How do you accept initial offers without looking too eager?

[bluebox]

Just yesterday someone offered $1000 for the name that I have for sale for $995 somewhere else.
I decided not to risk losing this deal by making a higher counter offer and accepted it outright (within 10 minutes or so).
I guess it seemed a little too eager because he answered that his budget is actually $150
At the end we agreed on $800 + escrow fees (that's what I would get if I sold it via afternic or godaddy) but I really need better strategy.

What is your answer to offers that you are happy to accept?

 

[Addison]

If you want to accept the offer, do not counter it. I've lost too many deals that way. It doesn't matter if you only increase their offer by a small amount--you're still jeopardizing the deal.

Rather than countering, word your response to make them feel they got a good deal:

"Our asking price is a bit higher, but you've caught us at a good time."

"In the interest of a swift and smooth transaction, we will accept your offer if you're able to proceed immediately."

"After due consideration with my team, we've decided to accept your offer.

Congratulations, that is a superb price for this domain name!"

"There was a long debate internally, but the majority has voted to accept your offer. Congratulations!"

 

[Kate]

<irony>
Q: How do you accept initial offers without looking too eager?
A: You don't reply "within 10 minutes or so", because the other party might think that:

• you are a nolife because you are always frantically checking your E-mail
• you are probably not at work, or you are doing personal stuff during office hours
  
• you are indeed eager to sell because you replied almost immediately, as if the other party was going to change their mind in the meantime. Yes, it can happen if you take days to answer but not if you delay by a few hours.
• the fact that you are so quick to accept the offer could lead the buyer into thinking he offered too much, you caught a fish and won't let it go

</irony>
Also, you should take the time to research the other party if you can grab any clues from the E-mail. For example: a bid was made at Sedo on a .com name of ours.
I noticed that the buyer was from Denmark. So I checked if the .dk was registered, indeed it was registered the same day. At that point I knew who I was dealing with. It's useful sometimes.

 

[matrigaldo]

Well, then you managed quite good, because if they were offering you $150 but ended at $800 + fees, i think you should teach us more than ask for a suggestion

 

[biggie]

How do you accept initial offers without looking too eager?

say .... "i accept your offer"

why play games?

if they are serious, then they will pay,
if not, then they were faking anyway.


now if you want more, that's another question

imo...

 

[fuzzy]

Just thinking though that maybe $ 150 really wasn't his budget, but well...

Agreed.

How about:

 

[HUKU]

NEVER accept the first offer if you want to show you aren't desperate to make the deal. Always counter offer.

I agree....

(1) Always counter, even if its just a bit higher.

By accepting it right away without a counter offer, you may have told the buyer that you're desperate or that you would have accepted a lower offer, which sows a seed of doubt in the mind of the person making the offer and which in this situation actually proved to be the case. I also would add:

(2) Never respond to any enquiry (initial or otherwise) on the same day or during weekends.

Responding in 10 minutes is something I personally would not advise. Take your time and think about it.

(3) Seller should NEVER chase a buyer whether they came to you or you went to them.

A lot of people will say that you should follow up with a lead if they haven't responded and I always wonder if there absolutely must be something to this because I've heard so many people talk about doing a follow up in that case. I maybe can see a good reason to follow up with a lead that *has* shown interest but if I'm absolutely certain that the potential target got the email and it went to the right place, I don't see any reason to chase it up if they didn't respond, in the case of pitch.

That comes from my basic premise that all buyers are motivated to some degree. If they're not motivated enough to respond, then they're not motivated enough to make a decent offer. If I chase it up with a non-response, I immediately look desperate and in that case I'm actually chasing any potential offer lower.... still, everyone has their own thinking and strategy, I suppose.

The key thing to learn about Buyers is that although you have an asset, they have cash and cash is King. Buyers can sense a desperate seller a mile off and they, over time, become very experienced at leveraging it to their advantage in negotiations. This industry is filled with much more sellers and inventory than there are buyers for that inventory.

 

[biggie]

How do you accept initial offers without looking too eager?

say .... "i accept your offer"

why play games?

if they are serious, then they will pay,
if not, then they were faking anyway.


now if you want more, that's another question

imo...

just a reflection, on the direction..... of my previous suggestion ^^

as when the scenario, manifested in reality a week ago.

coincidentally,
an initial offer was presented, at a price i could take.
so without hesitation, i thought, why do a negotiation?

so i replied..... "i'll accept your offer" .


the deal went thru escrow and this time, we split the fee's

cuz, considering the difference between what i paid and what they offered..... i was quite pleased!

a hand registered .com acquired 10 months ago,
that had a hyphen too!

if you got a 4 fig offer, what would you do?



drops the mic and walks off stage

imo....

 

[ProvenPro]

There is nothing wrong with accepting a great first offer. Some people actually seem to get turned off by a counteroffer, even when there is not much of a difference from the initial offer. Just give it a little more time before firing off a response next time. That way, you appear to have put some thought into it while anticipation builds on the buyer's end. You should spend that time doing a little research anyway. What you find out in your research may change your opinion of the domain.

 

[matrigaldo]

I tell you something happened to me a pair of years ago.

I received a direct call from an italian guy (i'm italian too) asking me if a domain i owned was available for sale. I replied "yes, of course, but it depends on what amount we're talking about, because this domain is related to a small project i've developing and, you know, changing it in the middle of something would be kind of expensive".
Obviously there were no project or something, i just figured out he didn't do his homeworks, and he confirmed me that when i heard his offer of low €1,xxx , while the domain (a brandable and not great 5L.com) was listed at €499 on Sedo, GoDaddy and Flippa.
In the meantime i was luckily at the computer, and already opened all three marketplaces, logged in and got ready to change the BIN price.
I asked him why he was interested in this domain while i set all the BIN prices at €2,199 . (i know, it might be considered unethical, buuuut if the buyer doesn't do his homeworks.....)
He told me something about his project with his small business, which i replied with interested "a-ha". After that, i told him this:
"Look, your project is way more interesting than mine, more ambicious, and i'm willing to give you my domain with pleasure. I already priced it at €2,199 on most important marketplaces, Sedo, GoDaddy and Flippa, because it is the amount i would give it away. However, i feel like your project would be difficult to develop and starting with the right domain is a huge step, so i can meet you halfway, and sell it to you for €1,800, what do you think?"
We negotiated some more and closed the deal for mid €1,xxx .

I know, a phone call is quite more effective for the negotiation, but while we were talking after closed the deal, he told me something: my domain wasn't his first choice, and tried to negotiate for another domain earlier that week, through email first and phone call later.
He had the feeling the other guy was going to "scam" him, because he replied to the email like instantly, with a way higher counteroffer, and after the buyer told him it was too over his budget, the other guy decided to lower his counteroffer until he basically reached the buyer offer over the phone call, but this behaviour made the buyer suspicious since he wasn't into the domaining world (he wasn't even aware there was a domaining world).

You can answer within a couple of hours but first at all decide your strategy and be coherent with it.
You can also accept the initial offers, but just remember to spend more time with some random talks, make the buyer feels like he's convincing you.

 

[Manik]

A useful rule of thumb is always ask for more even if the first offer you received is more than you want. Basically the buyer should feel that he is getting the domain name for a bargain and not overpaying for it.

But anyways, $800+Escrow fees is still an awesome deal. Congratulations!

 

[bluebox]

A useful rule of thumb is always ask for more even if the first offer you received is more than you want.

I rather just accept it than risk losing the sale - I just need a better way to respond - less "OMG, YES! Woohooo!" and more "mhm... I will have to think about it...."

The whole "give me a few days to think about it" gives buyer the time to change their mind or find better/cheaper name.

 

[tomcarl]

Give them a hypothetical.

"If I were to accept, when would you be able to make payment?"

It's not a direct yes or no and you can better feel out how interested they are by their response.

Also, I think you responded way too soon.

I noticed I get the best results when I respond in 48hrs (2 days later)

It can be hard to resist but I notice people are a lot quicker in their response time to me when I respond after offer or inquiry in 2 days rather than the same or next day.

 

[Kate]

Sometimes waiting a bit can be profitable.

Very recently I sold a short ccTLD for 2.5K to a Chinese. Here is what happened.
That morning I opened my mailbox and I had hundreds of mails as usual. So I saw an offer of 2K on a domain. Good. But I didn't respond immediately. I continued to sort and clean up my E-mail. Then I saw another E-mail from the same party, this time with a 'corrected' offer of 2.5K.

You get it: had I responded to the first mail immediately, I would have accepted an offer below his actual offering. I would have looked eager to sell.

 

[AbdulBasit.com]

NEVER accept the first offer if you want to show you aren't desperate to make the deal. Always counter offer.

 

[ivey]

Maybe ask for a little more like 1,500. Then the buyer will counter in the middle.
If they started at 1K then they will respond.

 

[MackieMesser]

I guess it seemed a little too eager because he answered that his budget is actually $150

Why would someone offer $ 1000 when his/her budget is only $ 150? Or am I misunderstanding something or is just a zero missing, so it's $ 1500?

 

[matrigaldo]

@fuzzy we all know Escrow.com, it's legit, secure, great, and whatelse.
However the majority of the population doesn't know anything about Escrow.com or even about online transaction, and sometimes they're also our "end-users", people with a small company to whom maybe someone suggested to acquire a domain name for their website, or just want a generic / specific domain name for their company, but with little to no internet / online transactions knowledges.

If you tell them "thank you for your interest, if you decide to increase etc etc i'll setup a transaction on Escrow.com" they might see kind of "i'm the prince of Nigeria and i need someone to unblock my treasure of 20 millions of dollars in US, i will reward you with the 10%" . Well, not exactly this one, but if you pull in third parts like Escrow.com almost instantly, you could look legit and reliable only if the buyer knows Escrow.com, otherwise you could look you're trying to sell something else.

All the replies suggested by Addison are perfect, letting the buyer decide how to proceed with the payment and the transfer and eventually suggest Escrow.com at this point.

 

[bluebox]

<irony>
Q: How do you accept initial offers without looking too eager?
A: You don't reply "within 10 minutes or so"

I know, I know, but it was already past midnight and I didn't want to wait until morning.
I'm not a patient person

Some nice ideas Addison - although I personally roll my eyes when I hear this kind of "car salesman" BS

 

[angela ketty]

i want to buy a new domain.
can you tell me how to buy and which website is best for domain.

 

[ben pedri]

This actually worked and it was true,I have used variations of it many times after that.
we were having a good two weeks sold about 9k in domains.{you know feast or famine } So when I got an offer my partner at the time was out of town in a 3rd world country where phones were basically on top of poles and hard to reach. Anyway I had a 1500 offer for the domain and it was a good name,but I though it was worth less ,anyway ,I told the buyer that this one was part of my partners original portfolio and the price was 1788 but I didnt know what he was in it for because it was 10 years old. I let him know that the price was stale and has not been updated for 2 years so it may be higher or lower than the current price listed. I told him that the best I could do is add 4 years renewal to the expiration,if he bought now, and that would save him 55 bucks ,or he can wait for my friends return we may be able to knock a couple bucks off,instead of the renewals for 4 years ,anyway the buyer probably felt that the price may go higher when he returned ,so he said ill just take it at 1788,so I added the reg which cost us only 34 bucks.we still netted over 1700 after split escrow.

 

[HUKU]

I replied "yes, of course, but it depends on what amount we're talking about, because this domain is related to a small project i've developing and, you know, changing it in the middle of something would be kind of expensive".

I would add another advice:

(4) Keep chat to an absolute minimum.

I include that you should never take any call from anyone about a domain and if you get a call, ask them to send an email. If you take a call, you're extremely vulnerable because its far more difficult to control your response on the moment than it is through a carefully drafted email. Believe me, sales people who are experienced in phone calling can make you agree to things you will later regret.

The enquirer is only looking for one thing during the initial contact email and that is to know the price so my response is usually just to quote a price. Everyone has their own approach, but personally I don't bother with Dear or Hello or signing a name. Unless there is some requirement, I usually just put a price and press reply.

The more chat goes into the email, the more information I am passing to a potential buyer. Buyers can sense an inexperienced or desperate seller from a mile off or they can simply discern your willingness to part with the domain for a much lower number. Remember, you don't necessarily know much about the buyer (unless you google them and pull up some info) and if you don't know anything, you could be dealing with someone MUCH more experience than you.

Not everyone will agree with me but, in my experience, if I send out a purchase enquiry and get a chatty response that usually bodes well for a getting a lower final price.

 

[Nick]

Unless you they are paying a BIN price you listed, never take the first offer. I like to respond quickly, while the idea of buying is on their mind. They could easily start looking around and find a better/cheaper name.

 

[Name Trader]

I haven't read the whole thread. I'm just responding to the initial question.

It might make a difference how fast you respond. But how can you possibly judge that? You could be super-efficient or hungry for a sale.

If somebody offered me $1000 for a domain, and I accepted. I tell him to "go fly a kite" if they came back and countered at $150. I'd rather lose the sale than have to deal with such stupid incompetent people.

I congratulate you on your perseverance, and to get the sale negotiated and completed. To me you did everything right. In all probability, I would never have sold the domain to that person.

 

[MackieMesser]

Why would someone offer $ 1000 when his/her budget is only $ 150? Or am I misunderstanding something or is just a zero missing, so it's $ 1500?

Okay I got it...the emoticon is the last zero