discuss Is Cold-Calling more effective than Emailing Buyers?

[GoWeb]

My head spins in amazement when I see some five-six figure domain sales concluded by Brokerage firms.
Many of these are only average domain names but fetch an awesome price. Is this some secret kept from the average joe domainer?

Recently there was a post by Hobi Michalec, a broker at DH, about how he sold BlueStar.com for $90k by talking to some over phone.

This raises a question: Is Cold-Calling more effective than Emailing Buyers?

People generally hate to be mailed about anything they are not concerned with. Call those emails SPAM, moreover email filters ensure that 80% of your emails go right to SPAM folder. So, it's pretty tough emailing.

When I started domaining about 18 months back, I tried cold calling a very long tail domain to a motor car business in VA and it worked like a charm, the domain sold for $750. But after that, somehow, I just stopped calling because calling can get really tiring.

Now, I have a few very good domains and wondering if I should resume calling for selling? Just listing on Sedo can be an endless wait and I can't be certain about the fate of emails but I would always know the fate of the Call.

Would you care to share your experience:

1) How was your experience in cold calling someone to sell your domains?
2) Do you feel you got a better price for your domain on Call than on Email?
3) Do you still Cold-Call?
4) Have you ever been threatened or abused by those you Called?​

 

[Pattern]

If you're unsure of which one to use, why not go for both

 

[GoWeb]

I get 4 or 5 calls a day from Asia, and actually in the UK it is mostly Indians who call me, most of them about domain names I've purchased from godaddy actually.

About getting those type of calls, we do get them as well here in India. There are services that provide the WHOIS info for freshly regged names and website development businesses buy that and do the calling.

I too hang up on them.

 

[GoWeb]

If you're unsure of which one to use, why not go for both

Just trying to find out Daniel, what gets you the best bang for your buck !!

 

[DomainGist]

About getting those type of calls, we do get them as well here in India. There are services that provide the WHOIS info for freshly regged names and website development businesses buy that and do the calling.

I too hang up on them.

By the way, please don't misinterpret my post, I'm not saying that cold calling couldn't work for you because you are Indian, clearly it does work otherwise companies wouldn't outsource their coldcalling to India.

My point was that I think you'd have to put a lot more work in to get the sales, simply because a larger proportion of your calls will result in somebody hanging up straight away.

Purely made up numbers but I suspect if you were to call 100 British people trying to sell them something you may find that 50 put the phone straight down, purely because this has become the automatic response for many when they pick up the phone to an Indian, purely because they instantly know that it is a sales call if they don't know any Indian people.

Whereas if I were to call 100 British people trying to sell them something I'd probably find that less than 5 people will hang up immediately, I'd at least be able to get my first couple of lines in.

I just think it would mean you'd need to make a lot more calls to get a sale, so a much lower conversion rate, but things are all relative and if you look at it from a business perspective then you could also argue that I'd need 3 times more sales than you to have what I'd consider profitable day considering the vast differences in living costs.