While many in Joplin huddled indoors today, out of the cold north wind and the freezing rain and snow, 100+ agents and the staff of Keller Williams Realty gathered together at the OGAR Board Office. It wasn’t just a tactic for keeping warm! We chipped ice off our cars and braved slick roads to stretch our thinking, to learn new things, to take our business practices up a notch and to embrace time saving technology.
The Joplin Keller Williams office decided late last year to go paperless. Anyone who has practiced real estate knows what a huge commitment that is. A standard contract is seven pages long. Add in addendums, supporting documents, disclosures and closing documents and we are talking about a substantial amount of paper for each transaction. Then, the need for duplication triples or quadruples those numbers.
Picture by Carolyn Thompson
One of the things I love most about the Keller Williams franchise is that they are always cutting edge, always at the forefront of the newest technological advances. A year and a half ago, as part of our package at KW, each agent was given a powerful online tool to use called dotloop. Any form and document can be downloaded into this program or blank forms accessed online within dotloop and filled out there. A loop is created, for example 1122 Gracious Living Street, Joplin, and everything about that property, from listing docs to offers and contracts to closing documents goes into that loop. Once a loop is started, it can be shared with the key people in the transactions: buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, and anyone else associated with those people. With a few clicks, documents can be sent electronically to all parties and signatures are gathered online and looped back to the agent. Dotloop not only saves paper and trees, it is saving immense amounts of time.
I’ve been using dotloop for quite a while, and when the announcement was made that the office was going paperless, I began to run all my documents, buyers and sellers through the program. I appreciated how easy it was to use, and greatly enjoyed the time I got back that I used to spend in the car, driving to meet clients to get their signatures. When today’s class was announced, and it was stressed that EVERY agent needed to attend, rain or shine, snow or sleet, I agreed to attend. However, I thought I was pretty up to date with dotloop and knew my way around the program fairly well.
KW Tech Trainer Carolyn Thompson
I am so very glad I was there today! KW agent and tech trainer, Carolyn Thompson, from the neighboring state of Oklahoma, drove in last night ahead of the winter weather, intent on making realtors’ lives easier with dotloop. She was phenomenal, easy to listen to and understand, and very knowledgeable about using dotloop. I didn’t just learn a couple of new things….I learned a LOT of new things. I’ve been using dotloop, but I’ve been doing some of it the more difficult way. Carolyn had great hand outs so we could follow along as she created a loop and walked us through the many benefits of being paperless. I took notes and can’t wait to put into practice all that I learned today. The Joplin KW office staff, amazing souls that they are, even made each agent a laminated flip chart to use for ease of remembering and continued learning.
Dotloop’s tagline is “peoplework, not paperwork”. Keller Williams is all about people as well. This rapidly growing international company is always focused on its agents, seeing us as people first, with lives and families, and then agents. They continually search for and implement programs, tools and models that help us to be the very best people that we can be. They know the rest will follow. In fact, one of my favorite sayings from the KW Bold program is “My business grows to the extent that I do.” Best of all, they have given me the opportunity to prove that truth. Now, I can also feel great about saving trees, being resourceful, and reclaiming precious time, both for me and my clients. And that’s a definite win-win!
Going Beyond 