The team over at Bloodhound Realty “get it” – as early adopters of technology, including electronic signature, they’ve realized that their offers have to be first, fastest and best so that their clients can get their dream homes.

To achieve these goals, they leverage the following technologies:

Apple MacBook Pro, with software to do contracts anywhere, as quickly as possible
• zipForm®, from Arizona Association of Realtors
• DocuSign, with zipForm® integration, enables Bloodhound Realty to capture signatures online, as electronic signatures

For example, they can pull out a purchase and sale agreement in zipForm® and write-up the offer and send via DocuSign for electronic signature right from the kitched of the home their buyers want to make an offer on. Mrs. Buyer might be elsewhere – at her mother’s, at the grocery store… while Mr. Buyer is traveling for business.

With DocuSign’s sequential signing feature, the Bloodhound Realty agent can set up the document in DocuSign’s electronic signature and online contract execution dashboard for the buyers to sign. That complete package is then forwarded to the listing agent via the CC: feature, where everyone who is designated as a “CC’” will get a completed listing package.

The documents are clean and clear – no data degraded from the back and forth of fax… is that an “8” or a “5”?

How long does printing, faxing or running documents around town to get signatures take?

DocuSign wants to hear YOUR story!

Did you know that more than 37 million electronic signature events have been powered by DocuSign? There’s a story behind every envelope sent via DocuSign, and we’re kicking off a contest to uncover some of the most interesting anecdotes about how DocuSign has helped you and your business. Our Grand Prize winner will receive a $500 Visa gift card.

We’re also giving away our new iPhone app for the first 10 iPhone users who share their stories. iPhone users, submit your best DocuSign story and you’ll be automatically entered to win the free app and the Grand Prize.

Great! So What’s the REAL DEAL (or “How to Win”)

From Tuesday, September 1 at 9:00 a.m. PT through Thursday, September 3 at 5:00 p.m. PT, we’re running a blog contest to uncover the best DocuSign story. Simply blog about a specific situation in which DocuSign helped close a deal in jeopardy, saved you money or just made a profound difference to your business. Tell us your story and post it to your blog during the hours that the contest is live. Include links to http://www.docusign.com/ and this blog post. Then let us know your post is live by sending us (“Hey @DocuSign!”) a tweet via Twitter with a link to YOUR blog post and #DocuSignFTW during contest hours. That’s all it takes.

Official Contest Rules:

• Contest is live from Tuesday, September 1 at 9:00 a.m. PT through Thursday, September 3 at 5:00 p.m. PT.
• Blog entries must be no more than 300 words in length and must be posted on your personal blog. (Don’t have one yet? Go to www.wordpress.com or www.blogspot.com and get started with a free blog!)
• Blogs must be posted during the contest hours of Tuesday, September 1 at 9:00 a.m. PT through Thursday, September 3 at 5:00 p.m. PT. No exceptions and no whining! The Twitter time stamp is the official time stamp of this contest.
• Tell us when your blog post is live and include the URL by using Twitter to notify us at #DocuSignFTW during the contest hours of Tuesday, September 1 at 9:00 a.m. PT through Thursday, September 3 at 5:00 p.m. PT. The first 10 submissions by iPhone users will be identified by the Twitter time post. (Not on Twitter yet? sign up for free and get started at www.twitter.com. Become a follower of DocuSign by going to http://www.twitter.com/DocuSign and clicking “follow”!)
• A blog entry without a corresponding Twitter notification #DocuSignFTW and links to “http://www.docusign.com” and this blog post is not a valid entry.
• A Twitter entry without a corresponding blog post, link to said blog post,”@DocuSign” and #DocuSignFTW is not a valid entry.
• The first 10 iPhone apps are for iPhone users only. DocuSign will not subsidize non-iPhone winners.
• DocuSign reserves the right to disqualify any blog entry as it sees fit. Any blogs posts deemed derogatory in nature will be automatically disqualified. Any blog posts containing profanities will be automatically disqualified.
• This offer is for those who are residents of the United States. No purchase is necessary. This offer is void where prohibited by law. DocuSign employees and their families are not eligible. Taxes are the responsibility of the winners.

So basically you must (Or Official Contest Rules In Plain English)

• Publish a blog post of less than 300 words on YOUR personal blog between Tuesday, September 1 at 9:00 a.m. PT and Thursday, September 3 at 5:00 p.m. PT. Explain how DocuSign has rocked your world.
• Immediately tweet your blog post URL with #DocuSignFTW to @DocuSign. Ex “Hey, @DocuSign! DocuSign Changed My Life! yourblogposturl #DocuSignFTW”
• Please play nice, have fun, and no whining!

The Grand Prize Winner of the $500 Visa gift card will be notified by September 30 after entries are reviewed by the panel of judges. The first 10 entries from iPhone users based on the time stamp on the Twitter message will determine who wins the iPhone application. (BlackBerry users don’t despair – we’re planning a new BlackBerry application – stay tuned for details!)

Good Luck!!!!

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.

Can you put together an integrated workflow to have a business process that is automated, paperless and saves you time?

While there is no single “best” way for every real estate professional, there are a variety of tools that work well together.

Automated forms software: You may already be using ZipLogix (zipForms/WINForms), RealFast, IRES, LPS Real Estate Group (Transaction Point or DocCentral) and Reveal Systems. All of these real estate software form providers integrate with DocuSign.

Contact management: Your contact management may be your Outlook email or CRM system that enables you to connect contacts to tasks and companies.

Electronic signature and online contract execution: DocuSign’s real estate specific features, like signing order, correct on the fly, import of handwritten signatures and contract templates explains why DocuSign’s real estate subscribers and their clients LOVE DocuSign. You can ensure that you’ll get every signature and initial you need. You’ll get the completed ‘DocuSigned’ documents which will be more “clean” than any scan-copy-fax-sign transaction. Needless to say, DocuSign transactions shorten sales cycles, thus saving you time. Our subscribers use these time savings to close more transactions. 

Using compatible technology tools enables you to enjoy a smooth workflow and makes your life easier while saving you time and money. Couple that with increased customer satisfaction and a paperless office just makes sense!

You can save even more time by creating and using templates for the forms you often use, such as leasing agreements, standard form disclosures, and others. Templates enable you to save recipient, tab and message information for reuse on new DocuSign envelopes.

Steps for Creating a Electronic Contract Template:

• Click the new template button
• Enter a name for your template
• Browse for and upload documents
• Enter a role name so you do not have to enter the email address and name for your signers if they will change as you send new documents
• Enter your signers’ information
• Click the lock check box to prevent other template users from editing the recipient information
• Enter your message
• Tab the document and make sure that the correct signer is highlighted as you place the tabs
• Use the radio buttons to group the choices for your signers
• Adjust the size of the text boxes for the documents

Once you’re done, click save… tahdah! You have a template. Create one template, save to the DocuSign system, and you won’t have to REupload, REtab, and REmessage every time you send a standard form document – that gets REannoying.

Take a few minutes to watch a video that takes your through, step-by-step, the template creation process for online contract execution.

Representing DocuSign were Suzanne Alberti, Real Estate Marketing Manager; Dave Thorpe, Director of Business Development; and Tom Gonser, Founder / VP of Product Strategy.

With approximately 1,500 decision makers and influencers in the real estate community in attendance, we enjoyed the opportunity to meet and speak with electronic signature and online contract execution users and potential users. We’re thrilled to be part of any real estate professional’s “go paperless” plan.

Seeing the innovation in technology for real estate, including social media and iPhone apps, hold exciting promises for the future. In addition to an interview for a real estate focused social media site (currently in development), Tom demoed a DocuSign iPhone app, so keep an eye out for it in the app store!

Inman Real Estate Connect definitely helped us connect with you, our users. As much as we loved hearing how much you (and your customers) “love DocuSign!” We ESPECIALLY loved hearing the feedback and suggestions for building a better product. Now that we’re back in Seattle, we’re back to work, innovating on our e-signature and online contract execution solutions to help you save time, money, and increase YOUR customer satisfaction.

It was Suzanne’s first Bar Camp – thank you to all of the attendees! Suzanne’s session, “A conversation around e-signatures” started with these five questions from the audience:

1) Concerns: what do you watch out for? The biggest “pitfall” of using DocuSign electronic signature and online contract execution is forgetting to place a signature tab and having to resend the document. Forgetting a signature happens with “wet” sigatures as well, when you signer forgets to initial or sign. The difference With electronic signatures is that you can make this change through email instead of driving back across town to get the missed initial or signature.

2) How do you sign-up? You can sign up for a 30-day free trial on the DocuSign Web site, to experience the speed and convenience of electronic signature in your business.

3) How do templates work? Take a look at this video, from our Product Manager, Doug Rybacki, that explains how to create templates.

4) Are there banks who won’t accept electronic signatures? DocuSign’s legal team is currently working with the FHA and banks on their electronic signature policies. If you learn about banks NOT accepting electronic signature, please reach out to us and let us know!

5) Are the subscription plans long-term or month-to-month? We offer both pre-paid, annual subscriptions as well as month-to-month subscription plans. With an annual subscription to DocuSign Professional, the monthly cost averages out to be $15.95/month, a $48 annual savings over the month-to-month plan. With a month-to-month plan, DocuSign Professional is $19.95/month.

Other questions people had included: Does DocuSign have relationships with associations and lenders, what makes an electronic signature legal, and who is currently doing business with DocuSign.

While Suzanne described the DocuSign electronic signature and online contract execution process, Jay Thompson of Thompson Realty DocuSigned documents on his PDA and demonstrated it to those present.

DocuSign electronic signature and online contract execution enables you to do business anytime and anywhere you have internet access and a browser – smartphone, netbook or desktop – click, sign, and send even when you’re at a conference, like RE Bar Camp SF!

Imagine: Your signer needs to choose between choices “A” or “B” or more before signing and completing the transaction.  

You, the sender, can use DocuSign’s radio button feature to indicate to your signers to make a choice before affixing their e-signature to the digital document. 

Here’s how: 

Add radio buttons next to the options on your document and group the options by assigning them the same group name. If you have more than one set of options, make sure you give them different group names. Your signers will be able to choose only one option per group of radio buttons. 

Take a look at the video below, which walks you through radio button creation: 

Have more cool feature ideas? Maybe you’ve made a video about using DocuSign – please don’t hesitate to share them with us, on our forums, on your blog, wherever tickles your fancy…