United Country® Real Estate specializes in recreational and rural real estate in approximately 700 small cities and towns across the country. It is the nation’s largest integrated organization of real estate and auctioneer professionals, with more than 4,000 agents.
David Dickey has been with United for four years. He previously served in senior-level positions with several companies specializing in integrated business solutions for enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM), as well as replication and disaster recovery solutions. He also spent several years in the enterprise software space.
Dickey received his BBA in Management Information Systems from Texas Tech University, continuing education from Kellogg School of Management, and is a graduate of the Stagen Leadership Institute.
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As a national real estate franchise company, United emphasizes its knowledge of the needs of brokers in rural markets, and has a strong focus on marketing and technology-based services. What functionalities are high on the “wish list” for United brokers and what types of systems do you offer them?
Our strategy is really split in two parts. First, our consumer strategy is to expose our listings beyond just putting them in MLS and having a sign in the yard. That’s key with recreational and rural listings, especially when you’re talking about second homes, farms and lake properties. We have a strong SEO (search engine optimization) practice on behalf of our brokers. We have more than 1,400 Websites overall, with some 3 million visitors each month – I call it a Web of Websites. We also do social media, we have a mobile strategy and iPhone app, and we’re into listing syndication, which is critical to our brokers.
The other half of our strategy is to generate buyer leads, which is where MarketLinx® AgentAchieve comes in. Our slightly modified version of AgentAchieve is branded as “Peak Performance.” It’s an agent CRM software that’s integrated with our agents’ 30,000 listings located across the U.S. and Costa Rica as well as the 350,000 buyers we have in our database. We get leads and are able to generate very slick marketing pieces such as virtual postcards. We have a very strong marketing program that is supported by the software
The real estate industry as a whole has historically lagged other financial services industries in its use of technology, especially with lead generation and management.
Our management team is a group of guys from the technology space. Previously, we ran ePartners, the 2005 Microsoft® global partner of the year. We actually realized the real estate industry was behind the curve, and that’s why we took advantage of the opportunity to purchase United Country. We knew we could bring technology solutions to bear; in fact it was an advantage that we didn’t have to migrate the company’s technology to a new platform. We just have been working on rolling out this solution over the past two years, so far to more than 650 offices and 3,500 agents.
With your impressive technology background, you’re obviously familiar with a number of solutions available in the marketplace. How did you come to choose AgentAchieve as your broker and agent solution?
Obviously we have implemented other systems, and studied AgentAchieve as well as a lot of other CRM packages. We’ve heard and lived through story after story of failed CRM implementation. AgentAchieve’s advantage is that was built by real estate people for real estate people. The notions of “sellers,” “buyers,” and “listings” are already built in. In addition, MarketLinx is entrenched in the MLS world, so integration is not an issue.
Consumers are getting their listing and community information online and are looking for agents who demonstrate their integrity, authenticity and ability to perform. How are your broker systems helping your offices and agents manage and promote that brand?
We were attracted to United Country because of its 85 years in the real estate industry. The brand is not as well known as some of the other real estate franchises, but it is strong in rural America. We’ve already done a lot of work to bring up the brand – in fact, our president is a former brand manager of Coca Cola, RJ Reynolds, and NASCAR so we have experience in that area.
What we’re selling is the value we deliver to the brokers. In fact, even though our franchise terms are rather short (3 years), our renewals are strong and Wall Street Journal and Dunn & Bradstreet have recently listed United Country as the nation’s #1 real estate franchise.
How do you view the future for your company?
One of the most positive things for our company was the move four years ago by our CEO to go
forward with an auction division. It’s a big network of 200 auctioneers. We have an agreement
with Colliers, the commercial real estate firm, and we simulcast online auctions. Right now
auctions are about 15 percent of our total revenue, but there’s still a lot of inventory and REOs to
be worked through. I’m also excited about our unique approach to multiproperty auctions where
we may not sell a property right then, but instead use the auction as an accelerated marketing
tool.
Our overall business is 60 percent residential, 10 percent commercial and 30 percent land – land
took it on the chin last year, and the second-home market was hit as well, but we are seeing both
improving in the first half of this year (2010).
Our Websites are amazing. You can search for anything from a bowling alley to a winery to
lakefront property. We try to help the consumer focus on the “what” in real estate.
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