Well done, Ripley! Of those 200 people you e-mailed, how many of them responded they were interested? In the case of those interested, did you call or e-mail them? I ask because I've recently discovered the obvious, which is that your sell rate drastically increases if you perform stage 2 (response to the "what's your price" message) over the phone. So far I'm six for six on such sales calls over the past 3 days for a total of $2300 in promised sales. All in all though you'd be pretty amazed at how much you lose in sales due to pure inertia, and the magnitude with which a simple friendly phone call can shatter the ice.
Lesson of the week: Clients buy your domains not so much because they like your names as because they like YOU.
Be yourself when chatting with your prospects -- it builds trust -- but don't try too hard to be yourself.
I find it enormously helpful to spend 10-15 minutes browsing through each interested client's website to internalize its mission and technique. Find one or two aspects of the organization you take affinity with and can relate to your own background. When you call your client, explain to them the market value of the domain is ($XXX * 1.5), where $XXX is your true, covert asking price -- cite age, TLDs registered, large # of prospects, past similar sales...whatever you can to back up your overt 1.5 * $XXX -- but because of [the organization's quality that piqued your interest], you'll offer them the domain for $XXX as you would feel happy watching that organization succeed. I'm not sure where I morally stand on this technique, but from a pragmatist's point of view it softens up the customer, helping them feel more important, and both you and they walk away with freshly christened droplets of connection (and you, furthermore, with 500 additional dollars in your wallet).
Not suprisingly, this "soften up your customer" method works more poignantly when dealing with U.S. end-users from the south and west than with northeastern dwellers.
