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Comment by dshipper | Hacker News Reader

You can definitely talk over the phone. But real business seems to happen more quickly in person, even today. Email certainly doesn't cut it.

The problem with the thought experiment is that it assumes infinite knowledge. It's very hard to imagine what things would actually be like if you had a trillion dollars and you wanted to build a flying car. You can definitely come up with things that you think are likely, but I've found that often times you know much less than you think, and the actual problems are MUCH less obvious than they seem.

It's kind of like a non-engineer imagining what problems he would run in to if he had to build the Golden Gate Bridge including design and construction. You can definitely foresee certain things, e.g. you need a lot of materials, pens and paper, but there's still a ton of uncertainty and real gritty problems that only come out when you're in the thick of things.

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"But real business seems to happen more quickly in person, even today."

Cost and time tradeoff and also what you get for closing and how often you have to close a sale.

You can send out more emails than you can postal letters.

You can do more postal letters than you can phone calls.

You can do more phone calls than you can in person cold calls. All depends of course on the product you are selling and the situation.

In any case going for the low hanging fruit to start (say sending an email to the IT manager at a university) doesn't mean you can't send a postal letter or a phone call or try to setup a meeting in person. But it makes sense in many (not all, many) situations to start with the easiest thing you can do and work your way up.

Example: I just closed a deal with a guy who has a reality show and all it took was an email which he replied to because he was interested in what I was selling. That's only one example I've obviously done the other things as well.

Lastly, negotiating in person also has it's drawbacks. Personally I prefer to negotiate by email in most cases. Depending on the other party and your own skills an in person does't always work out the way you would like.

Just another perspective.

Yes, I totally agree. I don't want to make it seem like phone / email are not legitimate tools for doing this type of stuff. I'm based in Philly so I'd say those two are REALLY important for what I do - we can only go out and meet clients in person a few times a year.

I think email is helpful for starting conversations (via cold emails). But what I was trying to say is that at some point you need to actually start talking to people on the phone or in person. You can only learn so much from watching your Google Analytics graphs.

Appreciate the perspective, thanks for allowing me to clarify.

I think it totally depends on what you're selling, who you're selling it to, and many other factors.

For example, a guy emailed me one day about a domain I owned, and wanted to know if I'd part with it. None of the domain appraisal tools rated it as having any significant value and I wasn't emotionally invested in it, and had no specific plans for it, so I emailed him back and offered to sell it. He made an offer, I accepted, and told him to Paypal me the money, and then I'd transfer the domain to his GoDaddy account. No "escrow", no face to face meeting, no weird stuff, just email and two strangers trusting each other over $100.00 and a domain. And if F2F had been required, it would never have happened, since I was in NC and he was in Canada. So, totally an appropriate case for doing everything via email.

Now... our startup is in the business of complex, B2B enterprise software solutions which will sell for 10s (if not 100s) of thousands of dollars for a subscription. This stuff will need to integrate with existing legacy systems, and - if successful - will have big implications for the way people get work done. We are not going to get anywhere without some serious face time when it comes to selling this stuff.

Of course, those are two extremes, but I think there are a lot of cases where the higher bandwidth of face to face communication is still very valuable.

"None of the domain appraisal tools rated it as having any significant value"

Well first let me tell you that means practically nothing.

Especially on the end of "no significant value". Although I've seen more errors with domains with value being said to have "no value" than I've seen with domains with clear value "having no value". (Can't off the top see if I mean "false negative or false positive" but you get the point.)

"He made an offer, I accepted"

In general, in any deal to sell there always needs to be some "kickback". Otherwise someone might feel they have left money on the table. General rule. Kickback doesn't have to be "more" or "less" money. It can be as simple as "ok but only if you..." (some non monetary item that makes the other party feel you are borderline on their offer).

"trusting each other over $100.00 and a domain"

Easy because the total amount at risk is $100. (Would you do the same if you had a domain and someone offered $20,000 for it and that was the value?).

"We are not going to get anywhere without some serious face time when it comes to selling this stuff."

Agree.

Let me know if anyone ever approaches you to sell any other domains.

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