Re-read the instructions on your application for admissions. Or your financial aid forms. Or your housing contracts. Or the registration schedule. Or even your departmental requirements. You might be surprised to find that even you have trouble following your directions.

Imagine what your students—and their parents—experience when they receive transaction information from you. It’s interesting to see how much our communication tone and voice changes when we shift from recruitment to transaction. Or when we seek an endowed gift versus actually completing the pledge agreement.

When I parked by this sign in Los Angeles, I had to invest a fair amount of time to determine if I’d be legal in this spot. I’m pretty sure the good people at the LA convention and visitors bureau don’t present the city like this. If they did, none of us would ever go there.

What if we thought of transactions as a continuation of sales? What if we didn’t change tone once we came to the point of commitment? What if we made form completion as exciting as our courting?

And what is our authentic self/organization? The person(s) we are during the sales effort? Or the person(s) we become at the transaction stage? What if there were no differences between the two?

-Rick Bailey is the principal and founder of Richard Harrison Bailey/The Agency and author of Coherence: How Telling the Truth Will Advance Your Cause (and Save the World). Follow him on Twitter @RichardHBailey.