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Notes:
Are you a non-native English speaker who at some point unsatisfied with how you delivered your demo? Or are you an English speaker who wants to make your message accessible to a non-native English audience? Have you had severe imposter syndrome because of both the technology and language you’re dealing with? Then you have tuned in to the right episode. In this episode, Kevin Nagliche, the founder of a deliberate English company. shares easy-to-follow tips on how you can speak English more confidently.
Kevin Naglich is the founder of Deliberate English. The company helps international sales engineers who have an intermediate or advanced level of English speak more confidently in presentations, meetings, demos, proof of concepts, and faster through active deliberate practice. He has worked as a sales engineer for 10 years in a cybersecurity company and found an issue that led him to start the company. He said communication is his strong suit and his saving grace that helped him get through the imposter syndrome.
Key Takeaways:
- Kevin’s field of work as an SE that led him to start his company
- How he landed an SE job at a cybersecurity company when he started as an IT auditor
- What helped him get through moments of imposter syndrome
- The weaknesses he saw in new SEs when he was a Director of Sales Engineer
- How to anticipate the possible questions and objections, especially for new SEs
- The three steps to follow to avoid improvising the conversation a lot during a presentation
- His strengths that he discovered through his imposter syndrome
- How you can ask for help from professionals and make them say yes
- How to make your message more accessible to non-native speakers’ audience
- How your pronunciation affects your ability to understand people
Quotes:
“Once I got into that role, I quickly realized that there’s a lot going on, right? You have to not only know your own technology that you’re selling. We integrated with hundreds of different technologies at our clients, organizations from databases to cloud computing, to everything in between.” – Kevin Naglich
“I felt a lot of impostor syndrome, I felt weak in a lot of situations. I thought like if I already feel stressed, and this imposter syndrome as an SE in my native language, imagine how much worse it would be if I had double impostor syndrome for my language, and the technology itself.” – Kevin Naglich
“Minimize the number of things that you’re going to improvise in that conversation. People are going to ask you questions, and you can’t always prepare for everything that they might ask you. But there are a lot of things that you can do to keep your improvisation stuff down to maybe just a question and answer.” – Kevin Naglich
“When trying to anticipate possible questions and objections, I would recommend trying to reach out to people in your organization, not just the SE organization, but others who really work with implementing and using the product to try to get some perspectives there as well.” – Kevin Naglich
“When I reached out, I sort of positioned this in a way that was beneficial to you and your listeners. And when you’re reaching out to someone, especially just randomly from people that don’t know you yet, you need to make it less about you, and you need to make it more about them.” – Kevin Naglich
“Most people when they’re talking about a foreign language, they complain about speed. So they’re always worried about how people talk too fast. But what I found is, it’s less about the speed that makes it difficult. And it’s more just about how well people articulate their words. ” – Kevin Naglich
