Be Patient With End Users

When you are selling a domain name to an end user buyer, you need to exercise patience. There are a number of opportunities for deals when making deals with end users, especially if you are doing a deal with a large or publicly traded company.

I want to discuss the three areas that cause the most delays when selling a domain name to an end user buyer. Sometimes all three of these areas cause extensive delays. The key is to not get upset about these delays and to expect them before becoming frustrated, as the decision maker may not be able to cut through the red tape any quicker.

1) Contract negotiations. I would say that all large end user companies have legal departments, although that is an educated guess. Many do not deal with domain names often, so either drafting or editing a domain sale contract can be a long process. If you want to help move the process along, I recommend paying a domain name lawyer to draft the sales agreement and use that lawyer to review changes requested by the buyer.

2) Payment. Just like large companies have legal departments, most also have accounting departments as well. Invoices need to be signed off by various parties, especially if the sale price is 6 or 7 figures. Oftentimes, a big sale to you is a small deal for them, and it can be difficult to get the invoice prioritized. The good news at this point is that you should have a signed contract with legal recourse if the company doesn’t pay.

3) Domain transfer. Nothing is more frustrating than agreeing to a deal, negotiating contract terms, agreeing to escrow, having the payment submitted, and then running into trouble with the transfer. Many companies aren’t familiar with how a domain transfer works, and oftentimes, the marketing or other manager who acquired the name doesn’t know the tech person very well. It can be a pain trying to explain how a transfer works to someone who will then have to explain it to someone else. This is especially time consuming when the current or receiving domain registrar takes time to send auth codes or release the domain name.

The most important thing you can do is keep your cool, despite the chance for a frustrating experience. When you are negotiating with an end user buyer or trying to sell a name to an end user buyer at a large company, you should know the sale process might not be smooth.

Sometimes, a domain sale negotiation is time consuming and can be a bit frustrating. Oftentimes when selling to a larger company, this is actually the easiest aspect of a deal.

Elliot Silver
Elliot Silver
About The Author: Elliot Silver is an Internet entrepreneur and publisher of DomainInvesting.com. Elliot is also the founder and President of Top Notch Domains, LLC, a company that has closed eight figures in deals. Please read the DomainInvesting.com Terms of Use page for additional information about the publisher, website comment policy, disclosures, and conflicts of interest. Reach out to Elliot: Twitter | Facebook | LinkedIn

5 COMMENTS

  1. Going through this. Am a newbie. Would be my first domain sale. A $50B+ world-renowned company. Emailed them my name and they showed interest. It’s all soo slow. Going on and on for several weeks. Feel like dumping all domains and quitting domaining. Peace of mind seems more valuable than big money.

  2. Well, mine has been a much confusing case for me and I wish someone could help me out here. Buyer contacted me on June 30 sayine he would pay xx,xxx via sedo. He mentioned his company.

    This happened after 2 months of sending out emails to various companies in which his was one.

    Well, I thanked him and agreed to the deal but till date, no news from him. I don’t know if he is playing politics such that he wants the domain to drop(which wouldn’t happen anyways) and he goes along to back order it but simply sampled his interest just incase.

    I have written to him on several occasions but NO REPLY. He hasn’t said whether he would like to go on with the deal or he has aborted the idea. No single word!

  3. I sold a LN.tv to a French company last year. We agreed to $5K. Three straight times they failed to fund the escrow.com transaction, this went on for two months. I got fed up.

    The very nice French lady called again to set up the deal and apologize. I refused to sell to them…she sounded mortified that I wouldn`t sell. Two days later a different woman called and in the process I discovered the buyer was a multi-billion-euro company…uh-oh:-)

    Long story short, after 2 weeks of additional negotiations, I sold for $37,500 and got paid, and that was nice.

  4. I agreed to $960k offer, they asked me to wait for the board approval and no answer from them. it’s been one month now since I agreed to their offer.
    The price will go back to $1.2 million if they come back after my deadline.

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