What’s impacting the domain aftermarket in 2018?
Few people have the view of the domain name market that Jeff Gabriel has as VP of Sales at Uniregistry. On today’s show, Jeff explains what he’s seeing in the aftermarket right now and why he expects Uniregistry to sell $60 million in domains this year, up 50% from last year. He also discusses domain payment plans and the best way to use them in a negotiation. You’ll learn a lot. Also, if you’re going to ICANN 63 in Barcelona, drop Jeff’s colleague Matthew Holden an email at mholden (at) uniregistry.com for an invite to the Uniregistry party.
Also: Cloudflare tries to shake up the domain business, NameSilo doubles in size, earnings announcements and the State Bar of California needs a new lawyer.
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Uniregistry brokers have closed dozens of deals for us. Their follow-up can be relentless as their brokers will keep fighting until they get a deal done or the person inquiring says uncle. Some deals can take a year or more and 50+ emails from the broker to complete. I appreciate that tenacity. As a buyer, you better know how to send an email that lets them know you’re no longer interested or they will keep checking in with you.
One of the largest advantages to their platform is the transparency. When you send a lead their way, you can see the correspondence between buyer and broker as well as the broker’s notes when phone calls are made.
Love to see that they are continually tweaking things, the payment plan option is a great addition.
Ian, I’m curious if you have any examples of their follow up emails send many months later converting into sales.
I don’t want to share too much but the secret sauce is often a friendly “just checking in” type of email or phone call that can get the ball rolling again and a little persistence.
Natalia Wilson closed one for us on 9-6 that started with this from the buyer in early January after our asking price was mentioned:
“I put your proposal to the team but it was considered too expensive. I think we will kick off with a new top level domain.”
She kept checking in with them, left a voicemail every now and then. The buyer let her know they went with a ngTLD. After a few months she was able to pick up the conversation again with:
“Are you still interested in XXXXXXXX .com?”
Another example for a lead that had zero contact for 3 years was picked up again by Mohammed Khan and didn’t close until 7 months later:
“I am writing to see if you are still interested in this opportunity. Do you have a few minutes for us to talk, and for me to introduce myself?”
31 emails were sent from the broker (several were automated follow up type messages), 18 emails were received from the buyer and a handful of phone calls were made before it closed.
For anyone reading this, it’s important to remember that these are inbound leads. Like all our sales, they involved parties who contacted us first and often started with an offer.
great interview… jeff and his troops are a force to be reckoned with and we reckon with them on a steady basis
So, i just tried your new [ LIKE ] system and i have to have a wordpress account?…
Anyway, thanks for another great interview, i really enjoyed it. As far as the wordpress account, i don’t need it on anything else, so no likes on here for me..lol.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s going to work for that very reason.
Did he say $60M in sales on a 13M domain portfolio?
I didn’t catch the # of domains listed for sale. He did say $60M in domains.