by An Bui, DocuSign Social Media on Monday March 23rd, 2009
DocuSign Users: Getting to Know Todd Waller of Team366
This series interviews real DocuSign users to share their stories about electronic signature and online contract execution. Get to know the people who use DocuSign and how
Please share with us who you are, and what you mean by “real estate at the speed of life” and “black tie service”?
I’m a simple man from South East Michigan…I was born and raised in SE Michigan. Graduated from the University of Michigan. Prior to real estate, I had a diverse job experience: automotive market research, governmental affairs division in a trade association, communications analyst and political campaign manager.HA! Real Estate Simplified with Black Tie Service was my first crack at a slogan in my young real estate career. Simply put, my service to my clients is “black tie.” In fact, I still show up to my closings in a tux! Folks around Ann Arbor have taken to calling me
Black Tie Todd.
Real Estate @ the Speed of Life is the slogan for my real estate team, Team366. My business partner and I assembled a team of agents with the intent of being accustomed and competent with the latest technology for real estate, but able to communicate effectively and at the pace of our clients. If they want to run like the wind to buy or sell a home, we can do that!
What other tools, technology or otherwise, do you consider essential to your business and why?
I CAN NOT LIVE WITHOUT MY BLACKBERRY! Hands down, it is a business machine. When you predicate your business plan on responsiveness and efficiency, nothing beats a blackberry for instant email and communication. Past that one piece of hardware, I would also need to mention two pieces of software or services: Google Apps for my Domain and DocuSign (not trying to kiss up, but DS is THAT important to my business!)Google apps simply because it is too easy to set up, fill and organize all the digital stuff of my business.
DocuSign, because I can send my contracts anywhere for signatures and because it has saved me countless hours of cross town travel and from headaches trying to decipher a multi-faxed document.
How did you discover DocuSign and do you know others who use technology tools like DocuSign in your area?
Oddly enough, I ran into DocuSign about the same time a real estate attorney approached me about it. He suggested that me and my team look into it as he felt we were the only ones in the market place who could see its immediate value and need.
There are many people that use DocuSign in many different ways, like using the consistent, personalized branding, bulk sending or multiple signers functionality or using the API to integrate with existing programs like Salesforce. How do you get the most out of DocuSign and what has been your most extraordinary DocuSign moment?
We’re not even that fancy with our implementation of DocuSign! We use the web interface and the API between an online RE form generator and DocuSign.The Ah Ha! moment for me was last summer. I had shown my buyers a few homes that day and knew they were “thinking hard” about one of the homes. They expressed to me that they would get back with me the next morning to let me know what their decision would be. They called just a few hours later and stated that they wanted to put an offer in on that one home. Long story short, I could not meet with them in person, but I could write the offer, get their signatures and initials via DocuSign and, in conjunction with my BlackBerry, email the offer into the listing agent.
Good thing we had DocuSign to overcome our scheduling difficulties; we got the offer to the sellers, and had their signatures before two other offers could be produced.
Give us one fun fact about yourself you haven’t already shared and any other tidbits you would like to offer.
I am a firm believer that all the cool technology that is coming out, DocuSign included, is simply making the job of the real estate agent more efficient. My job is to communicate effectively and efficiently with my clients, providing them the answers they deserve and crave. Ultimately, I see the job of real estate agent include the ability to find and wrangle information on behalf of our clients.
