Unlike a typical brokerage where an agent hangs their license but runs their business alone with little to no consumer help from their broker, The GoodLife Team works together with every agent using the required technologies to be successful in serving the needs of the consumer. In 2010 The GoodLife Team won the Inman News Innovator Award for Most Innovative Brokerage.
Business Challenge
The GoodLife Team, an innovative Austin-based brokerage led by CEO Krisstina Wise, differentiates itself from other real estate offices through its use of technology. The team selects new technologies that help them make the transaction convenient for their customers.
To implement this strategy, all agents on The GoodLife Team are required to use Apple® iPhones® and iPads®, which are loaded with the brokerage’s listing presentation and buyer presentation to help agents acquire new clients. However, the GoodLife Team lacked a technology to facilitate the most critical phase of the real estate transaction— document signature.DocuSign Solution
Garry Wise, chief sales officer of the GoodLife Team, selected DocuSign for REALTORS® because he saw that DocuSign was well suited to the team’s technology-based customer service focus. “One of the big reasons we chose DocuSign is the ease of use for consumers on a mobile device,” Garry says. “We knew this was the right solution for our team.”Results
The GoodLife Team now closes virtually all possible transactions with DocuSign. “Customers enjoy receiving and signing contracts on their mobile phones,” Garry says. “During face-to-face appointments, the customers sign in person on the iPad. They are ecstatic about how simple it is to use DocuSign to buy a home.”
Clients are happy to no longer have to come into the office to sign the paperwork—and The GoodLife Team saves time as well. Garry estimates the team saves three hours of work per transaction with DocuSign. Given the volume of transactions his team closes every year, that’s upwards of 500-600 hours per year of saved time across the team.
By implementing DocuSign along with the Apple iPad and iPhone, The GoodLife Team has been able to eliminate paper printing, copying and faxing for most transactions.
An unexpected benefit is higher integrity of the documentation. They no longer risk losing documents; instead, contracts and forms are stored on a cloud server for quick reference.
One of the team’s favorite features is DocuSign’s seamless integration with zipForm, the team’s real estate forms software. “When I’m using zipForm I don’t even have to log in to DocuSign to send a contract for signature,” Garry says. “It’s all integrated with the software that we use every single day to write every single contract for our clients.”
The competitive advantage of DocuSign also helps the team close more transactions. They can submit offers before anyone else, giving them a better shot at getting the house. This is especially valuable as the team increasingly finds itself in multiple-offer situations. “DocuSign is a great technology that makes it easy for us to provide real value to our clients.”
