Dan Duffy Shares Guidelines for Successful Strategic Partnerships

July 24, 2008 (Kansas City, Mo.) – Dan Duffy, chief executive officer and chairman of the board for United Country Real Estate, served as keynote speaker for the 9th Annual Marketing World: A Frost & Sullivan Executive MindXchange, held in Beaver Creek, Colo., on July 20-23. He spoke to approximately 5,000 leaders and managers from top companies such as Johnson & Johnson, AT&T, St. Jude Medical, Blue Cross & Blue Shield, Xerox, IBM, Honeywell and Capital One.

Duffy opened Tuesday’s general session by speaking about Identifying, Prioritizing, Establishing, Managing and Measuring Strategic Partnerships. His dynamic and entertaining presentation included a template for a strategic partnership "Matrix Filter" and "Prioritization Grid," as well as insights into the importance of intangible alignment around culture and values with strategic partners. He also listed the top 10 pitfalls to avoid when establishing strategic partnerships. Participants ranked Duffy and his presentation near excellent with comments such as “great sense of humor and high energy,” “inspiring and provoking,” and “useful and motivating speaker provided tangible tools.”

During the course of his career in various industries, Duffy has established strategic relationships, joint ventures and partnerships with dozens of Fortune 100 companies including Microsoft, Sage PLC, US Bank Corp, Whirlpool and Citi Group. Each of these relationships were designed and implemented to provide incremental revenue opportunities and strategic competitive advantage for the companies he served.

“In dynamic situations, it's imperative for executives to be able to identify, develop and sustain strategic partnerships with multiple audiences – customers, suppliers, employees and other parties critical to a company's performance – that drive real competitive advantage,” said Duffy. “The common element among all these potential partnerships is ensuring that each relationship has a substantial return on cash and non-cash investment and that it is strategically congruent with and not a detractor from the core business.”

In his role as CEO of United Country Real Estate, Duffy is principally responsible for the establishment
and execution of a long-term strategy designed to deliver competitive advantage to United Country franchisee partners as they operate in their local markets serving their clients.

Prior to joining United Country, Duffy spent nearly 20 years focused on serving clients in a number of senior executive positions. Most recently, he served as the president and chief executive officer of ePartners, Microsoft’s “2005 Global Partner of the Year” and largest North American Microsoft Business Solutions partner with more than 20 offices serving 12,000 clients across the United States and the U.K.

Prior to his tenure in the technology services market space, Duffy served as the chief development and financial officer of an online business-to-business exchange serving the auction and brokerage market for industrial equipment. He also was a founding member of the Chicago practice of The Center for Strategic Transactions, a division of Ernst & Young L.L.P., providing strategic and corporate finance advisory services to Fortune 100 companies as well as high growth technology, product and services organizations across multiple industries.

United Country Real Estate is the only national real estate franchise system specializing in properties
in and around the small cities and towns of America. Based in Kansas City, Mo., the company has been
an innovator in rural real estate marketing since 1925. United Country supports more than 700 offices nationwide with a unique, comprehensive marketing program that includes the leading web site in the
rural real estate market (www.unitedcountry.com), proprietary real estate catalogs, an extensive buyer database and national advertising of properties to over 90 million homes a week. United Country has
been named as a Top 25 Franchise by the Wall Street Journal and among Entrepreneur Magazine's Franchise 500®. In January 2007, the company introduced United Country Auction Services, becoming the nation's largest integrated network of traditional real estate agents and real estate auctioneers.

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2820 NW Barry Road, Kansas City, MO 64154
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