The advice to mirror your buyer is right. The way most people run it is wrong.
Somewhere along the way, “match the buyer’s style” got taught as “become the buyer.” So sellers try on a new personality every call. Fast when the buyer is fast. Blunt when the buyer is blunt. All numbers when the buyer wants numbers. It’s tiring to keep up, and most buyers can sense the effort underneath it. What was meant to build rapport ends up reading as a performance.
There’s a more honest version of the same skill, and I got into it recently with Mark Kempf, author of Unfurl Your Sails.
Access the part of you that’s already there
Mark’s reframe is simple and it holds up. You don’t imitate the analytical buyer. You access the part of you that’s already analytical, and you meet them in that quadrant.
The distinction matters. If you’re 20% analytical and the person across from you runs at 99%, you don’t have to fake the missing 80%. You have that 20%, and it’s real. You bring it forward and lead with it. You’re not proving you’re a different kind of person. You’re choosing which part of yourself to put in the room.
Same with pace. If a buyer wants things quick, you speed up so they don’t get bored or start to wonder whether you can keep up. That’s a real adjustment. But it’s you moving faster, not you absorbing their urgency and racing to match it.
Natural to you and built around the buyer are not in conflict
This is the part I pushed Mark on.
There are two ideas that sound like they compete. One says selling should feel natural to you, built on your own strengths rather than a rigid script. The other says the sale is entirely about the buyer and their decision. People tend to treat these as a trade-off, as if being yourself and serving the buyer pull in opposite directions.
They don’t, and the reason is practical.
When you’re working from a natural mode, you’re not spending energy managing your own discomfort. You’re not fighting the method or bracing against a style that offends you. Instead, you’re able to focus on the buyer. You can be building an environment where a person can think clearly through a plethora of options and reach a decision they trust.
Being comfortable in how you sell isn’t self-indulgent. It’s what gives you the capacity to make it about the buyer.
The tell is in the source
Speeding up because a fast buyer would lose patience with your natural pace is service. Speeding up because their anxiety infected you and now you’re racing too is not. The behavior looks identical from the outside. The source is opposite. And buyers, more often than we credit them for, can feel which one they’re getting.
So the goal was never to imitate the buyer, and it was never to imitate some ideal seller either. It’s to access what’s already in you that fits this particular person, meet them there, and keep enough of yourself intact to do the one thing they actually need: help them decide.