Christine Topham is the owner of Team Christine, Inc. in Carpentersville.

Every week, we ask a real estate professional for their Short List, a collection of tips and recommendations on an essential topic in real estate. This week, we talked with Christine Topham, the owner of Team Christine, Inc., on streamlining systems in your real estate business.

Agents are some of the busiest people I know! Tons of information comes at us every day, along with never-ending follow-up; therefore, it is extremely important to utilize our time efficiently.

To make sure I’m working efficiently, I follow these steps:

4. I create outlook templates for repetitive tasks. For instance, every time I speak with a listing prospect, I send them an email that has my PDF listing presentation, along with links to my showcased listing and YouTube videos.

3. When I secure the listing appointment, I send out a template that has “five things to do before you meet with Christine.” There is a questionnaire attached, asking for mortgage information, contact numbers and questions about why they want to sell.

2. I also include a list that asks for surveys, termite info, utility lists and the seller’s property disclosure, along with a key to provide at the appointment. If they have all of that information ready, they are serious about listing. My team loves it, because I come back to the office prepared and they can process the paperwork.

1. I love Dropbox, SkyDrive and my iPad. We use cloud storage with our team and clients. They can access files from anywhere, allowing everyone to save and add documents as needed.

I also use Microsoft OneNote, even with my iPad. OneNote allows me to send an email directly from Outlook to client files,  save PDFs from FMLS and much more. Go online to check it out! I use it for organizing prospect leads and follow-up.

Christine Topham is the owner of Team Christine, Inc. in Carpentersville. A Realtor since 1995, Christine has assisted families in all types of situations – from relocations, to moving and down-sizings, to investors and short sellers, Christine can service any consumer when it comes to buying or selling.