From Facial Reading to Commercial Action: A Bibliographic Study on Sales Management Based on the Customer’s Affective States

From Facial Reading to Commercial Action:

Abstract

This article investigates how affective information about customers can guide salespeople’s behavior in sales and negotiation settings. It starts from the operational premise that the Humor software already provides a useful reading of the customer’s probable affective state, currently based on facial expressions. Therefore, the focus of the study is not on validating the technical performance of the tool, but on understanding how this information can be translated into practical commercial responses. The general objective was to develop an applied framework, grounded in human behavior, affective science, social psychology of emotion, and sales psychology, to guide the salesperson’s conduct based on the information generated by the system. Methodologically, this is an integrative, interpretive, and applied bibliographic study aimed at identifying theoretical evidence on the relationship between affective states, interpersonal interaction, emotion regulation, and sales conduct. The findings suggest that the strategic value of affective reading lies not only in describing the customer, but in enabling behavioral adjustments by the salesperson, such as reducing pressure, increasing emotional attunement, providing clearer explanations, repositioning the approach more objectively, or advancing the closing process progressively according to the predominant affective state. The article concludes that the practical value of affective technology in sales depends on its ability to guide commercial decisions that are more aligned with the interactional context, even though the current reading should be understood as a probabilistic and operational inference rather than a definitive diagnosis of the customer’s internal emotional state.