5 with Jen Sale, Co-Founder of Evergreen

In the second quarter  of 2016, domain industry veterans  Jen Sale and Adam Strong launched Evergreen, a full-service naming agency that helps companies create, acquire, and manage their domain names. The company  has  clients of all sizes throughout the world.

Based on a small island off the east coast of Australia, Jen Sale is the COO (and Co-Founder) of Evergreen. Drawing on her 15+ years domain industry experience, Jen was previously the Co-Founder of DomainGuardians.com, Business Development Manager at DarkBlueSea.com (Fabulous.com) and a Web Designer/Developer. Jen has more experience in the domain name business than most.

With Evergreen’s one year anniversary on the horizon, I had the opportunity to ask Jen some questions about Evergreen and the domain brokerage business. Jen offered some insight into  building the business as well as operating within the domain naming space.

What goes into building a business like Evergreen?
We created Evergreen to consolidate the corporate naming services that Adam and I have been providing for around 15 years (Naming/Acquisitions/Management). Building Evergreen has required merging, acquiring, international corporate structuring, branding, product development and constantly growing our network.

How do you deal with prospective clients who don’t understand the value of domain names but want to own something great?
Education and honesty are key to setting realistic client expectations. We often share sales data, articles and podcasts to help educate our clients on the value of domains. While it may seem counterintuitive to tell a client what you can’t do, it’s important to be honest and explain why certain domains are out of their reach, and more importantly, how you will provide an alternative solution.

How regularly do you work with other domain brokers, and what is it like to work with them?
We regularly work with other brokers who exclusively manage one or more domain portfolios. Brokers want to sell domains, and our clients want to buy domains, so when the stars align, we close some great deals.

What domain name and/or naming trends have you noticed lately?
We continue to see a demand for 1word.COM domains. Combinations of words (e.g. Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, YouTube.com) and prefix/suffix+keyword .COMs (e.g. Spotify.com, Shopify.com) are also popular in the startup space, particularly where budget is a concern.

What advice would you give to domain investors who don’t regularly work with brokers but have a domain name that is of interest to one of your clients?
Be flexible and informative: Provide several payment options for a buyer, e.g. Buy It Now, Payment Plan/Lease-To-Own, Cash+Equity. Where possible, also provide comparable sales and/or statistics that support your price.