Business Naming Basics

Quite often a business owner will ask his employees to help name or rename the business through a contest.

I believe this is a bad idea.

There are several reasons for this, the first being that very few acceptable names are produced in this manner. Every so often you will hear a successful name being generated by a contest, but this is the exception, not the rule.

For smaller companies this process can also generate bad blood, or at least hurt feelings if someone’s “perfect gem” is not chosen. And if no name is picked from the pool of contest entries there are bad feelings all around.

So often an entrepreneur will accept a poor name rather than cause poor morale within the organization, and ask him or her self, “Why did I think a contest was a good idea?”

The answer, of course, is not to start a contest in the first place.

Reserve contests for blood drives and the bowling team.

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