If you have ever had a painful experience while attempting to share your screen or while trying to view someone else’s screen remotely, then continue reading. If not, then I salute you, for you are a rare breed.

At Contactually, I am frequently on the phone with prospective customers describing how our product improves relationships with their prospects. A few minutes into our  conversation, I pause and ask if they are at their computer (95% of the time they are) and if they would like a quick demo. Oftentimes, there is hesitation stemming from previous experiences with clunky screen sharing software. But after I tell the prospect to navigate to our private join.me URL and I share my screen with one click, their apprehension becomes amazement. It’s usually such an “Aha” moment that I often spend the next couple minutes explaining what join.me is (which is exactly how Contactually discovered it).

It’s really easy to get started and did I mention free!? Once you sign-up, you will be assigned a 9-digit code that you can share with your audience. The secret sauce lies in how easy it is for your audience to connect: no software to download and no registration necessary. Importantly, join.me is Mac, Windows, and mobile compatible. With the free version, you can have up to 250 viewers, chat with attendees, and even grant control of your screen to participants.

As a tech-savvy real estate professional, a clearly valuable use case would be browsing MLS listings with your client remotely rather than emailing back and forth or trying to describe over the phone all of the details that you have in front of you. By providing this extra level of service to prospects, you could even convert more sales.

While the free version of join.me is great, we use (and recommend) the paid pro version ($149/ year) for a few key features:

• Privacy: a “meeting lock” is provided which gives you control over who can gain entry into the meeting and see your screen. You can also keep the meeting unlocked so that everyone who has your code can join
• Multi-user: Ability to add other team members to your account as presenters
• Customizable URL: By creating your own join.me URL, you can share a memorable link with others, which can also help your branding

One final note: before sharing your screen, make sure to close all instant messaging clients and that you don’t have any unprofessional websites on your screen (i.e. Justin Bieber fan page). However, join.me is currently working on a beta version where you can limit your screen sharing to specific windows within your screen. Eventually, Beiber and MLS will be able to live in harmony without damaging your reputation.