Make it sound like you: how to teach Claude your writing voice as a real estate agent

If your AI writes like a robot, it's because you never showed it how you talk.

That's the most common complaint I hear about Claude and every tool like it. The writing is fine, but it doesn't sound like a person. It's too polished, too long, too keen. It says "I hope this message finds you well" to someone you've known for ten years.

That's not a flaw in the tool. It's a gap in what you've given it. Claude has never read anything you've written, so it falls back on a safe, generic voice. Give it a few real examples and that changes.

A quick reminder on words. I call it SI, super intelligence. Most people say AI. When I say SI I mean tools like Claude, made by Anthropic.

Why your voice matters more than you'd think

Clients don't just read what you send. They hear it in your voice.

Your vendors know how you talk on the phone, at the open, across the kitchen bench at the appraisal. If the written update they get on Monday sounds like a different person, they notice. It might not be a big thing, but it chips away at the feeling that they're dealing with you.

And so much of an agent's week is writing. Vendor updates after the weekend. Follow-ups after opens. Replies to enquiries. Quick texts to confirm times. If Claude is going to help with any of that, it has to sound like you, or you'll end up rewriting every draft yourself. At that point it hasn't saved you anything.

The idea: show it, then name it

The fix has two parts.

Show it real examples

Don't describe your style. Most people are bad at that. Ask an agent how they write and they'll say "friendly but professional", which is what everyone says and doesn't tell Claude much.

Instead, give it the real thing. Three messages you've actually sent to clients. Not your best work, not something you've polished for the occasion. Just normal messages that sound like you on a normal day.

Get it to name what it sees

Then ask Claude to describe your voice back to you in a few plain points. This step matters. It makes Claude show you what it picked up, so you can check it got it right before it writes anything. And it gives you a short description of your voice you can reuse every time.

Once you have that, you're not starting from zero with each new draft.

The Day 3 prompt

Here are 3 messages I've written to clients: [paste]. Describe my writing style in 5 bullet points: tone, sentence length, words I use, words I'd never use. Then rewrite this vendor update in my voice: [paste].

Here's what each part is doing.

"Here are 3 messages I've written to clients: [paste]." This is the evidence. Three is enough to show a pattern without overloading it. Pick messages that are a bit different from each other, say a text, an email and a longer update, so it sees your range.

"Describe my writing style in 5 bullet points." Five points keeps it short and specific. You want something you can read in ten seconds and say "yes, that's me" or "no, that's not right".

"tone, sentence length, words I use, words I'd never use." These four tell Claude exactly what to look for. Tone is how you come across. Sentence length is how short or long you write. Words you use are your habits, the phrases you lean on. Words you'd never use is often the most useful one, because it stops Claude slipping in the stiff, salesy language that gives it away.

"Then rewrite this vendor update in my voice: [paste]." This is the test. Give it a vendor update that's correct but doesn't sound like you, maybe one Claude wrote earlier or one from a template. Seeing the before and after side by side is the quickest way to tell whether the description worked.

Try it yourself

1. Pick three messages you've sent to clients. Texts or emails, whatever you write most. Choose everyday ones, not your best.
2. Take out anything personal. Remove names, phone numbers, addresses and anything else that identifies a client. Swap in placeholders like "[vendor name]" or "[address]". Your voice is in how you write, not in the details.
3. Find a vendor update to rewrite. One that has the right information but doesn't sound like you. Again, strip out client details.
4. Open Claude and paste the prompt above, dropping your three messages and the vendor update in where it says [paste].
5. Read the five bullet points first. Do they sound like you? If one is wrong, tell Claude. "I'm not that formal" or "I never use exclamation marks" is enough. Ask it to update the list.
6. Then read the rewrite. If it still feels off, say what's off and ask for another go.
7. Save the five bullet points. Copy them into a note somewhere you'll find them. That's your voice description.

You don't need a folder for this one. Pasting straight into the chat is fine.

Use it every time

The five points are the bit you keep.

The simplest way to use them is to paste them at the top of any writing job. Something like "Write this in my voice. Here's how I write:" followed by your five points, then the job.

If you'd rather not paste it each time, Claude has places to store instructions it should always follow. Many people put their voice description in their profile preferences in Settings, or in the instructions for a project they use for client writing. Menus move around between versions, so if you can't find it, ask Claude where to put standing instructions in the version you're using. Claude also has writing style options, and some versions let you create a custom style from your own samples, which does a similar job.

Whichever way you do it, check it now and then. Your voice with a first-home buyer might be different to your voice with a developer. It's fine to have more than one description.

A few safety habits

Writing in your voice makes the drafts more convincing, which is exactly why you should still read every one before it goes out.

• You send, not Claude. If you ever connect Claude to email or messaging, keep approvals on for anything that sends. A message in your voice that you didn't check is worse than a robotic one, because the client will assume you wrote it.
• Keep client details out where you can. As agents we hold a lot of personal information, and the rules about how that's handled depend on where you work. Placeholders work just as well for teaching it your voice.
• Ask for the plan on bigger jobs. If you're getting it to rewrite a batch of templates in a folder, give it one narrow folder and ask it to show you its plan first before it changes anything.

Where to go from here

Three messages, five bullet points, one rewrite. That's the whole job, and it fixes the most common reason people give up on Claude for writing.

Once Claude knows how you talk, everything it drafts for you after that starts closer to finished. You're editing, not rewriting.

Missed yesterday? Day 2: Your first real job in Chat

Every prompt from the series is on my free prompts page, with a new one each day as the episodes go up, ready to copy.