Changing your company's name.

In Harry Beckwith’s book, “What Clients Love,” he talks a lot about naming a company. Enough so that he scares me to death at the task. His opening essay on naming is the prediction that George Bush would beat Al Gore because George’s name is George and Al’s name is Al. Really!

In a word study, someone with way too much time on their hands discovered that the name “George” is preferred over the name “Al.” They assemble 85 “random” names that just happened to include every presidential contender since George Washington--yes, Adlai and Calvin were on the list. In every case the “stronger” name came out the victor. The essay ends with just tree words that place a burden squarely on my shoulders: “sweat your name.”

Our old name was born out of our neophyte business. We mowed grass. Period. And we wanted to communicate that by naming our company “Just Lawns.” The trouble with that is our little company was a lot like yours--it enjoyed some degree of success and expanded its services to include landscaping and sprinklers. Sound familiar?

Through the years that followed we have limited our offerings to sprinkler repair. So our old moniker, “Just Lawns” completely mis-informs by implying something we haven’t done in years.

It’s time to change. But to what?

I’m going to close with a list of names we are considering:
GeyserSmith
RainSmith
Sprinkler Bee
Sprinkler Dr.
Sprinkler Kaput

Any input would be glorious. This load’s getting heavy.

P.S. And just in case you think this stuff is easy, your colors even have a say in your success. Look at this HP article.