Gaudreau and Fort merge (1 Viewing)

FORT Insurance and Gaudreau Assurances Join Forces

This was last year, but i had previously sold Gaudreau to the Guadreau company, then as they were merging i sold them Fort as well. Great customer, understands the value and inextricable link between a domain and a brand.

Nice.... but the the devil is in the details

Can you share sales prices?

I'll hold off for now, I was happy with both sales.

rlm said:

FORT Insurance and Gaudreau Assurances Join Forces

This was last year, but i had previously sold Gaudreau to the Guadreau company, then as they were merging i sold them Fort as well. Great customer, understands the value and inextricable link between a domain and a brand.

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So happy for you Rob. The beauty of having great domains and being able to deal with the same end user. That's very rare. Dealing with the same Godaddy Broker itself is a treat for me, but you have done it with end users. That's commendable. Hard to find a customer that knows and understands the value. Everyone likes to play innocent.

Eby said:

So happy for you Rob. The beauty of having great domains and being able to deal with the same end user. That's very rare. Dealing with the same Godaddy Broker itself is a treat for me, but you have done it with end users. That's commendable. Hard to find a customer that knows and understands the value. Everyone likes to play innocent.

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Well I like to think that having Gaudreau added some credibility to his company and they saw the benefits over the two years before the merger. And once they started talking merger, the Gaudreau guy was probably the driving force behind acquiring Fort. Since the merger he's just shut down the Gaudreau site completely. Hopefully he doesn't ask if I want to buy it back, it'll be a harsh reality about the wholesale vs enduser values of domain names...

Eby said:

So happy for you Rob. The beauty of having great domains and being able to deal with the same end user. That's very rare. Dealing with the same Godaddy Broker itself is a treat for me, but you have done it with end users. That's commendable. Hard to find a customer that knows and understands the value. Everyone likes to play innocent.

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Thanks, and yes, I'm trying to remember if I've sold the same end user multiple domains before that weren't related and weren't sold as a package. I can't think of any right now. Although, I have had a guy buy a domain, put it to good use and then a year later inquire about another domain name. He never followed through on the second one, I suspect he was asking on behalf of someone else, probably someone they did business with that said "hey, awesome domain, how did you get that!?!?". And he probably didn't even know that I owned both either.

rlm said:

Thanks, and yes, I'm trying to remember if I've sold the same end user multiple domains before that weren't related and weren't sold as a package. I can't think of any right now. Although, I have had a guy buy a domain, put it to good use and then a year later inquire about another domain name. He never followed through on the second one, I suspect he was asking on behalf of someone else, probably someone they did business with that said "hey, awesome domain, how did you get that!?!?". And he probably didn't even know that I owned both either.

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I didn't sell two domains to the same end user, but was in negotiation with one and then he backed out. I have gone through the same Lawyer more than twice and recently almost completed a third sale. I have done more than one with Bill here and many other brokerage houses in the past.

Congrats on the sales @rlm & @Eby

Congrats on the sale! I remember FORT being sold here before on the .ca thread.

rlm said:

Since the merger he's just shut down the Gaudreau site completely.

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Why in the world isn't it being forwarded to Fort.ca?

Maybe this isn't a "friendly" merger and there is some antipathy between a few of the participants?

Congrats on the past sales.

Eby said:

I didn't sell two domains to the same end user, but was in negotiation with one and then he backed out. I have gone through the same Lawyer more than twice and recently almost completed a third sale. I have done more than one with Bill here and many other brokerage houses in the past.

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And here I am constantly dealing with domain hobos offering up the change in their pockets and expecting me to sell.

I think I need another break.

DomainRecap said:

And here I am constantly dealing with domain hobos offering up the change in their pockets and expecting me to sell.

I think I need another break.

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I'm not sure how you go about handling inquiries and negotiations, but it seems you need to change up how you do it if you find it that frustrating and time consuming. Maybe just set out your expectations up front and quickly. I'm guessing you ask them to make an offer, they understandably come back with some low ball. Once they've started an offer at $500 its really hard to change their mentality to spending $5000+. So you're probably better off setting out a high price, then being willing to work down a little bit if you so desire. But at least you send the hobos packing right from the start. Somewhere in your negotiations you're giving the hobos too much hope.

rlm said:

Somewhere in your negotiations you're giving the hobos too much hope.

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Maybe, but the main problem I have is that the retail domain marketplaces are designed to attract and cultivate potential customers while totally ignoring sellers.

It's impossible to really control anything at GoDaddy (which is one reason they're shutting down user domain sales there) while at Dan the customer has all the power. They can send messages, open or close domain sales negotiations, lowball til the cows come home, and have 100% control of the entire transaction - that's the way it was designed - to be customer-friendly. It's a lot like eBay, where the customer is always right.

As a seller you have control of absolutely nothing and can't even close a transaction with an abusive "buyer" (you have to email support first - zzzz) - and if you ignore a lowball offer, Dan and Sedo inundate you with email alerts that a "buyer has made an offer, please respond!". You can ask for $10K and get the same $1K offer 10X in a row (until you raise the minimum) then the "buyer" is allowed to yell, scream and insult you via messages until 3+ business days later when Dan finally reads your support email and closes the transaction for you.

That the seller cannot close an abusive or unfeasible transaction is insane, but again, Dan loves customers (and wants to keep them) and hates sellers, so the customers have carte blanche to do anything they want.

With zero seller control over the negotiation, and the buyer clearly in the driver's seat. Dan can be hell if you attract one of ever-growing number of insane people that are crawling around out there. And I seem to attract quite a few.

The answer of course, is to create your own landers and take over control of the system from Dan, GD and Sedo, and in the long run that's what I'm going to have to do. I just don't have the free time right now, so I'm forced to either totally ignore all offers (as I've done before and will do again) or play the pro-buyer/anti-seller game at GD, Dan and Sedo.

In the interim I have gone through a lot of these incessant non-sales and just put BINs at my previous offer price to hopefully shut them down. If they continue to harass me, Ill send out some more support emails to Dan.

DomainRecap said:

Maybe, but the main problem I have is that the retail domain marketplaces are designed to attract and cultivate potential customers while totally ignoring sellers.

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Do we really believe that a significant portion of leads are coming from retail domain marketplaces?? The domains I had listed at Dan (and their network) stopped getting any inquiries the second I moved them off, like a thousand domains on there, so a decent test. That's why I was stunned when I accidentally sold one domain a month or so ago on Dan. To me, that sale just falls into the realm of the infinite monkey theory.

And as for as godaddy goes, of someone DOES search for a domain that you own and isn't listed there, they will bring it up that it might be for sale and to use their brokers. And at that point most people with a lick of sense (and with any money to spend) would check the domain itself.

So if you're going out of your way to sell on Godaddy, I think you're essentially just dropping your hook and line over the side of the bridge and all the hobos living below are tugging on it. You gotta stop fishing where the hobos hang out. At least in my opinion, the small sales you might make from them aren't worth it. If any big fish find you there, they'd have found you anyways.

DomainRecap said:

It's impossible to really control anything at GoDaddy (which is one reason they're shutting down user domain sales there) while at Dan the customer has all the power. They can send messages, open or close domain sales negotiations, lowball til the cows come home, and have 100% control of the entire transaction - that's the way it was designed - to be customer-friendly. It's a lot like eBay, where the customer is always right.

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And the anonymity of platforms makes it a great place for hobos to jerk your chain without a shred of accountability...

DomainRecap said:

That the seller cannot close an abusive or unfeasible transaction is insane

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Yup.

DomainRecap said:

The answer of course, is to create your own landers and take over control of the system from Dan, GD and Sedo, and in the long run that's what I'm going to have to do. I just don't have the free time right now, so I'm forced to either totally ignore all offers (as I've done before and will do again) or play the pro-buyer/anti-seller game at GD, Dan and Sedo.

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Yup.

DomainRecap said:

In the interim I have gone through a lot of these incessant non-sales and just put BINs at my previous offer price to hopefully shut them down. If they continue to harass me, Ill send out some more support emails to Dan.

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I think that's a great idea for a lot of commodity level domains you don't really care about - if you've got the time and willpower to add those bins and keep them updated. In fact I should go back and start deleting my old Dan listings, so I don't get a sale on a couple year old price, minus hefty commission.

Unfortunately, the minimum offer options aren't fool proof, even though they sound like a reasonable way to stop the hobos. But there's still a lot of people will fill out a form with a $5K minimum offer and then respond to you're inquiry with "well i didn't want to pay $5K so I sent the form just to get your attention so I could offer you $100." I think the next best way to fix that is stating that all offers made are legally binding and put some legalese in there to make it look like you're serious, including name/billing address/etc... And the other option is to do the "pay $25 to get a response from the owner" model. If I had $25 for every failed offer I ever had....

rlm said:

Unfortunately, the minimum offer options aren't fool proof, even though they sound like a reasonable way to stop the hobos. But there's still a lot of people will fill out a form with a $5K minimum offer and then respond to you're inquiry with "well i didn't want to pay $5K so I sent the form just to get your attention so I could offer you $100."

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This has actually happened to me several times at Dan - it's truly insane that people who clearly don't understand that the "minimum offer" is designed to keep people like them away, and somehow believe that this tactic might work.

I think the last one was something like "I don't actually want to pay $1,000 and this is just a way to start negotiations at $100."

DomainRecap said:

I think the last one was something like "I don't actually want to pay $1,000 and this is just a way to start negotiations at $100."

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I understand your feelings. Been there.