Don’t Over-Negotiate a Good Deal

Knowing when to pull the trigger on a  deal is not always easy. Most people want the best possible deal, and by trying to continue to negotiate after a fair offer is made, they may miss out on the opportunity if the other party pulls it.

Here’s a comment from Mike Mann on Facebook yesterday afternoon after he gave what he deemed “a super duper low price” for a domain name his company owned and was motivated to sell:

“Live by the sword. People wanted to buy ResponsiblePower.com from me, I offered a super duper low price to get rid of it and move on, then they kept negotiating and being annoying, now its priced on the site tenfold.”

screen-shot-2016-11-01-at-7-58-52-pm

If you visit ResponsiblePower.com now, you can see the price is listed at $24,888. According to the previous Archive.org record, the domain name was priced at $2,000 in 2014.

I don’t totally understand this tactic if the goal is to churn the domain name. I can’t imagine that I would ever pay 10x the asking  price because I tried to get a better deal. In my opinion, it seems most likely that the prospective buyer will walk away angry and the deal is lost. Perhaps a humble apology would get Mike to reconsider, but who knows.

As an observer, it is another reminder that a good deal may be fleeting and it’s better to potentially overpay by a bit than risk losing the deal. This is especially important if the domain name is being acquired to be used for a specific project.

Yes, I’ve written about this a number of times, but it is something I have done and regretted more than once. I think this is a good reminder to not over-negotiate when a fair offer is made.

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
  1. I forget who I learned it from, but I generally live by the principle that I am more concerned with taking OFF the table than being afraid of leaving money ON the table.

  2. If you afford it, good on MM he does all domainers a service, you would expect it from RS or say cannot believe he sold it for that. What we believe to be true is our reality.

  3. If the buyer really needs the domain he will come back and pay the $25k because I know that Mike won’t move.
    If they don’t NEED it then the deal would be lost. But that kind of money is almost nothing for Mike. Actually I would never sell this domain for just $2,000.

  4. First of all, it’s not exactly a great domain to put it mildly. In fact, it’s a bit of a dog really, no offense to real dogs, which I love. Never sell it for $2k? Lol. I wouldn’t pay anything for it unless I really wanted it, and even then $2k is about right for a max, maybe more and I would not have tried to quibble him down from $2500. If he pulled that s**t on me just for trying, however, I’d just go get this one at reg fee or something else:

    ResponsiblyPowerful.com

    • No, I wouldn’t sell it. I know people that wouldn’t sell it for $50,000.
      Sorry if you don’t understand this.

      If you went and bought ResponsiblyPowerful.com then you did not NEED ResponsiblePower.com and hence you are not the right buyer.

      “You think everybody can just afford something like that or go into debt for a dog domain like that?”
      No, I don’t. This is one domain so I am not looking for everybody. Just looking for one buyer. The right one.

    • >”No, I wouldn’t sell it.”

      No, you don’t seem to understand it’s not a great domain.

      >”I know people that wouldn’t sell it for $50,000″

      Notwithstanding the above, even I will tell you that people like Rick the king could still pull that off. I’m honest that way.

    • The prospective buyer is most likely ResponsiblePower.co.uk. It is worth much more than $2,000 to them. You have to eliminate your own perspective to consider the perspective of the most likely — or, most importantly, the highest use — buyer.

  5. Mike has a track record of doing this, going back over 15 yrs.

    Mike use to say – when he knew he was giving someone a good price and the person kept pushing and pushing, he just started raising the price. The buyer got the message. If the buyer really wanted the domain, he became negotiable.
    I respect his strategy.

    We don’t know if it happened this time but we all have experienced a buyer who gets nasty (and/or threatens UDRP), we don’t give into their threat. I know that threats do not work with Mike.

  6. Just for the record, by the way, there are many three and even four word domains that are “50,000” times better than that one and more… Think about it…

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