Receiving and responding to domain inquiries and offers, takes a small chunk of time.
One has to research the buyer’s background and formulate a quote based on a combination of factors.
Presenting a potential domain buyer with a custom quote is important, in order to achieve a sale. Inquiries that arrive with an offer must be countered; if you take the first offer that arrives, you risk leaving money on the table.
Until today, most of my price quotes have been presented with a 7 day window. Anything past that time frame, and the quote is invalid. I do this to protect myself from attempts to front-run domains, and for various other reasons. A buyer that is truly interested in a domain normally responds with a counter-offer, or some other form of confirmation that they are working towards buying the domain.
Recently, I’ve encountered cases where the buyer’s offer and mine are aligned, and once that part is agreed upon, they invent some ‘obstacle’ along the way. They say that they will run this by a partner, or they want to present this to a client; in one case, the buyer stated they want to do a trademark search, in true reversal of the order of how business is conducted.
I’ve now changed the rules of my commitment to a quote, and all domain quotes are valid for 3 business days. I am not willing to wait out on such byzantine scenarios of “behind the scenes” negotiations. At the same time, I will be making any inquiries agree to a statement that they are personally and directly involved in the inquiry, and not as brokers, co-partners or other types of men in the middle.
My time and effort to provide affordable quotes are equally important to achieving a sale; for the benefit of swift domain transactions that I strive to provide, I require that the other party is up to par as well.
Acro I like your idea of reducing your quote validity from 7 to 3 business days in order to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Is this the time frame for the buyer’s acceptance of your offer/counter offer, or does it also include the buyer’s funding of the deal?
fizz – Indeed, such time frame ensures there is no pussy-footing regarding the domain. Three days from the quote, to starting the escrow process. No more sitting, waiting on a counter-offer, it’s take it or leave it.
I reached out to Uniregistry as well so that related verbiage can be customized, we’ll see how it goes.
I like the idea and sound of it. Going to be using it moving forward 🙂