Day 21 – Feedback

This is it, the final day in the 21 days to becoming a better domainer.  That said, this is not the end of your journey to improve, to become better, to reach your goal.  It’s nearly the end of this series.  So let’s get on with it.  On Friday, we talked about assessing how and what you have been doing.  Adjusting what isn’t working against what is working. This is all internal to you.  Your reflections on your experiences.

“There is no truth. There is only perception.” – Gustave Flaubert

Now it’s time to ask for some external feedback. on what you’ve been doing and how you could improve.  This is valuable because you maybe doing things that you think are positive and effective, but if your potential customers find them not to be, then the reality is they are not positive and effective.  This is often hard to fathom.  “How can they not see the value in this?”

This is where external feedback is extremely helpful.  What are some ways to source this feedback?

1. Ask for feedback from recipients of unsuccessful email campaigns you have sent
2. Ask customers you have successfully sold to
3. Bounce your methods off of some of the trusted mentors and contacts you developed earlier in this series

Ask for feedback from recipients of unsuccessful email campaigns

You’re probably thinking, “if they didn’t respond to my sales email, they aren’t going to respond to a request for feedback.”  You’re probably right…. well mostly.  I recently sent out a batch of emails on a restaurant name with no responses.  It was pretty frustrating because I really thought it was a great name for the recipients I targeted with my email.  I had high expectations and zero results.  WTF.

In my frustration, I decided to send a second email about two weeks later to the same group.  I titled the email “What can I do?”  My email stated:

I understand you don’t have interest in acquiring this domain name. This is a big part of my small business effort and I’d appreciate any feedback you can give me on what I could have done differently to have at least gained your interest.  You don’t owe me anything but I would consider it a favor from one small business owner to another if you would reply.

Out of the batch, I only received 2 responses.  Hey, that’s a better rate than my original email.  One email stated “Let me talk this over with my business partner and I’ll get back to you.”  Wow, either this person didn’t originally see my first email or he is considering the purchase.  Great!!  The second email said “The domain has nothing on it and doesn’t have any traffic.  If you can build it up and get some traffic, I might be interested.”  Great feedback here.  Not part of my sales plan, but something I will certainly consider for this name.  I can see how that would make it more attractive than trying to build the initial traffic yourself after buying the name.

Ask customers you have successfully sold to

As off this writing, I haven’t actually tried this one out, but I plan to.  What better source is there for what a customer wants then from one that has made a purchase from you.  While I haven’t contacted a buyer for feedback, I have contacted buyers for repeat sales and been successful.  It’s worth asking, “what made you buy?” to gain some insight into what works.  Maybe they already understand the value of a keyword domain and other buyers don’t.  Maybe you worded your initial email in a more persuasive manner.  Ask.  Find out.  Adjust. Repeat.

Bounce your methods off of some of the trusted mentors and contacts you developed earlier in this series

Hopefully you have gained some new contact on the message forums, reaching out to bloggers, working on Twitter.  These are people in the industry with a whole different set of experiences than you’ve had.  If you’ve developed a strong enough relationship, reach out to one or more of them and say “Here’s what I’m doing…  What’s worked well for you?”  You’d be surprised how domainers are willing to share.  I’ve said it before in different ways, overall, domainers I have meet have been stand up, quality people.  There are the exceptions, but overall a very good group!

Hopefully this series has helped some new domainers take some actionable steps toward growing with their new found passion.  I also hope that some of the seasoned domainers have found some reminders of old habits and dusted them off for re-use.  Remember, this is not the end.  This is the start.  I’d love to hear your comments and suggestions so feel free to post you thoughts in the comment section or shoot me an email.  Good luck!