I remember it was in January of 2009. I got an inquiry about a property that we had listed and the buyer asked if they could see it right away. I showed the home to the older couple and learned they were down from Utah and looking for an off-season place in the Phoenix area.
Two days later they wanted to get an offer in on the house, but they had returned to Utah. It was Saturday night and after talking to the buyers realized fax was not going to work easily as the nearest fax machine was not close to them, it was at a Staples which was over 30 minutes away.
I sent out a quick Tweet asking people for ideas on good electronic signatures. A few trusted friends responded back quickly and recommended DocuSign. So I signed up. During the sign up process I was in a rush and as happens, made a mistake and could not get it to work.
I had told the buyers they would have the contract before late on Saturday night, and here it was about 7pm. I sent out a quick Twitter alert that I was having problem and needed advice on how to fix it. Within minutes I received responses from both @DocuSign and @tgonser on Twitter. I would not realize until later that @tgonser was the owner and president of the company. I was very impressed with their support on the Internet at 7pm on a Saturday. From there I was sold.
DocuSign not only helped me get that deal done, they have saved me dozens and dozens of hours of chasing contracts over the last 8 months. I have said it many times, besides my car and Blackberry, it may be the most useful tool I have in my real estate career.
One of the great challenges I have faced my whole life is my name. I have joked for a long time that I want to change my name to Dean Skywalker, or something a little easier to spell. Dean Ouellette is not the easiest name in the world to spell, but it’s my name.
Towards the end of last year I decided I needed to control my name. Being in real estate and meeting a lot of people I wanted to be easy to find and when you searched for Dean Ouellette you would find me and not an artist in San Francisco.
As most who will read this also know I am a big believer and user of social networking. I am very active on Twitter, Facebook and Linked In. I also knew it was not going to be easy for someone to find me on Facebook as more often then not when they typed in my name they would not be typing “Ouellette,” but likely “Ouelette” or “Oullette” or “Ouellete” or… you get the point. It is more often than not my last name is misspelled.
I decided to steal an idea I had seen someone else use and I registered DeanOnFacebook.com. I would then take that page and make it a direct link to my Facebook page. No worries about name being misspelled again.
I could not see a reason why Facebook would have a problem with that. After all if you were to look at the back of my business card, see DeanOnFacebook.com and wonder what that was you would be sent directly to a Facebook page. In theory more traffic for Facebook and more people seeing their advertising. It’s not like I created a parody site or I am trying to make money off it, just trying to make my Facebook page easier to find.
(Maybe instead of Dean Skywalker I should change my name to Dean Facebook.)
Here is the letter they sent me today. And it is a good thing I got it on my Blackberry because it went into my Gmail spam folder and would have never seen it. [click to continue…]
The world is changing right before our eyes, are you changing with it. If you are not staying ahead of the curve it will be almost impossible to keep up. This is just a stunning 4 minute video on the world and the way it is moving.
A fellow agent in my office recently asked me to put together something on Twitter and how real estate agents could utilize it. We are Realtors, there is one thing we all love to say when introduced to anything new, “I’m to busy for that.” And while it is true you, like I, may be very busy, it is important to look at what we are doing with our time and is it leading us to where we need to be down the road.
Twitter is one tool many of you have probably heard of, but have little clue what it is. The short answer is Twitter is a micro-blog social networking tool. My goal here is not to teach you the ins and outs of what Twitter is, but why as a real estate agent you should be using it.
Purpose
There are three main purposes I am going to focus on in hopes of convincing you Twitter is a tool you should be using.
Presence: Have you ever searched your name on the Internet? What do you find? If you were to meet a potential client in your day-to-day activities and handed them a card what do you think they would do when they get back home? They are going to Google you more often than not. What will they find? Twitter is a tool that can help you control what they find. Not only does Twitter rank well so your actual Twitter account will be found, but Twitter can also be used as a tool to drive people to other sites that control your message as we will discuss more below. [click to continue…]
It’s just a few days away, Thursday April 23rd Phoenix area real estate agents gather for our first REBCPHX event. And an event it will be. We have over 300 people signed up and we hope to have over 300 attend.
The first question most real estate agents will ask is what is a bar [...]
I want to thank DocuSign for asking me to do an interview for their blog. I want to take a few minutes and go more into my history of how I made the move to use their service. If you are a real estate agent I recommend you sign up immediately if you have [...]
I wanted to let you know about the SEVRAR / BlueRoof360.com Technology Conference on the 27th of January 2009!
We’re holding it at the Mesa Convention Center in Building B and we have some FANTASTIC people lined up to speak!
Jack Peckham - Founder and CEO of the Real Estate Cyberspace Society (www.RECyber.com)Greg Tracy - REALTOR and Founder of www.BlueRoof360.com Joeann Fossland- GRI [...]
e.Republic’s Center for Digital Government and Digital Communities magazine has named the City of Mesa one of the top digital cities in the nation through its eighth annual Digital Cities Survey. The 2008 Survey examined how cities use technology to create a seamless environment between local government and constituents.
The City of Mesa has recently started [...]
I have always been a technology geek, but to date have tried to avoid social networking. I must admit, over the last couple of weeks as I have been playing with it I have become fascinated by it. I am now on twitter. Send me a tweet at @deanouellette. Who would have thought that posting everything [...]
Lee Lefever makes some great videos on common things. Ever wonder how a CFL light bulb works and will it really save money? Or how about how web searches really work? Want to Twitter, but you are not really sure how to? Lefever always has videos that explain it in clear language. The one that really changed my [...]
Call Dean Ouellette from here! Just click on the phone icon below, enter your name and phone number and this will connect your phone to mine automatically.
Thompson's Realty
3664 E. Vaughn
Gilbert, AZ 85234
Direct: (480) 270.4990
Fax: (866) 264.0032
Skype: DeanOuellette Email Me Here
Yahoo M:DeanSellsAZ
GTalk: DeanSellsAZ
AIM: DeanOuellette
Two days later they wanted to get an offer in on the house, but they had returned to Utah. It was Saturday night and after talking to the buyers realized fax was not going to work easily as the nearest fax machine was not close to them, it was at a Staples which was over 30 minutes away.
