I normally get three types of offers from people writing to me on my domains.

The first is from people who ask me to make the first move, “What would you sell x for? Are you considering selling X – what is the price?”

I realise that this is a standard negotiating tactic and I will be going into this in a later post.

The second is from the chancers who offer a couple of hundred dollars for a very good name. I still reply to them, but nothing normally comes of it.

The third is the one I’m going to focus on today, and that’s when out of nowhere a fantastic offer lands in your inbox.

Now before I go any further, I’d just liken to say that this is not the definitive guide on how to deal with buyers, they are just tactics I have used myself.

So the offer has come in, it’s for $5500 and they would like to buy one of your average LLLL.com’s.

The first thing I do is congratulate myself on my shrewd purchase and my forsight

Then I immediately google the persons name and e-mail address to see if I can find out anything more about them. Because at this point they know a lot more about me than I do them, and I want to know who I’m dealing with whether it be a domainer at the top of his budget or a big corporate whose still playing with petty cash.

It’s quite rare that I do find anything, but it’s worth checking.

Next step is to wait a little. If I get the mail on Tuesday morning I’ll reply on Wednesday evening so as not to act overly keen on selling the domain and thus weakening my position. It also gives me a chance to think about how I want to play this, as the way I see it I have four options:

1) Accept the offer straight off. As it’s more than I thought I would ever get for the name and I’ve made a great profit. Also I don’t want to scare the buyer away by being greedy.

2) Go back with a price I will sell the domain for, e.g. $30,000 (if I do this I will give additional reasons for it’s worth) The problem with this is that if the figure is too high they are likely to run a mile and also they may have been willing to pay $100,000, so nowadays this is not a tactic I usually employ.

3) Thank them for the offer and say I have plans for the name and hadn’t really thought about selling, and at the price they have offered I really wouldn’t be interested and again list some reasons why the name is worth a lot more. I’d then invite them to make a higher offer and go from there.

4) Say the domain is not for sale as I have plans for it, but thank them for their offer.

Now this is a tactic I’ve never employed, but I’ve heard of people who have used it successfully. It’s success is dependant on the fact that the Individual or corporate is desperate to have your name and will not take no for an answer and they will come back with a massively increased offer. (I haven’t got the stomach or the globes for this type of negotiation as I’d rather have the cash in the bank.)

Out of all of these tactics number three is the one I employ most often and seems to deliver the best results. One other important factor is to leave the e-mail open. What I mean by this is that if you don’t hear back from them for three weeks you are still in a position to accept their original offer (I’ve done this a few times.)

I hope this was helpful and I’d be interested in hearing how you deal with offers that come in.

James

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