On Jun 5, 8:01?am, "Clams Canino" wrote:
"D-unit" cof42_AT_earthlink.net wrote in message
A reverse Dutch auction?

Interesting.

Wonder how high you'll need to raise the price to find a buyer. :-)

Maybe Billy Dee Williams needs an outboard.

Laugh now.... but it worked.... I got a bid. Heh....

-W

Actually, I'm not at all surprised.

I once sold a boat with a similar technique. I had a listing that had
a lot of interest, but no bites. Experienced boat buyers know that it
typically takes a very long time to sell a larger boat, and they will
"follow" a boat they are pretty interested in until the seller starts
to weaken and drops the price once or twice. After the seller
demonstrates a crumbling of resolve by cutting the price, the sharp
buyers will *then* come in and make an offer even lower than the last
price cut.

When the client began to despair that nobody had made an offer on the
boat and asked how much I thought we needed to drop the price, I said
"There's been a lot of action on your boat, and there are a couple of
guys who are pretty sold on it. Why not *raise* the price, at least
for a short while, and see what happens?"

Within half a day after the price went *up* on Yachtworld, I had a
phone call from one of the better prospects demanding to know what the
seller had added to his inventory of equipment that justified a price
increase. I said, "Nothing, it's just that it's getting closer to
summer and the seller feels that with the market heating up he doesn't
need to offer the boat as cheaply in order to find a buyer."

"That's bullsh**! He can't raise the price!"

"Of course he can. It's his boat. He can do anything he wants with the
price."

"Yeah, well you can tell him for me that I wouldn't give him a dime
more than he was originally asking for the boat, less the 10% he's got
built in to offset your commission!"

"Why don't you bring over a deposit check, and tell him yourself in
writing?"

The buyer did, and the seller got more than he would have realized had
he lowered the price instead of raised it. More importantly, the boat
was sold, the expenses stopped, and the first price cut might not have
been the only one required to smoke out a patient buyer.

By raising the price you became less "needy" than the buyer. In any
negotiation, the person with the least emotional need will prevail. :-)