In the contemporary economy, new work often emerges within specialist and human services that aim at advancing organizational learning, well-being and engagement. The rise of the service sector has also created entirely new professions. One example of these are hybrid artist-developers, namely, creative professionals who have expertise in arts and use art-based methods for the purposes of organizational training and development (see Lehikoinen et al. 2016; also Berthoin Antal et al. 2016). However, although art-based interventions are increasingly utilized in organizational settings, they are still a new concept to wider audiences, thus forcing the professionals to actively reach out for potential customers and make their services known. In this way, sales and marketing are necessarily an integral part of their work practices.
In this presentation, we investigate how sales and marketing are accomplished in the work of a photographic artist who provides art-based training workshops for organizations. The data come from demonstration workshops where the artist publicly presents her services to prospective customers and business collaborators. Using ethnomethodological conversation analysis as a method, we examine a feedback sequence at the end of the workshop where the audience members ask questions concerning the service product, followed by the artist's response. Previous research has shown that audience questions may be used for resisting top-down organizational plans by pinpointing challenges related to their real-life applicability. Accordingly, the presenters may orient to counteract such criticism in their responses. (Nissi & Lehtinen 2016.) Our results show how the artist similarly orients to potential criticism and uses extended response turns to promote and maintain the good image of her service produce and to reach consensus with different audience members. The question format however restricts the design of the artist's response. Our presentation contributes to previous research on sales work by advancing understanding of sales encounters where no customized product is yet offered or no price discussed between a salesperson and a customer (cf. Clark et al. 1994; Niemi & Hirvonen 2019). In this way, it also sheds light on the dimensions of promotional discourse within the work of new hybrid service professionals.
References:
Berthoin Antal, A., Woodilla, J. & Johansson Sköldberg, U. 2016. Artistic interventions in organisations introduction. In: U. Johansson Sköldberg, J. Woodilla & A. Berthoin Antal (Eds.), Artistic interventions in organizations: Research, theory, practice, pp. 3–17. London: Routledge.
Clark, C, Drew, P. & Pinch, T. 1994. Managing customer 'objections' during real-life sales negotiations. Discourse & Society 5(4), 437–462.
Lehikoinen, K., Pässilä, A., Martin, M. & Pulkki, M. (Eds.). 2016. Taiteilija kehittäjänä: Taiteelliset interventiot työssä [Artist as a developer: Artistic interventions at work]. Helsinki: University of Arts Helsinki.
Niemi, J. & Hirvonen, L. 2019. Money talks: Customer-initiated price negotiation in business-to-business sales interaction. Discourse & Communication 13(1), 95–118.
Nissi, R. & Lehtinen, E. 2016. Negotiation of expertise and multifunctionality: PowerPoint presentations as interactional activity types in workplace meetings. Language & Communication 48, 1–17.
