interviews Expert Exchange: How Do You Qualify Potential Buyers?

All clients or interested buyers are vetted. It’s imperative to learn as much as you can on your potential or prospective buyer. What are their strengths and weaknesses? How can you use that to your advantage to effectively close a deal? Also, ask the right questions of your buyers. Find out if there are suitable domain alternatives. Establish their budget parameters so you align accordingly.

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Lots of research. Search the news; search engines; social networks, particularly LinkedIn; and check to see what other domain names they may own.

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As a Buyer Broker, I am very picky about who I choose to take on as a buyer client, and I turn away far more clients than I accept. All potential clients are taken through a multi-step discovery process where we gain a deep understanding of who they are and why they want the target domain(s). Our buyer clients are qualified and vetted by my team, and each client has to sign an exclusive brokerage contract with us and, in most cases, pay us an upfront retainer fee before we begin work.

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For end-user buyers, we learn about:

1. Whether they have a sufficient budget for the domain name?
2. How important is the domain name to them?
3. Will the domain name save them money in their marketing and advertising efforts? If so, then we compare the estimated money they can save per year with the asking price of the domain name.

For investor buyers, we qualify them based on things like: budget, preferred type of domains, past domain purchasing history, speed of payment, etc.

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We have developed an 11-step process that allows us to qualify buyers up front, even before reaching out to them. There is no point in reaching out to a company that doesn’t have an appropriate budget or a vested interest in the domain name we’re brokering. In this way, we avoid wasting the time of the potential buyers and most importantly the time of our clients.

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We deal with small and large brands, so the research is more prospect-based around the decision-makers we wish to make contact with.

Processes include brand awareness, identity and recognition potential, as well as niche, vertical, industry and, of course, if someone is using the exact or a derivative name.

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We all know that some people talk a lot. Some people prefer to listen. Prospective buyers are people. Sometimes they volunteer a lot of information such as: who they are, what they do, why they do what they do, why they want the domain name, etc.

If they don’t volunteer much, I ask a few basic questions, but I tend not to ask too much unless the seller wants a lot of information. Plenty of interesting and relevant data often emerges through easy-to-access tools such as Google search of email address(es) and/or the buyer’s name and social media drill down.

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It really depends on what the domain name is and if it's more of a brand push, generic, industry term, etc. I usually start with: relevant search terms if it's a brand, who is crowding the brand space, if it's a generic name then what industries utilize it and of those which are the most valuable/competitive, who's ranking on this industry term already, who's trying to rank/compete via CPC, SEO work, marketing/advertising, etc.

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Managing over 100,000 domains, I don't qualify every buyer for every sale inquiry that comes in. As you can imagine with such a large number of domains, some domains are of a higher value and quality than others.

For the high-end premium domains, I try to qualify every buyer as best I can. With these higher-valued domains, I have a price range from the owner, so I use this as the first way to qualify leads. I will let the potential buyer know the owner's price expectations and ask them to make an offer. Their response will dictate whether I spend more time researching the buyer and what their motivations for the domain might be.

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