I use a program called DocuSign.  DocuSign is a great program!  DocuSign recently allowed me to service both a seller who lived over an hour from me and a buyer who was serving our great country in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.  Yes, I said CUBA!  She was able to sign the contract and put an offer in on a property which we closed on earlier this month.  This would not have been an easy transaction without DocuSign.

Want additional, updated resources for electronic signature?

• The Legalities of an Electronic Signature
• FHA and Lender Acceptance
• Introduction to Electronic Signatures and other videos
• DocuSign Demo
• Try Electronic Signature with a 30-Day risk free guarantee

With DocuSign’s commitment to continual innovation, some of the many features we’ve added since JT published his blog post include:

Templates, so our customers can save even more time
“Husband and Wife” Signing, so two individuals who share an email address can both sign without having to set up another email address
• White-label, or Brandable Experiences, so your company’s logo, personalized messages and colors will be displayed for your senders and signers
Import of Handwritten Signature so you can upload your “wet” signature and adopt it as your electronic signature

What hasn’t changed in this year is that DocuSign electronic signature provides its users with significant time savings and convenience. What are you waiting for?

Several businesses, such as BuyATimeshare.com, have decided to go paperless. This decision has resulted in more environmentally sustainable, cost effective business practices that also streamline business processes. BuyATimeshare.com’s paperless office has also resulted in:

• Increased customer satisfaction
• Faster sales cycles
• Effective customer service
• Greater scale, with thousands more properties reaching the resale market than ever

What other businesses have “gone green”? Other real estate professionals have recognized the benefits of adopting paperless processes, including electronic signature and online contract execution.With more than 18,000 real estate professionals who have used DocuSign for electronic signature services, we’ve heard many testimonials of significant time savings as well.

According to BuyATimeshare.com:

DocuSign, which eliminates paper-based contracts, has tripled the speed of transactions, bringing properties to the resale market faster than ever.

BuyATimeshare.com now uses fewer than 20,000 sheets of paper each month since implementing their paperless business process. That’s one-fifth of the environmental impact that results in a positive impact on productivity.

Do you think much of the value you bring to a professional relationship is in the face-to-face interaction?

In real life interactions are an important part of relationship building and maintenance. However, online tools can enhance our ability to communicate and relationship-build without regard to physical location. 

Tools like Facebook, Twitter, blogs and even DocuSign are additive to relationship building. These tools enable us to connect with those we choose to, without the constraint of geography.

For example, last week, I visited Phoenix, Arizona for a friend’s wedding. When DocuSign subscribers heard I was going to be in town, we set aside an evening for a Tweet, Meet, and Greet that they arranged. I had never met any of these subscribers in real life before. All of our interactions have been over email, instant messenger, Twitter, Facebook, Active Rain, blogs… in other words, all online.

Did I feel I had a relationship with them, on an individual basis? Yes. Did I feel I had a relationship with them as a group? Yes. Do I feel thankful and blessed that they spent an evening with me in Tempe, just talking about real estate, life, upcoming events, whatever we wanted to discuss? Absolutely.

This type of interaction would not have been possible without the relationship building facilitated by online technology and tools.

Frankly, without the online interactions prior to my visit, they would have no reason to care that I was in town. The interactions provided the basis for continuing the relationships in the real world.

What about Face-to-Face interactions? Aren’t they important?

In-person and “In Real Life” interactions are absolutely important. At this time, body language and other subtle nonverbals are impossible to interpret via online interactions. This is why online interactions are additive to, not a replacement for, in-person interactions.

DocuSign Electronic Signature Service enables its subscribers to take advantage of online interaction to achieve the goals set forth by the professional relationship.

Take, for example, a real estate transaction. The agent and the client want to make an offer on a property. After the initial offer, they must respond to the seller’s counter offer. If they accept the counter offer, they have to sign documents to move the process along.

With DocuSign, the signing process can happen remotely if that’s what the client needs. However, we realize that some subscribers and their clients value the in-person signing experience. DocuSign’s in-person signing capabilities enable you to leverage the power of electronic signature and provide the in-person interaction as well.

Now you can see how technology tools such as DocuSign can enhance relationships, driving value for all parties who use them.

Expedite Sales

By combining the strengths of DocuSign’s electronic signature service and DocCentral’s document management and sharing capabilities, contracts and other documents can now be executed, managed and shared via a secure Web environment. Busy professionals and their clients can efficiently complete files associated with buying and selling property, without being encumbered by faxes, regular mail and a myriad of paper documents.

“The overwhelming success of our individual products is a testament that real estate professionals, and the organizations that support them, are looking for ways to reduce paper while improving the security, workflow, and access to documents required for today’s real estate transactions, as well as those used for internal operations,” said Walt Clark, senior vice president of transaction and document management solutions with LPS Real Estate Group. “The integration of DocuSign and DocCentral will make it even easier to conduct real estate transactions while realizing the benefits of digital signatures and electronic document-sharing and retention.”

Improve Customer Service

Real estate transactions involve a lot of detailed paperwork and often have multiple signers who do not live or work near their agents and brokers. Signing in person or sending lengthy faxes back and forth is often inconvenient and time-consuming. By enabling online completion of agreements, all parties involved in the process can securely access documents at their convenience from any location via the Internet. DocuSign’s on-demand service is fast, easy to use, and dramatically improves the traditional signing process. To date, DocuSign has executed more than 37 million signature events and has more than 18,000 registered real estate professionals in the United States.

“DocuSign is the market leader for electronic signature – especially in real estate. Our award-winning product and support are ideally suited for real estate professionals,” said Tom Gonser, founder and vice president of product strategy at DocuSign. “It was natural for the two companies to partner and offer our market-leading products to real estate professionals, who can close deals faster while reducing costs, eliminating errors and providing better service to their clients.”

Cut Costs

DocCentral is a simple, intuitive and cost-effective tool that allows real estate professionals to digitize, organize and share their documents. Documents are stored on secure servers and accessible online 24/7 by agents and the other transaction participants they authorize. By taking transaction documentation off laptops and out of filing cabinets, DocCentral eliminates redundancy, safeguards information and provides an audit trail for today’s increasingly complex real estate transactions. With DocCentral’s offsite storage, courier costs are virtually eliminated while customer service is enhanced.

Real estate professionals who manage and organize their documents on DocCentral can now automate the entire contract lifecycle and secure signatures in a more simplified and streamlined process than the traditionally slow “print-ship-sign-copy-return-scan-fax” cycle. From within DocuSign, users can quickly send documents for signature via e-mail. Once the forms are electronically signed, they can be automatically stored in DocCentral, where they can be accessed by authorized parties. This paperless process saves time, cuts costs, expedites the sales process and improves customer service.

In the months since she has been using DocuSign, she has only received positive feedback from her clients and other professionals that she works with. 

Why does she love working with DocuSign electronic signatures?

• Legible, easy to read contracts
• Positive feedback from banks – they like complete and “clean” documents
• Convenience for out of state buyers, late night signings, estranged couples, those with non-traditional work schedules, those traveling and generally busy people
• Saves her and her clients time, an important factor when putting together, and ultimately, closing deals
• Ease of use
• Allows her clients to ESIGN for free

For more detail and explanation why Ms. Cloud has adopted electronic signature and online contract execution, stop by her blog. Her explanation comes complete with screenshots so you can see why DocuSign electronic signatures and electronic contract execution services are a powerful ’value-add’ feature.

Jeff Dowler, of RE/MAX Associates, has shared nine lessons he’s learned from relocations. These lessons are useful to both buyers and agents and include gems such as:

Communication must be timely and multifaceted – email, text messaging, cell phones, home phones, and faxing have been used to keep things moving along BEFORE we found the  right home and during the transaction. This was especially important when buyers are not local. And of course there was plenty of face-to-face contact during their house-hunting trips.

The ability to communicate with clients and customers via a variety of channels gets (and keeps!) business moving. DocuSign recognizes this daily – our core electronic signature and electronic contract execution technology’s application helps our customers close sales more quickly than the outmoded alternatives – overnight shipping, in person delivery, and fax.

Be prepared to move quickly – a delay in your decision making can cost you the home. You are NOT the only person looking for a deal and there are others who are as hungry for it as you are. I have had several multiple offer situations recently.

You snooze; you lose. You can buy more time to discuss and decide if you take less time to receive and sign legally-binding documents by using DocuSign’s electronic signature and online contract execution services. If you don’t need more time, using DocuSign means that you can feel good about doing everything you can to move as quickly as possible to increase your odds of getting the home you want.

And our favorite lesson?

DocuSign is a great tech tool – this can be a godsend, with all the paperwork that needs to flow back and forth very quickly. Getting DocuSign signatures via email from all parties, and having a PDF file that could be saved, is a terrific time saver.

DocuSign – the electronic signature and online contract execution solution for real estate that enables buyers, sellers, and agents to integrate these lessons in the property buying process. See the rest of Jeff’s words of wisdom on his blog and let us know which lesson you found most valuable in the comments!

Recently, DocuSign joined ActiveRain. Why? With so many Realtors and real estate agents as customers, we want to understand the challenges they face so we can provide better service and create useful features. By following the vibrant discussions on ActiveRain, we hope to provide useful insight to help the real estate community where we can, especially regarding electronic signatures and online contract execution.

DocuSign continually innovates our electronic signatures and online contract execution service for real estate and has established real estate specific partnerships with many of the major forms providers such as IRES, Realfast, Reveal Systems (TrueForms), Ziplogix (Zipforms) and Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions. One of the many useful features DocuSign provides includes signing by multiple people with only one email address, as is the case when a husband and wife share an email address. DocuSign also works with ESRA, the Electronic Signature and Records Association, to establish clarity in policies regarding the use of electronic signature and electronic contract execution.

DocuSign’s commitment to providing an electronic signature and online contract execution tool that helps real estate agents save time, money and do more deals has brought us to ActiveRain. Please do stop by, say hello and let us know how we can help you.

Last weekend, Greg Swann of Bloodhound Realty blogged about some of his questions regarding DocuSign, and received some amazing answers from some really cool commentors:

1. Is it possible to use DocuSign to do “broker oversight” signatures?

DocuSign can be used to sign any printable document. In the U.S. and worldwide, customers in every industry have used DocuSign to sign over 30 million transactions – loan mods, real estate transactions and sales contracts. You can now upload almost any document format into the DocuSign envelope to be converted to PDF. Any required secondary documents can easily be uploaded as well.

2. How can one use DocuSign to get a client’s signature on a document from another DocuSign-using Realtor?

Depending on the workflow used by the other realtor, you can get your client’s signature on a document with one of two methods. If the other realtor were to ‘CC’ you on the transaction, DocuSign will get you that document the second the last signer signs. Then, you can take that document and create a new envelope with it, adding your signers, and cc’ing the other agent so they will receive the final, signed copy when it is done.

Another way to get a client’s electronic signature on a document is by uploading the document to DocuSign once the other realtor sends you a copy in an email. However, this is not as fast or automatic as the first method.

3. What about an ordinary PDF or ordinary fax?

On Windows, DocuSign can load any document that can be printed via the print driver. On Mac and Windows, you can load most file types directly by using the ‘upload’ function.

4. How can we add our own forms and/or other added documents in a DocuSign envelope?

You can add your own documents from other locations after you add your ZipForm, or other form software-created documents. Simply start your envelope with ZipForm, then select documents and load more. If you have the print client (Windows only) you can also print more documents into that same envelope.

5. What do you love about DocuSign?

I love how one spouse is in New York and the other is in China. Then after they sign, miraculously both of their signatures are merged onto the one document…. freaking amazing…no FEDEX or UPS overnighting docs ever again. Since DocuSign did an update, now I can take my real signature and upload it to be used on all of my signings. – Rob Thiessen

Increased productivity, lower business costs, clients LOVE it! Try setting up templates for your disclosures and having your clients fill them out on-line — very cool. – Kris Berg

6. What do you hate about it?

You have to be very careful in placing initials or signatures above one another. If they are too close they ride over one another. Templates are fussy to set up, but worth it. Also, if the client forgets his password, it can be a bit of an ordeal.

*note* DocuSign uses user feedback in future product development – please post your suggested improvements in DocuSign forums for us to consider in future releases!

Bonus Electronic Signatures and Online Contract Execution Tips:

You can at any time, save your envelope as a ‘draft’. Then you can come back later and add documents, tags, users, etc. This enables you to periodically save so you won’t have to start over if you forget to include a document in your envelope.

If you have DocuSign Advanced, you can create templates that apply everything – tabs, workflow, etc. – to documents you load into the envelope.

Templates will save you significant time when you send the same documents over and over. For example, consider a purchase agreement. Make a template for your purchase agreement, then the next time you send a purchase agreement, IDR will apply everything for you – ALL the tabs, the subject, email, etc. You just need to translate the roles in the template to users. This turns a 10 minute job into a one minute job, and you can’t make mistakes anymore!

Depending on the version you select, DocuSign costs from $.45 per day to $1.15 per day. However, user surveys indicate DocuSign saves the average realtor about 6 hours per week, or nearly an entire day. No more babysitting the fax machine, no more making customers find fax machines to sign, huge customer satisfaction increase. So for transactions that may be worth thousands of dollars in commission, spending less than a buck to ensure it goes smoothly does not seem expensive… using electronic signature and electronic contract execution is just good cents, I mean, sense.

This really happened to Robert Sanchez, DocuSign’s Regional Sales Director. The couple behind him contemplated the purchase of a MacBook, wondering if they could use DocuSign on the laptop. The Apple salesperson said no, and Robert overheard. He politely introduced himself and explained that he was DocuSign’s Regional Sales Director. Robert was at the Apple Store getting his MacBook Pro serviced, the MacBook Pro he uses to close deals for DocuSign, with DocuSign.

This couple revealed that they needed a laptop that would enable them to sign documents with DocuSign while they were traveling. Robert assured them that they would be able to use DocuSign on a MacBook. After talking with Robert, the couple said “Well, we guess we’ll take the MacBook.”

You can use DocuSign if you have a browser and an internet connection. So, how many Apple users are online? Apple’s share is just over 10 percent, combining the market share for both Macs and iPhones. Macs account for 9.63 percent of computers online. Compare that to Windows’, including Windows Mobile, share of the market is 88.7 percent. This represents a decrease in 2008 by .94 percent as well as the lowest share for Windows since NetApplications began tracking this data.

What does this mean for DocuSign and electronic signature and contract execution? If the current trend continues, more computer users will adopt the Mac operating system. DocuSign and Mac work together, and here’s how:

Using the DocuSign Print Driver on a Mac:

1. Create your document and save it locally as a .pdf file – to your machine, a thumb drive, or other external storage device.
2. Login to DocuSign
3. Browse and upload your document to the DocuSign system
4. Continue with the standard signing process

If you’re using a document creation service such as Zipforms or Winforms, you’ll want to follow the process above. Currently, the ability to send documents from a service like Zipforms or Winforms directly to DocuSign is only available to Windows users.

Have a Mac and running Windows? Chances are, you’re using virtualization software, like Parallels. Turn on your Mac, make sure you’re running Windows and you’ll be able to use DocuSign electronic signature and online contract execution just like any other Windows users.

Any questions? Take a look at the DocuSign forums. If someone else hasn’t asked your question, sign in and let us know what you’re wondering about!

The latest issue of Insurance Networking News features a cover story about Amica Life’s adoption of electronic signature and online contract execution technology. We especially appreciate that Amica Life named DocuSign as its e-signature provider of choice.

Amica Life Insurance Co., Lincoln, R.I., used DocuSign’s e-signature technology to:

Slash transaction times: Previous transactions completed by mail averaged a 14 day turnaround. With DocuSign,transaction times average two days, or 14% of the previous turnaround.

“In terms of getting the coverage in force and getting the case out of our queue, it really sped things up,” says Duncan Hannah, assistant VP of Amica Life Insurance Co.

Improve customer service: DocuSign revolutionized how Amica Life handled changes to accounts, like changing beneficiaries. Instead of the “type a form – snail mail for signing – return to sender” process, Amica simply keys the information into the form, sends the document through DocuSign’s secure system for electronic signature, and gets the deal done.

“The whole transaction is completed in a much shorter timeframe, and there is less follow-up on our part,” Hannah says.

Close new business deals: Amica Life trains its sales agents to walk their customers through the electronic signature process in a manner that makes ESIGN feel natural. Those on Amica Life’s sales team report a high rate of DocuSign usage.

With DocuSign’s technology, all signers and senders need is an internet connection, email and a browser. An insurer can send a contract and have it securely signed online. There’s no software to install and add an unnecessary layer of complexity when you can have a esign solution that is fast, simple and secure.

Thanks to Duncan Hannah of Amica Life for sharing how electronic signature and electronic contract execution helps slash turnaround time, improve customer service and close business deals. You can read the article in its entirety and experience the power electronic signature (for free!) with DocuSign Express for Drawloop.