Good People, Training Help Smaller Companies Compete

A couple of mid-sized real estate firms are thriving in Northwest Arkansas’ booming real estate market, racking up more sales than some firms with twice as many agents.

Eric Duca & Associates Inc., an ERA real estate agency with offices in Springdale and Rogers, is on track to do $55 million in sales this year with just 17 or fewer agents working throughout the year. Duca’s agency did $40.66 million in sales in 2003, after launching the agency in 2002 with just four agents and about $20 million in sales that first year.

Duca’s not sure he’s got a real secret to the business, but he does have an obvious love for his work and a plan in place to help his agents succeed.

“We’re really focused on trying to have the right people in place and training,” he said. “We want to have the most professional real estate agents out there, and training is the key.”

Duca looks for positive people who have a good work ethic. He then provides them with a strong training program and a good place to work that encourages goal setting, he said.

Because each real estate agent is sort of a business of its own, Duca asks agents to write a business plan for their professional life.

“They’re basically entrepreneurs and their success relies on what they do on a day-to-day basis,” he said. “It makes them accountable.”

Duca said he wants his offices to be “a fun place to work” and encourages the agents to take care of their personal lives, making family their first priority.

Good agents are good people, who treat people right, he said. It would be tough for an agent to build the relationships needed for success in real estate if they don’t treat others well, he noted. He sees real estate agents as “facilitators” rather than sales people, he said.

“I have a passion for what I do and I try to extend that to those around me,” Duca said.

Duca said he’s in the process of training 13 new agents, many of whom will work in the firm’s Rogers office which opened in June. Duca is also in the process of building along U.S. Highway 412, in front of the Har-Ber Meadows development. It will be 14,000 to 16,000 SF with several tenants. Duca said his firm will occupy about 5,000 SF of the new building. The Springdale space the firm leases now is only 2,000 SF.

In addition to building a new Springdale office and opening one in Rogers, Duca said the firm’s five-year goals include opening offices in Fayetteville and Bentonville, and possibly another in Siloam Springs.

Ward Jones Realtors Inc. of Siloam Springs also has fewer realtors than some of its local competition.

The agency’s revenue jumped 12.5 percent between 2002 and 2003, from $36.6 million in sales to $41.2 million. Ward Jones, president and owner of the firm, said the agency’s increase in sales volume will be even greater than that this year, but he didn’t have an estimated total for the year. The firm has 13 agents in one office.

The agency was formed in 1992. Since then, Jones said, it has only had one year in which the firm didn’t meet its sales goal. That year one of the firm’s top agents left, and Jones said it took a number of months to recover.

Siloam Springs may not have experienced the recent real estate boom of other Northwest Arkansas cities, but there is growing interest in the city for housing, Jones said.

“A lot of people coming into Northwest Arkansas are considering Siloam Springs now,” he noted. “We’ve had a number of people who didn’t want to look on the [Rogers, Springdale, Fayetteville] strip because of what we offer in a small town.

Ward Jones Realtors also has a thriving business in northeast Oklahoma.

Jones, like Duca, credits his firm’s ability to compete so successfully with a limited staff to the people he hires and the training they get.

“We are good at what we do,” he said.