Prompted by the fact that personal sales is an area of human communication that has received little attention from communication scholars, this paper integrates previous sales research relevant to communication inquiry into a foundation for future research. The first section of the paper discusses the importance of personal sales, while the second presents a critical review of the sales literature. The third section presents a model incorporating previous research and tests it by an analysis of the persuasive strategies employed by salespeople. The results suggest that the use of particular persuasive strategies by salespeople have implications broader than the sale-no-sale dimension. (Author/HOD)