Take care when choosing your small company name

Used a plumber lately and cant recall the name of the company? Booked a mini cab but cant for the life of you remember which local firm you used? Well dont worry, its not your memory that needs help. Instead, it is more than likely that the company is one of over three million that potentially suffer from "..and son" syndrome.

The "and son" syndrome affects the 81% of small firms that spent too much or too little time in naming their company, according to new research from the Microsoft Small Business team, and as a result, may have ended up with an eminently forgettable business name!

Microsoft worked with the British Chambers of Commerce to interview the founders and MDs of over 200 small UK firms to discover how they chose their name, including how long it took.

Over a quarter (26%) admitted that they had spent less than an hour on deciding on what they were going to be called, whilst 24% spent less than 10 minutes on one of their most important business decisions. According to DTI figures, that equates to over 900,000 UK firms coming up with their name in the time it takes to make their mid-morning cuppa!

However, for 1.78 million firms, the decision was been much harder 45% of the small businesses interviewed took a week or more to come up with their name. Indeed, in the case of 1.5% of these firms, they claim still not to have come up with their name even though they are currently trading!

The problem, according to top memorizer Andi Bell who has been World Memory Champion on three separate occasions, is that the amount of time spent on a name for the company can affect its basic memorability and therefore how well its customers can remember what it is called.

"The simple fact is that too short or too long a time spent on deciding what to call your business can adversely affect how memorable the final name is," explains Andi Bell. "After you come up with a possible name, you should then reflect on it over a 24 hour period in order to properly consider its memorability. However, more time than this can be a mistake because, as the name becomes more familiar to you, it will start to seem more inherently memorable than it might actually be."