I don’t like chit chatting on the phone. That’s especially true for business related conversations. Because of this, I hardly ever use the telephone to contact prospective buyers of my domain names. There is a good time to use the phone though, and I’ll share when I think it’s appropriate.

After sending emails to prospective buyers and you receive a reply from someone who seems interested but isn’t quick to reply or has short replies, you might want to give them a phone call to discuss. A phone call can help move a deal forward in several ways:

• Establish trust
• Speed up the pace of negotiations
• Allow you to get a better read on the buyer
• Move the negotiation to your schedule
• Take away some leverage from the buyer

The primary reason I use the phone is to move a conversation along more rapidly and to get a better read on the buyer. Based on the buyer’s needs for the name and/or interest level, I can price it accordingly and also offer better terms.

I can also  gauge how familiar the prospect is with domain names and domain acquisitions. If I think the sale process and transfer will likely take more time and effort than usual, I can price the domain name accordingly.

One important thing to keep in mind is that a phone call can also kill a deal. If the buyer asks questions you don’t know the answers to or appear reluctant to answer, he or she might have no interest in doing business with you. In addition, if you struggle with communications (ie you don’t speak the same language as the buyer fluently), it might make things more difficult and might also cause trust issues.

I think using the phone can be an effective negotiation strategy. I would not use it to cold call, and I would use the time to build trust, establish a dialogue, and try to push a deal forward.

The other day when pitching a domain name to a potential buyer, he asked me to verify that the domain name I was selling was the actual keyword .com domain name. I was a bit taken aback by the question and confirmed that it was in fact the actual keyword domain name.

He later followed up his strange question to let me know that someone had tried to sell him what looked like a great domain name, but a number was in place of the letter, rendering it just about worthless (for example but not the one that was discussed, L0SERS.com).  I don’t think the seller tried to pass it off as the real deal, but it was certainly not explained to this potential buyer until he copied and pasted it in his browser and he was able to see that it wasn’t the real keyword domain name.

This type of business is bad. First off, it’s deceptive if the potential buyer doesn’t realize what the seller is pitching. Secondly, when the number is added to a word, especially in the middle, Google and Bing will see it’s a number and make it much more difficult to rank for the keyword. It’s just about the same as a totally unrelated word since that’s essentially what it is.

Whether a seller is trying to be deceptive or not, selling a domain name that looks like one thing but is really something else is not the right thing to do. I personally wouldn’t touch a domain name like that, let alone try to get someone else to buy it. That is just asking for trouble.

I want to share another tip with you on how you can find the contact information for an end user buyer. Now that LeadRefs is no longer an active website, performing Google searches is generally the most effective way that I find potential buyers of my domain names. I am sure you’ve done the same, so this is common knowledge.

Once you’ve exhausted the contacts you’ve made on the first few pages, you likely search other keywords to find a buyer or hang on to the name until someone contacts you. Been there, done that, don’t love it.

Here’s a quick tip to find additional contacts if you don’t want to use a service like Estibot.

Hope on to a proxy website like HideMyAss.com, Proxify.com, or NewIPNow.com and visit Google. Perform your keyword search again, and voila, new potential buyers. Because Google shows relavant listings based on your location (aside from the most popular websites of course), if you search from a different IP address located in a different region, you’ll likely find additional advertisers and listings.

As always, make sure your domain name is actually good and relevant to the people you are emailing or you’ll end up annoying people who have no interest in your domain name. In addition, become familiar with email laws to be sure what you’re doing is permissible.

I have personally found that it’s much easier to sell a domain name to a small to medium sized business than others (aside from other domain investors). SMBs may have a smaller budget and might not understand the value of domain names, but SMB owners generally make quick decisions and there’s less red tape.

It can be difficult to find a contact person at some companies though. Sometimes you’ll find the registrant email address is private or the domain name is registered in the name of the web developer or hosting company (a bad move). Other times, you won’t find a contact form for some reason, or the contact form on the site doesn’t function due to a faulty capatcha plugin. It seems that many don’t have email addresses on their contact forms either.

That said, it seems that most operational websites, especially those with an ecommerce component, have a privacy page. Many of these privacy pages are created by privacy policy page generators, which means many have one thing in common: a contact email address. This can be used to quickly and easily get in touch with the owner of the domain name.

Most websites with a contact page at least have a phone number if not an email address, but some domain investors are reluctant to use the phone to sell a domain name. I have never been a phone person when it comes to selling domain names because I think it’s more annoying to interrupt someone’s day by calling and I don’t believe a cold call to sell a $x-xx,xxx domain name is really effective. Emails generally work best.

The next time you have a great domain name for sale and want to contact a company that you think should have an interest, try the privacy policy page.