How do you respond to the how much

Recently, someone asked me a question regarding outbound – Should I respond to “how much” by asking them to make an offer first? And IMO, this is something I don’t recommend, and let me tell you why.

Let’s take a real-life example, so you are at home busy doing your stuff, and someone rings your doorbell, and you see a salesman pitching you a product, and if you find it interesting, the first question that you’ll ask the salesman is how much?

Now imagine if the salesman doesn’t give you a price and asks you to make an offer rather than giving the price; how would you react? If it’s me, I’ll politely ask him to leave and shut the door.

Why? Because he came to me, I did not book an appointment with him to visit me, and I wasn’t even thinking about that product, so if he has done all the research to find my address and grind his way to make it to me, he better make the most out of it by giving me the price.

That was his best chance to push the conversation forward and maybe start the negotiation, but no, he blew it by asking, “make an offer.”

Now apply the same scenario in domains. If you are reaching out to potential buyers to sell your domain, you better have your price on the table; if someone asks you how much, be confident and give them the price rather than delaying or most likely killing the sale by countering back with “what’s your offer”?

To be honest, in the past, I had also tried this strategy by asking them to make an offer when I was doing outbound, but it really didn’t give me the outcome I was looking for.

Now you must be thinking, Oh, but it has been said that “whoever makes the first offer loses.” I’m afraid I have to disagree because it helps you control the frame of it. You set the reference point and shape expectations. The party has tremendous power that sets the opening offer, which creates the opening expectation.

If it’s an inbound inquiry, yeah, you can ask them first to make an offer first because they are knocking on your door, not you.

Also, never let your offer(numbers)speak for itself. Always tell the story that goes with it, avoid doing this – The asking price is $ and expect them to agree with you and give you the money.

Try this -I’m asking for X because of blah blah…

I’m asking for X. Here’s my analysis, here are comps, etc.

The richer the narrative, the richer the story, the more likely your asking price will stick and the more likely the other side has to come up with a compelling reason before they choose to ignore it; it is much easier to ignore an offer that does not come with a story, that does not come with a justification, that does not come with a narrative.

I hope this makes sense, and I apologize for writing a blog post after a long time. I’ll be more frequent now.

Namaste 🙏

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