One of the most helpful tools in our business has been the fax machine.  Next to the telephone, this has probably been the single biggest productivity tool that we have used in the past 20 years.  I don’t need to belabor all the ways that faxing has benefited us and the way that we do business, but I think I need to spend some time on what a tremendous time waster and resource waster that faxes has come to be.

How many times have you stood by the fax machine waiting for a fax to arrive?  How many times did the other party send the fax to your office fax when you were waiting by your home fax (and vice versa)?  How many times did someone else pick up one or two pages of your fax with theirs (by mistake of course)?  Or even worse, your entire fax?  How many times have you stood by the fax machine waiting for someone else’s fax to finish before you could send yours?  And my personal favorite fax time waster, how many times have you tried to send a fax to someone who has an old steam powered or hand cranked fax that takes forever to accept a page? (or even worse, it’s out of paper or jammed or….)

If you’ve done at least one real estate transaction you have probably experienced at least one of these faxtrations (my word for fax frustrations) and probably most of them.

Fax is a way of life in real estate so what can you do?  Well, I think I have a solution and if you have $10.00 a month, you can get started.  I have been using a service called MyFax for the past 18 months and am a total believer in the product.  (There are similar products out there, but MyFax is the one that I use).

My $10.00 a month buys me total freedom from the faxtrations that I have described above.  When I signed up, I opted for the toll free number option.  In fact, my fax number is (866) 408-0589.  Go ahead and send me a fax so that you can see that the experience of sending a fax is quick and efficient.  In fact, if it wasn’t for the speed of transmission, you wouldn’t be able to tell that you weren’t sending a fax to a dedicated machine in my office.

So, what happens on my end?  Simple.  I get an email containing a preview of the fax along with a PDF file attached to the email.  I can have the email sent to multiple accounts, so I can have the fax that you send to me sent to my home and my work email accounts simultaneously.   This means that I no longer have to stand by the machine and wait!  I can be any where that I can receive an email…I can even receive it on my phone!

OK, that’s pretty cool.  But can I SEND a fax using MyFax.  As a matter of fact you can.  Simply log on to MyFax.com, provides your user name and password and select send a fax.  You will then get to navigate your hard drive to find the document that you want to fax.  Simply upload it, provide the info for the cover sheet (which you can customize) and you are done.

So, with an inexpensive subscription, I have solved every one of my faxtrations!

Click here to signup for a MyFax account and buy 2 months to get the 3rd month FREE.

Or click here to sign up for MyFax and get a free Toll Free number…your choice.

Of course, this assumes that the document that you want to fax is already on your hard drive.  But what if it isn’t?  There are three solutions to that problem.  Most of our offices have copy machines that can scan to email.  If you are in one of those offices, simply scan the document into an email that you send to yourself.  Then open the email at your desktop or laptop computer and save the document to your hard drive.  From there log in to MyFax and send it as a fax!  Sounds complex, but couldn’t be easier.

Solution 2 and 3 are actually close to being the same, but they entail buying a scanner.  Solution 2 is a desk top scanner and solution 3 is a portable scanner.  I‘ll talk about them, and my recommendations in another posting.

For now, take advantage of one of the offers that I have obtained from MyFax for you and sign up today.  Start using the service and see if you can’t end your faxtrations!