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.