Bad Times to Close a Deal

If you’ve been in the domain industry long enough, you’ve probably had someone back out of a deal. Whether it’s a buyer rescinding an offer or a seller deciding not to sell you a domain name, it’s frustrating when a deal you’ve consummated doesn’t come to fruition.

Based on some personal experience, I want to share some advice regarding closing deals, specifically when you shouldn’t close a deal.

One of the worst (if not the worst) time to close a deal is on a Friday afternoon or evening. After a long week, some people aren’t thinking clearly and the decisions they make during that time are ones they come to regret. Since payment can’t be made until the following Monday, they have over 48 hours to contemplate backing out. With this extra time, there’s added risk they will re-evaluate the deal over the weekend and back out.

Another bad time, although it’s less  controllable, is after business hours. When someone sleeps on a potential deal, they may reconsider the deal and cancel the transaction in the morning.

If I am thinking about an offer or mulling over a purchase, I always try to make the decision in the middle of the day and usually in the middle of the week, too. The buyer can initiate a wire transfer that day, and if I am buying, I can set up a wire before the close of business. If Escrow.com acknowledges my payment (or the buyer’s payment) before the end of the day, the deal can be done ASAP.

When closing transactions, I almost always use a sales agreement an attorney crafted for me. If the buyer or seller has agreed to a deal and it’s in writing, I have the option to litigate if the counter party backs of the deal. If I can help it though, I try to get my deals completed as soon as possible.

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

5 COMMENTS

  1. I am chasing two 4 figure deals, One closed via sedo on Friday night, UK buyer, just the way the counter/offer ended, user had a full buyer rating, so was confident on quick payment, no such payment logged into the system yet.

    Another payment closing via in middle of June, had to remind based on escrow system used that his confirmation was a contract, and within 10 minutes, payment was made to escrow.

    I am finding many people have ideas for domains, want domains, but are just cash poor right now. Some of the big companies are finding more creative ways that paying up for straight generics. Also hugedomains is putting serious pricing pressures on keyword plurals/singulars of older portfolio domains, with their hoarding of new catches, and quick attempt of flips, while creating a massive portfolio, basically domain gambling, as long as you can sell more than your renewals.

  2. Interesting advice, Elliot. I’m still learning domain sales so I appreciate it.

    @Ron … I hope that HugeDomains sells as cheap as they can so that these other variations plural/singular get developed quickly and spin off a bunch of traffic leakage to my corresponding singular/plural domains, in which I will get paid for through PPC and such, and then won’t need to sell my old school portfolio domains at all.

    I play more of a keep and earn game.

  3. [QUOTE]it’s frustrating when a deal you’ve consummated doesn’t come to fruition [/QUOTE]

    Call me pedantic, but until the deal is completed, it isn’t consummated…yeah, it’s a slow morning for me 😉

  4. What about you agreed a deal with the broker and the broker back out the deal because he received an offer? What would you do?

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