I wanted to share two recent inquires that I had with two different domain names with two different styles of contacts.

The first contact came from my little system that I have set up. With this, they used the contact form on my MustOwn.com page for the specific domain and not either of the links provided to make the offer on Sedo or Afternic. With the email contact comes the all important IP Address that I have right in the email and 99% of the time the persons name and email. You should be able to get the IP in the email header also if it’s a direct contact.

I use IP2Location.com (on right of site) to find the geo location. Then using the name of the person I was able to connect the location of the person from several Google listings.

Since the contact was from a gmail email address, and the connection was from Comcast. This is where I ran into some problems. This person happened to work for BillShrink.com from my digging. Now was this person contacting for themself or for BillShrink? I had to go with BillShrink.

Although I never changed my price, I still approached my reply as if I was speaking to a company.

This deal has not turned into a sale (yet at least) but I was able to confirm my research was correct.. because I asked after things were not looking like a sale would happen and they confirmed.

Even though this contact has not turned into a sale this time, I was able to confirm my research methods work. To me, that helps me and was like a sale.

The second contact was via Phone. I admit phone inquires are pretty rare, but they very likely got my number via Whois.

Since this is likely the case, they have an idea about domain names IMO. The problem with this call, the guy acted like he never even heard of the internet! LOL Well, he sure came across as this was the case anyway.

With phone inquires as the seller, you have options.

• Act busy and get a number and good time to call back
• Stall and do research while on the phone
• Ask for an email address so you can send them more detailed info

In this case, I stalled as it really was not a high priced domain. I looked at my phone and wrote down the phone number on my caller ID. I then went to WhitePages.com which you can do a reverse phone number look up.

This can reveal the persons name and or company name.  Also, the location. With this info at your finger tips, you can dig even more via Google to find out more about the buyer. Big company, small company, quick news search etc.

One problem with phone numbers is it can be unlisted (which in this case it was) but I used the area code to find the location. Another problem, the number could be from a cell phone which will not help you all that much either but again you should have the area code which is some info.

If all fails with the phone number, try to get an email address to send them more info or work your sales skills on the phone and simply give a price.

The more information you can have about your buyer is really priceless. One hates to leave money on the table but you also want to be in the ball park and not lose a sale.