The subject of lowballing always hits a nerve with domainers, especially when such an offer comes from – shock, horror – another domainer.
It seems that end-users are less prone to use foul language when it comes to expressing their frustration.
A recent heated exchange on DNForum between a well-known domain entrepreneur, Sean Stafford, and another domainer escalated to name-calling and obviously a failed business exchange.
Rick Schwartz promised to divulge tomorrow the February list of inquiries and sales, quoting that he responded to less than 10% of them.
Perhaps, that’s the secret with domain negotiations after all: sensing when an offer is not going to lead to a sale and simply not respond to it.
Instead of exchanging increasingly heated emails about who’s right about a domain valuation and who isn’t, it’s simpler to let the numbers talk for themselves: when the right offer comes, it will speak for itself.
It’s almost impossible to undo the damage caused to one’s reputation when such arguments surface, without properly acknowledging one’s fault. The quickest way to resolving such arguments is to resort to a genuine “handshake” and move on.
I never respond to lowball offers. I dont care how many times someone keeps emailing, unless their offer increases to my price-point – it gets deleted.
Other low offers that I do respond to, in hopes of getting the buyer to come closer to what I expect for the name, have always ended cordially.
If an offer is made that’s too low, I explain why I think it’s worth what I want and either a compromise can be made, the buyer ignores it or the buyer finds a more efficient way of doing things (it’s a long time since I looked at an economics book about innovation, but in this case it’s ‘buys a different, cheaper name’). Or, in one, bizarre case, the buyer came back with a bid higher than what I was originally asking for. That was definitely my favourite sale – I didn’t believe it until the cash actually arrived!
Being polite when turning down an offer doesn’t cost anything and I think (although I have no empirical proof) it’s led to people coming back with serious offers.
That said, if my catalogue was the size of Rick Schwartz’s I’d probably never have time to respond to all the inquiries…..