Going Paperless

Over a year ago we had you take a look at your business and share with us your plan for going paperless. Or if you had already eliminate paper from your business we asked you to share with us how you had done this.

Well you didn't think we were going to just sit back and believe that you actually put that little plan into action, do you? Of course, we all set out with the best intentions, but sometimes life and business get in the way. But if we were able to eliminate paper from our business not only would it potentially make us more efficient.....it could save us a heck of a lot of money!

I know when we had our brokerage that printing and paper were two of the largest expenses of our office every month. But it's 2012 and it's actually possible to eliminate paper from our business.

Maybe you're thinking......"no way! I HAVE to have flyers on my listings". Do you really? Could you have a text for info type rider on your sign that not all saves a tree but also gives you a way to capture information on interested consumers instead of just letting flyers fly off the shelf?

Or Maybe it's "We do all contracts on paper. My clients like to be able to see what they are signing". Then why are tens of thousands of real estate agents using DocuSign and closing deals without printing and faxing paper back and forth? They've figured it out, what is holding you back?

So for this month's challenge we want you to go back and re-evaluate your committment to go paperless. If you joined us for the last paperless challenge in Feb of 2011, it's been over 18 months, have you actually put into practice anything you lined out in your plan? If you have, tell us about how that has worked for your business. Has it made you more efficient? Did eliminating fax, print, sign, print, fax, resign, rinse, repeat, try to read, actually make life easier for you. What kind of things from your plan proved to be very difficult to get away from? Did you find that you just couldn't break that habit of printing out the MLS sheet for every house you are showing your clients this weekend? Why? Let us know.....

If you didn't take place in the paperless challenge way back in Feb of 2011, we'd like for you to take a look at your business and see where you can eliminate paper. Maybe you can't completely eliminate paper in your business, but take a look at where you are using paper and think about if there is a way to either reduce the amount you use or completely replace that process with something more efficient.

The Challenge:

**Post a blog that revisits your plan from Feb. of 2011 and tell us how you've made progress in eliminating paper from your business. If you haven't made progress, tell us why it was a challenge and how you plan to take smaller steps to reduce the amount of paper you use in your business.

**If you didn't join us for the challenge in Feb. 2011, we'd love to have you post a blog that outlines your plan to reduce or eliminate the use of paper in your business.

**Posts must be 300 words to qualify. But the reality is, a real plan, or a real assessment of your last plan is going to well exceed 300 words. Don't mail it in. The point is to get you thinking about your business in a meaningful way.

**Posts submitted by the deadline will receive 2000 points. In order to submit your post, leave a link to your post in the comment section of this post.

**Deadline for entry is 11:59pm Pacific Time, September 28th. You must leave a link to your post in the comment section of this post by that date and time.

The Winners:

**We will randomly draw 5 posts from all the entries to win a $50 gift card. Anyone that tweets their post to @DocuSign using the #paperless hashtag will get an additional entry in the drawing to win one of the $50 giftcards.

The five randomly drawn winners will also win an additional 2000 ActiveRain points.

**But the real winner is you if you can find a way to make yourself more efficient and eliminate some costs from your business. That's why we do these challenges, to give you a chance to take a hard and honest look at your business.