Out of necessity, I had to become very creative for my showings last week. As I was getting ready the day before showing my new clients their top picks, I found out just how bad it is for the toner in your printers to sit idle for 6 months while tucked away in a storage unit. As I hit the print button, the page went through just like it should have but as I picked it up, there was nothing on it.
Necessity and adversity has certainly helped me to find a way to save money in the future. I am always looking for ways to use technology to my advantage. Saving time, money, and setting myself apart from the competition is very important and I am always looking for ways to utilize the latest and greatest for my benefit. Sometimes the old way of doing things still remains the way to go but I think this time, I found something that will stick.
Here is what I am now doing to prepare for and execute my showings:
Hardware: iPad (iPhone or other smartphone with evernote)
Software: Evernote
Process: I go into my local MLS and pull up all of the listings that I am going to show. I put them in order of showings from the first to last and then click print. Instead of actually printing the listings to paper, I select the option to print to PDF. Here is where Evernote comes in. On my Mac, I have Evernote installed so I have the option to print to Evernote PDF. I select that option and it automatically sends it to the Evernote program. The reason I don’t send the listings to myself in an email is that I can’t see the private (realtor relevant) notes with the email option. I can only see them via the print function. This is the beauty of the PDF. The system can’t tell the difference! Once I send the listings to Evernote, I take a quick moment to create a folder for my client so that every time I create this process for the same client, the folder already exists and I stay organized.
OK, here is the important part. You must make sure that you have the Evernote app on your iPad (or other smartphone that can run Evernote) and make certain to hit the sync button. Once you do that, the file should be on your mobile device and you are ready to go. Being extremely aware that technology can sometimes fail you, I make sure that I can see the document I need with my data connection turned off. I really like to make sure I have what I need!
One last thing. I create a short Excel document with a summary of the listings that I am showing for the day. The information I include in this file is the MLS #, address, and price. Sometimes I include what type of sale it is, i.e. short sale, lender owned, or the ever popular standard sale. I do this mostly for quick access to the address and quick information about the next home we are going to see.
The downside:
The only negative that I have found so far is that if your list of homes is really long, say 15 homes or more, it can take a few extra seconds to scroll down to the bottom of the page where the last home is. That is why I created the summary page I can reference for the easy questions. I believe this is a small price to pay and it hasn’t negatively impacted my clients experience.
The upside:
Cost reduction – In just two showings with my new clients, I have saved at least 70 pieces of paper and toner with just two showings. Not to mention that I am much more organized before and during my showings. Gone are the days of flipping through multiple pieces of paper and wondering what I did with that page with the home we viewed three homes back.