can work better to drive specific business results.

Both Detective and Architect

Modern conversational science serves dual purposes in business optimization:

Detective Work: Mining existing conversational data to identify patterns that separate successful outcomes from unsuccessful ones. Which specific moves do top performers use when handling pricing objections? What conversational sequences predict customer churn risk? How do the most effective onboarding sessions differ structurally from those that lead to early cancellation?

Architectural Work: Designing better conversational experiences from the ground up. If we know that certain sequences drive better outcomes, how do we train teams to execute them consistently? How do we build conversational frameworks that guide representatives toward optimal patterns while maintaining authenticity?

This dual approach transforms conversation from an art into a science—preserving the human elements that make interactions genuine while systematically improving the structures that drive business success.

The Laboratory in Every Business

Your organization generates natural experiments daily. Every sales call, onboarding session, support interaction, and retention conversation contains data about what works and what doesn't. The systematic study of these conversations—understanding their choreography, identifying successful patterns, and scaling effective techniques—represents a fundamental shift in how we approach business communication.

This scientific approach provides the methodological framework to unlock conversational intelligence, combining academic rigor with practical business impact. It's not just about fixing problems after they occur, but about understanding the science of human business interaction well enough to design better outcomes from the very first exchange.

Because ultimately, every business result begins with a conversation. And every conversation follows patterns we can learn to recognize, analyze, and improve.

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Photo credit: ArtTower

Note: This article is an evolution of a post I published on Loris.ai's blog in 2023 when I was the company's Head of Product. Current version reflects the developments in my thinking about Conversation Analysis since then.