5 Essential Ways to Simplify Your Real Estate …thepaperlessagent.com/.../2014/05/Evernote-Report-.pdfEvernote application (mobile or computer), and you will be able to find your

5 Essential Ways to Simplify Your Real Estate Business with Evernote

Master these easy-to-learn concepts to elevate your own business to the next level!

5 Essential Uses for Evernote in Real Estate

Copyright 2014, The Paperless Agent www.thepaperlessagent.com

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Are you struggling to stay organized? Do you find doing Real Estate deals on the

go is a challenge? Are you getting frustrated with your paper-based client files

and your attempts to streamline your business in this ever-changing industry? Do

you have trouble consolidating all of your digital media into a single accessible

platform?

Here at The Paperless Agent, we train real estate agents across then country to

use various applications and programs in order to get mobile and go paperless in

their business. While our comprehensive training programs cover a number of

various mobile and computer applications with varying functionalities, we use one

program to tie it all together: Evernote.

Evernote isn't just a documentation program for taking notes and storing

information - it's a comprehensive document management system that is greatly

under utilized in the real estate

sector. You can organize your

client files like a digital filing

cabinet, document your home

inspections and property tours,

email images and documents

directly into your Evernote

business system, annotate PDFs

and images directly in your

Evernote account, and integrate

Evernote with other apps like

DocuSign and DocuSign

Transaction Rooms (and these

aren't the only functions of



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Evernote - there are many more possibilities and opportunities to integrate

Evernote into your business practices!).

If you’re having any of the problems we mentioned above, then using Evernote

with this guide is right for you. By mastering these 5 simple concepts with

Evernote, your business will be simplified, your digital assets consolidated, and

you’ll be further on the path to a Paperless business in the current times of our

tech savvy, mobile clientele.

Efficiently Organize Your Client Files

One of the biggest steps towards going paperless in your real estate practices is

digitizing the way you manage your clients' documents and records. Evernote

mirrors its functionality so closely to the standard filing cabinet method that the

transition to managing your clients without paper is simple and efficient.

Notes, Notebooks, and Stacks

Evernote's document and file organization system is broken down into Notes,

Notebooks, and Stacks. A Notebook is a collection of individual Notes that

belong together (for instance - an "Expenses" Notebook would be composed of

notes documenting expense reports). A Stack is a collection of Notebooks (for

example - if you had a Notebook for "Expenses", a Notebook for "Employees",

and a Notebook for "Meeting Notes" - you could pout these three Notebooks

together into a "Business Operations" Stack). For a further breakdown…

• Notes = Individual Documents

• Notebooks = File Folders



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• Stacks = Filing Cabinet Drawers

How Do I Organize My Documents Now?

Keeping that in mind, now you can begin to understand how you can organize

your clients' information in Evernote.

PLEASE NOTE: We recommend that you move to the Evernote system with

each new client and prospect - transferring existing and previous clients to

Evernote can be a cumbersome and time-consuming feat, and puts you at risk

for misplacing information that you may need in the immediate future.

To start, each client gets their own Notebook. This ensures that you can store all

of a client’s documents and notations in the same place, as in a file folder. This

Notebook, as mentioned before, is comprised of a collection of individual Notes



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pertaining to that client. These Notes can be anything that you would normally

store in a file folder - written communications, recorded conversations, home

inspection notes, meeting notes; anything that you would want in a client's file

can be stored digitally in a Notebook. The Notes will be automatically sorted by

date within the Notebook, so consider these already organized for you!

Once you have a few client Notebooks set up, you can group them together into

Stacks, as if they are in different drawers of a filing cabinet. Group all of your

Sellers together into a Sellers Stack, group your Buyers into a Buyers Stack,

group your Prospective Clients into a Prospective Clients Stack, etc. Once a

client or prospect is no longer active, you can move their respective Notebook

into an "Inactive" Stack as well.

Documenting Inspections and Tours

One of the joys of Evernote is that it is available on the go using your mobile

device. On your iPad or other tablet device you can type, take pictures, and

record audio in the field while you are viewing properties or inspecting your

potential listing.

Taking Photos: Using the attachment option when in a Note on your mobile

device, you can snap photos directly into the Note. This provides the ultimate

form of documentation on a home inspection or property tour (and with Evernote

you can keep it all in the same place).

Typing Notes: Using Evernote on your mobile device, you can notate findings

about the home you are inspecting directly into your client's Notebook. One of the

most effective ways to use the tablet's keyboard while inspecting the home is to

write captions for the photos you are capturing throughout your visit.



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Recording Audio: Another form of attachment you can complete within a Note on

your mobile device is a recorded audio clip. We almost always talk faster than we

can type, recording your conversation with the buyer or seller while you are in the

note ensures that no essential details are missed.

Store Digital Documents With a Simple Email Did you know that you can e-mail documents, images, and PDFs directly into an

Evernote Notebook? This makes keeping track of loose documents much easier

on the fly, ensuring that a digital copy of your receipts, e-mail chains, images,

and other assets are in the correct Notebook of your Evernote account.

How do you do it? It's quite simple. Look up your account information within your

Evernote application (mobile or computer), and you will be able to find your

"Evernote Email Address" - the email address you use when you want to send

information to your Evernote account via email.

When emailing an item to yourself (say, an image of a receipt from your iPhone),

the subject line of the email will be used as the title of the Note.

To denote which Notebook you want to email to, you just have to denote with the

"@" symbol and the name of the notebook at the end of the subject line.

Here's an example.

If you want to e-mail a receipt into your "Business Expense" Notebook, you

should write the subject line like this:



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Business Lunch Receipt @business

expense

If you want to take a picture of a For

Sale sign with a listing agent's

information to send to a specific

Buyer Notebook, you should write

the subject line like this:

For Sale Potential Home @buyer

jane smith

If you do not write which Notebook to

send the document to, your email will

be sent to whatever Notebook is set

as your default Notebook.

If you're concerned about accurately indicating the specific Notebook that you

wish to send items to, a solution we've found is to make an "Inbox" Notebook and

setting it as your default Notebook. This way as long as you stay diligent about

moving your e-mailed items to their proper Notebooks regularly, you can save

some time and hassle when initially sending the item to your Evernote system.

Marking Up Images and Annotating Contracts Skitch's integrated Markup feature in Evernote is extremely useful for real estate

agents. You can use this feature to annotate contracts, mark up images on home

inspections and property tours to draw attention to certain features in photos, and



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to develop lifestyle maps to make your listings stand out from the rest.

Annotate Contracts: You can load the PDF versions of contracts into Evernote,

which serves a couple of purposes. You can store a digital copy of the contract in

your Evernote system to ensure it never gets lost, but you can also annotate the

contract using the markup feature. Strike through prices and indicate the correct

prices, highlight areas of interest that need to be contested or altered, and much

more. Furthermore, you can send these annotated contracts back into DocuSign

directly from Evernote.

Marking Up Images: Let's say you are inspecting a home for a listing client. On

this inspection you will most likely take dozens of photos, indicating areas to

highlight as well as areas that need to be improved. Sometimes an image is

simply not enough, though! Using this feature you can circle and caption different

areas of the photo to draw your client's attention and indicate what needs to be

done in their home (if they are listing), or accenting positives when touring a

potential home to buy.

Lifestyle Map: This is a

valuable tool that you can

use when listing a property

to make you stand out from

the competition. A Lifestyle

Map is essentially a

property's neighborhood

map, with specific key

business establishments

and neighborhood

highlights indicated by text,



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arrows, and shapes on the image. Simply take a screenshot of the neighborhood

in your Maps application and mark up these area features using the functionality

in Evernote.

Using DocuSign and Evernote Together

There are several different ways that DocuSign and Evernote can be integrated

that can both streamline your business transactions and increase the accuracy

and visibility of your contract documentation.

From DocuSign's mobile application, you can open a contract in Evernote in its

own individual Note and move it to a specific client's Notebook. This keeps

records of your paperwork organized and, when you share your client's Notebook

with them online, grants them that ultimate total visibility that will set you apart

from other agents. Evernote is an excellent place to keep records of your

contracts, as they cannot be lost like papers in a file. As we mentioned before,

Evernote's cloud system keeps your data available even if you have a device

failure, so it can be accessed form anywhere with an internet connection.

Additionally, Evernote's cloud system is encrypted, so you can rest assured

knowing that you are meeting security compliance as well as protecting the

privacy of your clients.

Evernote can also be used if the contract needs to be modified before acquiring a

signature.

From the mobile DocuSign application, open the contract you wish to annotate

directly into Evernote. Using the markup feature within Evernote, annotate and

detail the changes that need to be made to the contract. These indicated

changes can be various terms and conditions, prices, and so on. From there,



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you can save the annotated contract and open it directly back into DocuSign to

initial these changes and to obtain closing signatures.

Once the signatures are acquired and sent to the proper parties, you can load

the completed, signed contract back into Evernote one more time to keep a

record of the transaction. When you share the Notebook with your client, they will

also be able to keep a digital copy of their signed contract!

Implementing Evernote into Your Life and Business Have you thought about using Evernote in your personal life? To manage your

business expenses? Are you a broker that could use Evernote to manage the

day-to-day operations of your business? The possibilities of how Evernote can be

utilized are limitless thanks to the program's versatility and thoughtful

organization model.

These are only five of the ways that you can effectively use Evernote in your

Real Estate business practices to boost your success and set you apart from the

competition in your industry, and to get you on the path to becoming a Paperless

Agent.

To find out other applications and systems you can use to get you on the path to

Paperless, visit our website at www.thepaperlessagent.com.

Are you interested in giving Evernote a try? You can get a month of Premium

service for free at www.thepaperlessagent.com/getevernote.