Selling in English: a guide for non-native reps

There is a particular kind of frustration in being sharp in Swedish and mediocre in English inside the very same call. The joke that loosens the room at home becomes a half-sentence that dies in the air. The counter-question that usually turns the objection arrives three seconds late. None of it comes from poor English in the school-grade sense. It comes from the fact that a sales call's critical moments demand automaticity, and automaticity is language-specific.

Why do you sound less convincing in English?

Working memory is the bottleneck. In your native language you phrase without thinking and can spend all your attention on the buyer: the tone, the hesitation, the thing not being said. In English, part of that capacity goes to composing the sentence, and the first casualty is listening. On top of that, tempo rises when we get insecure, and tempo is already a risk factor: Gong Labs data shows top-performing sellers hold around 176 words per minute during objection handling while average reps speed up toward 188. In a second language the urge to rush is even stronger, because silence feels like failure. That is the conclusion turned backwards. Slower English sounds more senior, not less.

The Swenglish that grates

Some errors go unnoticed by the speaker because they are direct translations that feel natural. 'I will revert with a proposal' does not mean coming back in English, it means regressing. 'Already now' and 'we must look over this' are Swedish sentence structures in an English costume. None of them sinks a deal on its own, but together they create a light friction that makes you seem less precise than you are. The cure is not memorizing error lists but simplifying: short, direct sentences in English you are sure of beat elegant constructions you are unsure of. 'Let me come back to you on that tomorrow' always works.

How do you handle numbers, price and terms?

Numbers are the most dangerous terrain, because here a mistake costs real money. Ninety and nineteen, fifty and fifteen: pairs that native ears separate effortlessly but that blur in both directions under pressure. Always say prices in their parts, 'four nine nine, so four hundred and ninety nine', and repeat back every term the other side mentions: 'Just to confirm, that is thirty days payment terms, starting March first.' It sounds formal but reads as professionalism. And present the price without a cushion: no 'the price is maybe around', no apologetic laugh. The price said at a calm tempo, followed by silence, works in English exactly as it does in Swedish.

Small talk is a skill too

Swedish directness is an asset in negotiation and a risk in the opening. A 'how are you' from an American counterpart is a ritual, not a question, and skipping past it to get to business reads as coldness rather than efficiency. Add one extra sentence of politeness at the start and end of the call compared with what feels natural in Swedish, especially in email. It costs ten seconds and buys warmth that the directness can then spend.

How do you practice out loud without burning real prospects?

The moments that decide, the opener, the objection, the price, are too expensive to practice on real prospects and too awkward to practice on colleagues. A roleplay against an AI solves both problems. Salesprep has both Swedish and English AI voices, so you can run the exact same cold call or negotiation in English that you already master in Swedish and see the difference in the scores: seven components in cold call, six in negotiation, each with a written comment. Tonality and energy are also judged from the actual audio recording, not just the words, which is precisely what a second language needs. Three calls are included free.

Your English is almost certainly better than it sounds under pressure. What is missing is not knowledge but repetitions, and repetitions can be collected in safe rooms before they are needed in sharp ones.