What’s in a company name?
A good friend of mine suddenly found himself out of a job recently. I like others immediately called him to offer support. I pleaded – begged him – not to go back into paid employment, but to venture out on his own. “Why have one customer (your employer) when you can work for yourself and have many.” When working for yourself, you will lose a customer but It would take a major catastrophe to lose all of them.
He has made that mental step to go it alone and I am very pleased for him. He will make a success of it.
Meeting yesterday, he came to me outlining his plans and opportunities and his company name, the subject of this diary entry.
His idea was to call the business” The xxx Consultancy Limited. (As he has not registered the company yet I clearly cannot give away the middle word.)
Point one; do not use the word “Consultancy.” We are in the middle of the deepest recession in years and the first thing companies, and especially the public sector do, is to terminate consultancy contracts.
Point two; he replaced the word “Consultancy” with “Partnership.” To me this constitutes a few people in business together not the makings of a big brand.
Point three; be it I do not want to give away the middle word, to me the company was to sound like a firm of accountants as opposed to a sales focused organisation.
There is a school of thought that says a company name is irrelevant, their point being just get on with the business. For me, I believe a lot of thought and potentially investment needs to be put into the company name. You are creating a living breathing body that will consume vast amounts of time and energy. Like a child or pet, you will become emotionally involved so having a company name that means something to you is important, let alone what message that is sent out to suppliers and customers.
Unfortunately, most of the cool names have gone as have the corresponding domain names, hence why I say a company name does need a lot of thought. Building a brand does start with the company name, so get it right first time.
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