How do “big picture,” sociable, highly driven, entrepreneurial real estate agents suddenly become “small picture,” structured, by-the-book, and detail-oriented? That's what needs to happen when it comes time to put details onto contracts. If they can’t delegate it to someone else, what do they do?

According to Tony Alessandra in his book Relationship Strategies, people can become what they’re not for small periods of time. Real estate agents can take on the personality of a highly compliant person ---that of a bookkeeper or an accountant--- for twenty minutes. Could they do it all day long? (Are you kidding?) But for twenty minutes, they can count the zeroes, watch for grammatical errors, and read for misspellings.

Here are some suggestions to help you do the same:

1. You have a difficult time slowing down? You let errors slip by unnoticed? Then eliminate distractions. Find a quiet, secluded place. My secretary used to hang a sign outside her door when she was proofreading. It said “Doing Payroll,” and everyone left her alone.

2. Don’t be afraid to find someone in the office (or an assistant) to help you proof your work, especially if you’re composing a Website. Please let other people, preferably non-Realtors, proof the site. Why expose errors to hundreds of potential customers? Let someone with an objective perspective proofread your work.

3. If numbers are involved, and you have a history of missing a “zero,” find a partner to proof it with you. Read it out loud while the other checks it.

4. This is an old trick, but it works. Let the piece of writing sit for a few hours before you turn it in. President Harry S. Truman had a 24-hour waiting period. OK. Perhaps not possible in the age of e-mail, but get in the habit of taking a break before your trigger finger sends the e-mail.

5. A lot of times we make the same mistakes. Take an inventory of the types of mistakes you make. Pay attention to those errors that you know you are prone to make the next time you write.

6. Ever notice how people can find errors in your writing, but you can’t find them yourself? That’s because the brain has been working on the same letter for a period of time and thinks in terms of content. The brain skips over errors because the words (the content) sound so familiar. You have to trick the brain to think it sees a new document. In order to uncover the mistakes, print it on colored paper, brighten up your monitor, or change the font and size so that the document looks different. You can also read it backwards, sentence by sentence.

The consequences of not proofing a document can be enormous. In a prominent newspaper ad, a large real estate firm once left the “l” out of the phrase “public offering.”

Ouch!

Slow down. Hunt for errors. Do it for twenty minutes. That’s all it takes to save yourself frustration and embarrassment.

Published: December 17, 2001

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