I’ve Been Texting Much More on Negotiations

One thing that has changed for me during the past couple of years is that I have been negotiating on purchases and sales via text message much more than in prior years. I have closed a few deals on both sides via text message, and it seems to be more acceptable these days than in prior years.

On my Embrace.com price request inquiry form, I have an optional field for the prospect to leave a phone number. Typically, I will send a canned reply via email with the price of the domain name and a bit of a sales pitch. If the prospect left a contact phone number, I will usually send a text message to let them know their request was received and a reply was sent.

More often than not, I receive a reply from the person, and I can discuss the domain name directly via text. It’s a bit more personal and much more instantaneous than email, and I think it is less intrusive than a phone call. In addition, with the influx of robocaller spam, I think most people ignore phone calls from numbers they don’t know, so there is a higher response rate on text messages than on phone calls. If the text message does not yield a reply and the email goes unanswered, I can always follow up with a phone call.

The one thing I do not love about text message negotiations is the lack of a paper trail. When I buy or sell a domain name, I almost always use a purchase agreement (contract) to memorialize the deal. I like to have a record of the full discussion as well, and that is more challenging to retain with text messages. To alleviate this, I sometimes screenshot the text messages and generally send a follow-up summary email when a negotiation is successful or if it falls just short.

Text messaging has become a much bigger part of my business communications arsenal in the past couple of years, and I think it’s a great way to communicate with a counterparty to buy or sell a domain name.

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

3 COMMENTS

  1. I find text to be a great way to keep record since I can print them and keep them or forward them to my self and keep them in files on my computer. That way I have the records.

    I find it easier via text because then they can reply at their pace and people open up more via text then on the phone.

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