“We like to win”: Local real estate team ranks at the top, beating previous records.

Competitive, communicative and connected. Those are the qualities of a winning strategy, according to Ross Clark, who with Brett Dickinson, leads The Dickinson Clark Team under the Compass brokerage.

The Dickinson Clark Team closed $252 million in real estate sales in 2023, securing their spot at the number one team in La Jolla.

Not sitting on their laurels, the team is on track to maintain that lead for 2024, Clark said, with sales at $300 million by the end of August – including the most expensive home sale in La Jolla’s history  –  towards their goal of $350 million for the year. 

It’s not a new phenomenon for The Dickinson Clark Team to hold that position, as the team has honed its collective skills over decades of combined experience and held the lead for some time, Clark said. 

Clark and Dickinson’s partnership began about four years ago, when Clark was a top agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and Dickinson was a top agent with Pacific Sotheby’s International Realty. 

“We were doing a bunch of big deals together; we both got along so great,” Clark said, adding their similarities in being competitive athletes enhances their business backgrounds.

Ross Clark (left), Brett Dickinson (right). Photo courtesy of Dickinson & Clark.

“We both have a winning attitude. We like to win,” he said.

Clark and Dickinson decided to combine their real estate expertise with then-newer company Compass, which “came from nothing to be the number one broker in San Diego, La Jolla, California, the U.S., and … the world,” Clark said, with billions sold per year. 

“It’s a big deal,” he said, attributing Compass’s quick rise to its prowess in technology and digital marketing. 

Compass “learned how to identify buyers and then help us market our homes directly to the buyers,” Clark said, forging relationships with publications from The Wall Street Journal to Architectural Digest for placement for the properties its agents bring to the market. 

“If we’re going to be the number one team, we need to be at the number one company,” Clark said.

In the two and a half years since The Dickinson Clark Team merged with Compass, the team has been the number one team in all of San Diego, Clark said. 

“We’re annihilating our competition.”

What enables The Dickinson Clark Team to assert itself at the top is its ability to review industry standards and often upend them for improvement, Clark said. 

“We are really good at selling. We know a lot about construction, development, [and] marketing,” he said, adding the team has its own full-time marketing specialists on board and also works with consultants  to “really own the market … and reach the clients we need to reach.”

Clark likens the strategy to fishing: “A typical agent would just take a listing and … drop the fish in the water, … hoping that a fish was going to swim up and bite it. But there might be no fish within 100 miles of you, and you’re never going to have success.”

The Dickinson Clark Team is like having “GPS with thermal imaging,” he said. “We find out where the fish are, what they’re eating, where they’re biting. And then we go out there … on our boat … and drop the bait down right in front of their mouth. … We go out and we find our buyer.” 

That’s only half the game plan, however. The other play, Clark said, is “the interaction that we personally have with our clients,” and the team’s ability to quantify the value of a home.

“We’re really good at looking for why we can substantiate that this house is worth what we’re asking for it,” he said.

Often, that comes down to what’s outside the home: “People are not only buying the house, they’re actually buying the community,” Clark said, noting he and his team have the leverage to facilitate their clients’ memberships at coveted spots like the La Jolla Beach & Tennis Club and applications at The Bishop’s School and La Jolla Country Day School.

“We have those relationships with the infrastructure of the community that can help these people overcome the reason why they wouldn’t move forward and buy a house,” he said.

Adding that there’s no hierarchy on The Dickinson Clark Team and everybody shares the profits, Clark emphasized “we’ve built our whole reputation on being honest, [playing] the long game with integrity. It’s really important that our clients trust us.”

The team has had “great success” with this approach, Clark said, noting that of the 14 sales in La Jolla’s history that closed at more than $20 million, his team has brokered five.

“Nobody else comes close.”

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