How to Select the Right Name for Your New Business

How to Select the Right Name for Your New Business
8 Steps To Destroy Your Fear And Replace It With Certainty
Tech Issues That Steal Efficiency From Your Business, and How to Fix Them
The Company That Works Out Together, Works Well Together

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 02:00 PM PDT

name a business

Does the name of a business affect that business’s success? In most cases, absolutely it does. So how do you name a business?

While the right name can make your business popular within a short time, the wrong one can doom your prospects. The right name can create a unique business identity, but the wrong one can mar it, along with your chances of success.

Do you go with something descriptive or something creative? Do you include a location in the name? Do you decide this on your own or get expert help? You need to find answers to a number of questions before you make a final decision to name a business.

How to Name a Business

Expert Advice: You May Need It

It’s not easy to name a business. The name has to convey the right message and generate interest. Trademark issues must be considered and most importantly, you need to develop the right marketing strategy for the name you’ve chosen. If this is not particularly your field of expertise, hiring an expert may make sense.

If you’re in a sector where the name of your new venture is sure to affect its success, you need to involve an expert in the selection process. But don’t depend blindly on the expert. Instead, work with them to find the best name for your business.

Professional naming firms know what works and what doesn't. You may come up with a name that seems good to you, however, they have the expertise to identify a name’s potential and evaluate its possibilities. They also know how to prevent legal hassles over trademarks.

Don’t think that hiring a professional is just a waste of money. The identity of your business depends on its name, at least initially. When you name a business, mistakes can lead to long term consequences that are costly in terms of time and money.

Informative or Abstract: Which Should You Choose?

Descriptive or creative? Real words or fabricated ones? Location-based or general? The questions are numerous. However, all of them are intertwined. Everything boils down to the basics – whether you need to choose a name that informs people about your business or a name that generates people’s interest, making them want to find out more.

There are no hard and fast rules to name a business. What works for one business may not work for another. This makes it even more important to think hard about the type of name that will be good for your endeavor.

You also need to decide whether to include a location in the name. While a location may define the proximity of your business for your target customers, it may become a problem if you expand your business to other locations later on. Just because your new business is small today doesn’t mean it will remain so in the future. The ideal name for your business should be the one that conveys the uniqueness of what you bring to your customers. But, the ideal may not always work for every business.

Here are a few tips to name a business that do work for all businesses:

Pay attention to what your clients want; not to what you want.
Don’t choose a long name with difficult words.
Use words that evoke familiarity.
Don’t use puns, as they may not be understood.
Incorporate your business before you use the “Inc.” in the name.

Professional firms often use a simple trick to come up with business names—morphemes. These small, meaningful units of words provide a good base for an interesting, yet informative business name.

Trademark Issues: How to Stay Safe

Trademark infringement may lead to legal battles where you lose precious time and money. Therefore, it’s important that you research the names you think will be suitable for your business. You may also find it helpful to hire a trademark attorney to help you avoid legal issues.

Don’t take trademark issues lightly: These conflicts can completely annihilate your financial resources. An ounce of legal prevention is worth a pound of cure in terms of time and money.

And the Winner Is

Now that you have three to five names as contenders, whether you came up with them yourself or had experts contribute them, it’s time to finally pick one. Here are a few ideas that may help you find the best one for your business:

Ask yourself: Does the name convey the company image you want to create?
Ask your target consumers : Does the name seem interesting? (You can do this with a market survey.)
Ask your marketing people: Does the name have potential?

The last decision rests with you: Follow your intuition, go with the expert recommendation.

Whatever your method to name a business, make sure you start to market the name as soon as you have decided to use it.

Internet Cafe Photo via Shutterstock

The post How to Select the Right Name for Your New Business appeared first on Small Business Trends.

8 Steps To Destroy Your Fear And Replace It With Certainty

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 11:00 AM PDT

overcome fear

Recently, I had a conversation with a business owner who was keen to make some changes to his business. These changes involved the sales mix of his service offerings and focusing more aggressively on a specific subset of his current customers. He realized that his true passion was for providing one of his current services to a very particular group of his current customers. This focus also had the bonus of being a much better tool to improve his financial results in addition to aligning more closely with his dream lifestyle.

The problem was that if he simply "got rid of" all those customers who didn't fit his newfound target, he would face a short-term reduction in sales and cash flow. His passion for this particular target segment would eventually generate financial results that would eclipse what he had been creating with his current customers. But the time lag between now and that point in the future would drain cash from his bank account.

Painful frustration!

Having realized that he wasn't able to comfortably sustain the temporary reduction in cash flow he became predictably frustrated. He expressed that he felt he would probably never be able to create his dream business. He felt he missed his chance because he should have done it "the right way" when he first started out. He felt that he had "built a monster" that he could no longer control.

Most business owners can relate that situation and those natural feelings of frustration. But those feelings are completely unwarranted if you understand how to overcome fear via a path to bridging the chasm that seems too wide to cross. The keys to bridging that chasm are to follow a proven series of steps that make it crystal clear what you need to do and how to do it, without suffering a reduction in financial results. Below are the steps to follow.

8 Steps to Overcome Fear

Step One

Calculate how much profit you would make from this target combination of product/service and customer segment. Then calculate how much you anticipate making from a single unit (target product/service and target customer segment combined make one unit).

Step Two

Calculate how much profit you are making right now from all the other combinations of product/service and customer segments that do not fall into your new target. Then calculate how much profit you earn, on average, from one of these units.

Step Three

Divide the profit you calculated in step 1 by the profit calculated in step 2.

Step Four

This is the number of "old customers" (from the non-ideal product/service and customer universe you looked at in step 2) you can get rid of every time you acquire one of your new target customer units from Step 1.

Step Five

Start working hard to attract your new target customers.

Step Six

Have the intestinal fortitude to jettison the number of "non-ideal" customers from step 4 every time you acquire one of your new target customer units.

Step Seven

Determine your target date to have this transition completed and back-calculate the rate you must acquire new target profile customers in order to achieve your goal.

Step Eight

You now have concrete targets for acquiring these ideal customer units that you can use to establish your goals and targets for lead generation and conversion.

Conclusion

The result of this approach is a set of clearly defined targets that will allow you to migrate toward the ideal outcome you identified, a clear timeline for accomplishing it and certainty that you are moving toward your ultimate goal as you hit the intermediate targets along the way.

You will accomplish all these things with no reduction in your current financial results and with the confidence to release those non-ideal customers according to your plan. Ultimately, you can overcome fear and achieve your target that may have initially seemed impossible.

You will be able to do it with a clear plan, minimal risk and no reduction in your financial results.

Scared Businessman Photo via Shutterstock

The post 8 Steps To Destroy Your Fear And Replace It With Certainty appeared first on Small Business Trends.

Tech Issues That Steal Efficiency From Your Business, and How to Fix Them

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 07:30 AM PDT

We all want our businesses to be lean and mean. But efficiency can be like heat inside a building that has tiny cracks around windows and doors. Heat leaks out here and there – you don't even realize it. Below are some technology issues that can steal efficiency from your business through your information technology systems, that you may not even realize.

technology issues

Technology Issues and How to Fix Them

Lack of IT Policies and Procedures, or Not Following Them

According to a Ponemon Institute study in 2012, "Negligent insiders are the top cause of data breaches." Internal negligence accounts for 39% of data breaches. Probably most of those people involved in breaches were horrified at what happened, but human error was still at the heart of it.

There are many ways human error can happen: Not controlling system administrator access when roles change or people leave; employees losing laptops or having them stolen; easily cracked user passwords. Too often a breach sends a business into a crisis tailspin. It may lead to financial losses, public relations repercussions and legal problems.

How to fix it: Prevention is the best answer. Audit your processes and implement security best practices at all vulnerable points. Educate employees as to their responsibilities. Hold them accountable for following policies, too.

Maintaining Physical IT Resources

Maintaining information technology hardware can be expensive as well as time consuming for small businesses already having a tough time meeting the growing demands of their operations. Common issues include slow or outdated servers, and physical loss in the event of a disaster. Then there's the capital expense of buying and scaling IT equipment, implementing upgrades, as well as the sheer number of servers needed and the operating expense.

How to fix it: Consider virtualization technologies and moving to virtual environments. Letting an outside service having economies of scale handle the hardware, while you maintain IT oversight in-house, may be a more efficient use of capital and staff. Involve the Finance Department to make a cost-benefit analysis.

Failing to Schedule System Backups or Incomplete Backups

Even in this day and age, studies still show erratic backup practices among small businesses. The causes are many: Human error, backup solution failure, budget restrictions. The headaches and costs of trying to recover – and perhaps not being able to recover completely — can threaten a smaller business's very existence.

How to fix it: Schedule backups and test them regularly. “Inspect what you expect.” If you've delegated, ask questions until you get satisfactory answers about backups. Consider moving to a managed service that handles backups for you.

Not Requiring Employees to Update Passwords Regularly

Using the same password multiple times, and using easy passwords are two common practices making your entire system potentially vulnerable. Chinese hackers were able to breach the New York Times website in January simply by getting email login credentials of a writer.

How to fix it: Require employees to reset passwords regularly, through password expiration in applications. Educate them on the need for strong passwords.

Not Treating Mobile Devices as an Integral Part of Your IT Systems

In a 2012 honeypot study, 50 mobile devices were intentionally lost. In the vast majority of cases the person finding it accessed information on the device (intentionally or unintentionally). The costs of mobility-related incidents were $247,000 on average, per incident, according to that same study.

How to fix it: Treat mobile devices (even BYOD devices that employees own) as endpoints of your IT ecosystem, entitled to the same levels of protection as your network, servers and desktops. Incorporate solutions such as encryption and remote wipe capabilities for mobile devices into your IT security plan.

Slow Network and Internet Connections, and Downtime

You may not realize just how much time employees spend waiting for large files to transfer and slowness caused by bandwidth limitations and other issues. The last thing you want is business-critical computing to be interrupted. Other systems can be disrupted, too. A VOIP phone system that's down for a half a day can mean tremendous lost business and inconvenience for employees and customers alike.

How to fix it: Go for fast speed and reliability for key communications connectivity. One option today is to bypass the public Internet for internal computing locations, and tap into a private Ethernet network service.

Not Identifying and Tackling the Biggest Problems Areas First

Systems and networks get more complex all the time. Complexity makes it harder to troubleshoot issues. You don't want to spend hours or days solving minor issues while the biggest issues continue to plague the business.

How to fix it: The biggest ROI will be had from isolating and fixing the biggest problems. Don’t underestimate what’s involved with troubleshooting. We see with our systems that troubleshooting can take repeated attempts before you isolate all the causes and effects. Reports; web-based administration tools; key performance indicators that you monitor – all are essential troubleshooting tools.

In summary, technology issues involve hundreds of details and can be interrelated. When problems arise they take mindshare away from running the business. Important revenue-generating IT projects get delayed. The company can be thrown into crisis mode. None of us enjoy spending large sums to fix issues because we're forced to in order to avoid disaster.

One other piece of advice we’ve learned the hard way: Don't continue doing things one way just because you’ve always done it that way and never had a problem.

Make a point to educate yourself and your team on the possibilities. Many more options exist today compared with even a couple of years ago. Today’s solutions could be — and often are — more efficient in terms of staff time and money.

The post Tech Issues That Steal Efficiency From Your Business, and How to Fix Them appeared first on Small Business Trends.

The Company That Works Out Together, Works Well Together

Posted: 27 Mar 2013 05:00 AM PDT

business fitness

Overit Media in Albany, New York, is at the leading edge of a trend. The 30-person company was recently featured in Fast Company because of its hourly company-wide business fitness breaks, which range from lunges and pushups to "freestyle dancing."

Every hour, employees drop what they're doing when the company P.A. urges them to join in the two-minute group fitness activity. There's also a power walk at lunch.

When I saw the photos of Overit employees "planking" on their office floors, I giggled. (And also thought that you'd have to have a pretty casual dress code – or a pretty good janitorial staff – to be confident about dropping to the floor at any given moment). But giggles aside, Overit has the right idea.

Making fitness a part of the workday is a concept that's gaining momentum for many reasons.

Employees who are fit are less likely to get sick or suffer from chronic health problems like back pain or diabetes that can lead to extended time off. Of course, fewer health problems mean fewer doctor visits and lower health care costs – good news for employers and employees alike.

Many companies are dealing with concerns about rising health care costs by urging employees to eat better, exercise more and generally be healthier. But this can be hard to do because at the same time, you're urging them to work longer hours and do more with less. Because you still can't afford to replace the employees you laid off back in 2008. Below are three lessons every company can learn from Overit's business fitness program.

Ways to Put Business Fitness Into Place

Think Small

For many of us, making big changes is hard. Overit's plan is based on small, simple changes that don't ask too much of anyone. In itself, taking a two-minute break every hour of the workday, that's 16 minutes of calisthenics, isn't going to turn anyone into The Biggest Loser or transform a couch potato into a triathlete.

But it can trigger your employees to think differently about fitness. Exercise makes you feel good and want to do more.

Make it Regular

Because the exercise break is repeated every hour, it drills the benefits of fitness into participants' heads in a way that a weekly in-office yoga session or shoulder rub can't. Frequency also benefits the business by getting employees' blood flowing on a regular basis, which leads to clearer thinking, better work and fresher ideas…all day long.

Do it Together

How many times have you vowed to make a healthy change like doing yoga stretches at your desk or taking a quick walk instead of downing coffee when you need energy at 3 p.m.? You do it for two days, or maybe a week, and then work gets in the way. It's a lot easier to stick to a new habit when everyone else is doing it with you (and when the P.A. is reminding you).

Group workouts have the added benefit of sending the message, "We're a team, you're part of our team and we care about your well-being." That boosts employees' mental and emotional health as well as their physical fitness.

How are you working employee fitness into your workday? Do you have a business fitness program in place?

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Thursday, March 28, 2013