First, your question described your signature as “sales real estate.” And you’re right, your email signature is extremely important. You will want to include (at least) the following:

• Your name
• Your company name
• Mailing address
• Email address
• website URL (and more than one website URL is OK, but don’t list all 17 or 77 that you have!)
• Phone/fax number(s)

In essence, you want to make sure that anything that people need in order to get back in touch with you is easily accessible. Most professionals expect this to appear in an email signature.

Then, you can have several other components included in your email signature, but avoid having all of them:

• Your “tag line” if you have one
• A great quote that supports your overall professional message
• An “offer” and this might be a book, a special report, a way to get weekly email from you, a program that you will be teaching, a teleseminar you’re offering, etc.

Again a reminder, don’t try to include all of these, just one. This area can quickly become cluttered and if people are printing out an email, you don’t want an overstuffed email signature to be the reason the printing runs on for an additional page.

One more caution: Do not put fancy graphics or emoticons (or sailing ships made from parentheses), etc. Depending on what it is, it is either hard to load, won’t show up the way you intended, or makes people wonder whether you have enough to do that you can figure out how to make a ship from parentheses (well, you get the idea).

You want your email signature to let people know what you do and who you are – and why they would want to work with you. Take the ideas in this article to heart and then take a good look at whether your email signature needs to be revised.

And, to access additional ideas so you are productive in your personal and professional life, you’ll want to access the resources at

** http://www.TopTenProductivityTips.com

(c) 2009 by Meggin McIntosh, Ph.D., “The Ph.D. of Productivity”(tm)

Through her company, Emphasis on Excellence, Inc., Meggin McIntosh changes what people know, feel, dream, and do via seminars, workshops, writing, coaching, & consulting.