We recently sent all our agents a revised Office Policy Manual.  In past we'd need to get everyone to sign a paper copy. Instead we used docusign, for a few reasons;

 

1. Docusign is awesome

2. You should have experience in docusign from the point of view of the signer (typically your client) - One  example of this is that I've noticed that AFTER a client signs, it goes to a window asking them to join (sign up for) docusign.  So I warn people in advance now that the document has been sent and they can ignore that last screen.

 

If you are reading this and are not with our tech savvy Main Streey office, contact me at cory@coryraven.com and I'd be happy to send a document over for you to test docusign.

 

Sign up and http://www.docusign.com and use code CREA or sign up through the link in webforms

 

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Cloud storage has exploded in popularity in recent years.  Pretty much every CRM and email service is now cloud based.  For accessing files in a shared space, the 2 best options right now appear to be Google Drive and Dropbox

 

Dropbox http://www.dropbox.com/

Pros

• Free (up to 2 gigs of storage)
• Easy folder and file system windows users will enjoy
• A "dropbox" folder on your desktop so you can locally access files (so if the internet was down you could still access any files dropbox got during your last sync
• • Very easy to use files ans folders and also share those files and folders with other users (clients, other agents etc) 

  Cons 

  • Dropbox plans, if you want to use more than 2 gigs, are not cheap (They also aren't overly expensive, but they start at $11 a month for 100 Gigs of extra space)
  • There is no file editor built in to dropbox.  So if you and are share a spreadsheet, we need a system in place to make sure the most up to date one is always the one we use.  Below you can read about how google has done a better job in this category

  Google Drive (formerly Google Docs) 

  Pros

  • Interfaced with Google, where likely 90% of us already have an account
  • Free (with limited storage) 
  • Price is much cheaper than dropbox.  You will spend only $1.99 a month for the same 100gigs dropbox charges $10.99 a month for.  In fact at $9.99 (a dollar less still than dropbox) you'll get a full Terabyte worth of storage. This would hold pretty much endless documents and can act as well as a media (photos, movies and music) storage centre
  • Built in (versions of) Word, Excel and Powerpoint.  You can work on documents, spreadsheets and presentations and every change you make is AUTO saved to the document, leaving no room for "old version" errors

  Cons

  • At this point Google Drive seems like a clear winner, right?  Well it is not, yet.  Here's why... The file system is clunky, not user friendly and just, well not as good as dropbox.  I thought I'd use google drive to get pictures off my phone and on to my homer computer.  Save them from my phone to a computer and on that computer put them in to a "pics for home" folder.  What should have been easy took me a month to deal with as the original computer kept adding the pics back (thinking perhaps I deleted them by accident) and then my other computer with Google Drive kept getting duplicates.  I am sure there is a practical reason for this, but for my needs it didn't work very well
  • It doesn't use a folder system (sort of like gmail) - It will accept your file system if you create folders in the google drive folder in you computer, but then the online and desktop experience is much different.
  
  
  Never Lose Another Note
   
  I've spoken about Evernote http://www.evernote.com a few times before.  I am a big fan of this program.  Watch these videos for more.
   
  Steve Dotto talks about his 5 favourite things about evernote 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kad-OBBhBdM
   
  More of an intro, why use evernote?
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oyDjxVfE-E
   
  11 useful features of Evernote 
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ce2_gWZHBIs