Scanners With Document Feeders Are Becoming Essential
Commercial mortgage loan brokers now only really need three pieces of equipment - a reliable cell phone, a laptop computer, and a combination copier / fax machine / scanner.
The need of a commercial loan broker of a good cell phone is obvious; but have you ever considered whose phone number you are promoting? Let's suppose that you send a thousand mail pieces and 3,000 emails every month for two years. Further suppose your marketing pieces encourage your clients to call the main office number for your broker.
Now suppose your broker goes belly-up. Oops! All of those clients and referral sources will be calling a disconnected phone number. Yikes.
Or suppose a commercial real estate agent really needs a commercial mortgage loan for his client. He calls your office and asks for you, but you're out of the office. "Is there another commercial loan agent there with whom I could speak?" You've just lost a commercial loan and potentially a good commercial real estate agent.
The moral of the story is this: Promote your personal cell phone number, not the office number of your broker.
Let's talk about laptop computers. I recently converted to an Apple MacBook, and I absolutely love it. No longer do you have to spend hours updating your virus protection software and malware protection software. Sure, an Apple MacBook costs an extra $600; but the machine so worth it.
Don't worry about software. Microsoft makes Office software for the Mac. This means that I can still use the fabulous Apple OSX software and still communicate with my office. There is Word, Excel and PowerPoint for the Mac, and my staff at our commercial loan office can easily open with their PC's any file I create on my Mac. It's heavenly.
But the machine that gets me hot and sweaty is my new, combination copier / fax machine / scanner with autofeeder. The other day a broker faxed a commercial loan package to me. Because the original commercial loan package had been faxed to him, I was working with a second generation fax. The copy quality was starting to decline.
I printed out the commercial loan package and then scanned it using the autofeeder. I then clicked a few times on my laptop and created a PDF, which I simply emailed to my office. The quality did not degrade, and my commercial loan officer at Blackburne & Brown was able to issue a loan approval letter the same day.
This combination machine was not expensive. It was less than $300 and I absolutely love it. It's a Canon MX700 and I even bought it using the reward points on my credit card.