Don't fixate on a single domain. There's no point. There are always multiple that would work equally well. It's
very easy to find yourself in love with one, so try to avoid that.
The procedure is simple enough: email the owner. Some times they have a contact form on their web site, other times whois will give you an email address. If you have a business email address use that. Email from gmail/hotmail/yahoo addresses tends to get ignored more often. If your organization is big and rich though you probably want disguise yourself otherwise people will ask for too much.
Be sure to tell the person that you want to make a serious offer. People constantly try to buy $10k domains for $100 and it gets annoying. Indicate you're not one of them.
Give a phone number if you're comfortable negotiating on the phone. Otherwise keep it to email.
Abso-fucking-lutely use Escrow.com (or Sedo's escrow service) to handle the transaction. Split the fee if you can, otherwise pay the whole thing. It's worth it.
Facebook.com was bought for $200k by not telling the owner who they were. It's covered briefly in The Facebook Effect.
