Increased Productivity Means More Clients Helped in Buying and Selling Homes for this Ontario REALTOR®

Jennifer Evelyn is an Ontario REALTOR® that is one of the first agents in her market to truly adopt the paperless business model.

Evelyn, who has been a REALTOR® for 10 years has been paperless for approximately 1.5 years and in that time has experimented with other eSignature solutions including Docusign and PDF Expert (In our opinion, PDFE cannot offer a true paperless experience for either the client or the agent).

Jennifer has been working with Repree since July of 2015 and we wanted to track her progress to see how her business has been transforming the last 9 months in being completely paperless.

Below we have asked Jennifer a number of questions and she has been very candid in her answers. If this seasoned agent can transform her business and increase productivity in less than 9 months, what’s stopping you?

Case Study: Jennifer Evelyn’s Journey to Being 100% Paperless

How long have you been in real estate? How long have you been paperless in your real estate business?

Ten years. Approximately 1.5 years

What challenges in your real estate business forced you to look for a paperless solution?

• Connecting with clients that have work or family issues.
• Timelines with offer dates.
• Need to make a change on the offer & I didn’t want my client to have to drive in from Toronto.
• I can work from out of office locations.

Did you have a previous solution that no longer fit your businesses needs? How did those needs change?

I started with PDF Expert and eventually I tried Docusign. PDFE was limited as it is not an eSignature program that offered a truly paperless solution for my clients. I didn’t find Docusign to be user friendly or what I was looking for in a transaction manager.

Where did you begin your search for an alternative solution? Word of Mouth? Internet? Personal Connections?

Personal connections.

When you decided on our solution, did you encounter any issues or problems with implementation? How did you solve them?

It was difficult using the product the first couple of times, specifically, learning a new process as I am not technically advanced person. It took time and experience, approximately 3 transactions to learn the system.

What processes does our solution enhance within your business? Do you find that it has saved you time, money, both?

Being 100% paperless has saved time and money. Getting signatures in downtown Toronto is a 3 hour round trip & being able to send documents electronically saves a ton of time. Paperwork is cleaner for the conveyancing department at my office, that department loves how nice my contracts come out when they have to print them for the file.

What specific results have you seen in your business since implementing our system?

I have actually increased the number of  transactions, they total 5 in the last 5 months because I was able to spend more time working with other clients and not driving paperwork around the city. I think I can average approximately an additional 12 deals per year on top of what I am doing prior to using repree. My overall business will increase about 30%, however, this is not just about a financial gain but the quality of life that I am getting back, has been really important.

The Three Steps Jennifer Took to Going Paperless

Step 1: Identify a Need

Jennifer understood that her clients had no interest in driving across the city, or, really wanted her to drive across the city either, to get paperwork completed.

Her clients are busy people and were not necessarily interested in having her come to their work or their homes after they get home. Her clients needs then became her own.

Step 2: Do Your Research

Having used a couple of other products when she was first starting to go paperless, Jennifer understood what she was looking for in a paperless solution.

She wanted an all-encompassing solution that was truly paperless and that would give her access to her forms and her clients paperwork from whichever device she was using.

Step 3: USE the Product You Select

Too often we sign up for a free trial of a piece of software and never wind up digging into it to see if it is going to actually help our business. Jennifer didn’t use the product to it’s full capacity until about her 3rd transaction, she didn’t shy away from it either and claim that it doesn’t work.

Decide what you are looking for and then take the time to learn the product you’ve selected.