[trubleshtr]

Ok, I'm taking the big step out into the world of self employment, and would like to test the names I have picked out for my business with you guys to get a feel for what works. I am An Industrial Maintenance mechanic, the service I provide is maintenance repairs to automated machines, CNC, PLC ect.
Since most of you have experience in this area I am hoping your feed back will assist me in the right business name.
Thanks in advance to all of you ....

[Al_The_Man]

The tendency these days is to get away from long company names and use short one-word names or initials, like Mectec or CNCmec. The one that come to peoples lips easily. If you are looking for a customer base, one thing to consider is how easy you are to find in the yellow pages etc and select the right heading if someone is looking for you. Knock on some doors and leave your card.
Usually the word gets around as this business does not have a lot of good people.
Another thing to do is to make sure the Tech Reps in your area know about you, as they call on alot of people that are your potential customers and the customers often ask these guys if they know of, or can recommend some one that does service.
Also the reps often sell equipment that you can pick up after sales-service on, this also helps the rep if he can sell a product with after market service.
Al

[trubleshtr]

Thanks for the input Al.

If I used an accronym form of my business names above, I suppose I would have what you are describing

I.M.R.
A.I.M.
I.A.M. ( and "I" is canadian....

[trubleshtr]

If any one else has taken this step and could lend advice/pitfalls to avoid I would greatly appreciate your input.
Thanks again.

[ViperTX]

So, the name should clearly indicate the type of service(s) or product(s) you will deliver. As with most new ventures...the biggest problem is undervaluing your service/product...promissing more then you can deliver in the alotted time....so, lay out the steps that you use to deliver your service and alot time to each step and then you'll know for sure how much time to charge for...your rate should be adjusted to cover your expenses (overhead, etc.).

[onthemarc]

I have the name Advanced Wood Design It has worked well for 13 years. People get a good idea what we do by the name. The Advanced gets you at the top of the yellow page listing But money and seniority get the best add in the book. I agree the name should be short tricky and easy to remember, Good luck
onthemarc

[Gunner]

You may already have decided on your name but if I were going through the phone book I would probably overlook you unless there was more description along with your name. I would try to stress machine repair in the company name. Maybe "Automated Machine Repair" (AMR) for short or something along that line. I also agree with Al, there are not many real good service people around. When I find one, I don't forget the name or number and I pass that along to other associates in the business.

[SanDiegoCNC]

Here's how I would approach the issue.

I would link my company name with my business niche.

Do a Yahoo, Google and Mamma search using the keywords that describe what it is that your company will do. This is a big help in the sense that potential customers will also be searching the same terms and your website's url will describe your business.

Hint: Keep it simple and direct. Try it as a dot com name. Dot biz and other dot names are not easily remembered. Example:www.machinerepair.com

The payoffs: When a spider (another term for a web crawler) goes through your website, it'll give you a higher ranking based upon several criteria.

1. If your company name is the same as your web address then your customers will be able to more easily remember your website. Do not use hyphens as people don't generally remember them. Example: www.machine-repair.com

2. Web crawlers give a higher ranking for url's that contain the search criteria terms.

3. When building your website, use the most common search terms that describe your business within the website as often as practical without compromising the site. Web crawlers also rank the number of 'hits' (search terms) within the website.

4. After building your website, link your site with as many companies as possible. This will give you a higher ranking. Link to trade organizations and local trade rags.

Note: Don't expect the web crawlers to pick up your website immediately. It can take as long as three months. Also, don't pay some company to link you to their websites. Web crawlers are constantly getting smarter and are known to 'ignore' certain websites that do nothing but link sites together.


Try this as a real life example of what I'm talking about. I live and own a machine shop in San Diego, California. If you do a search of;

1. machine shop San Diego ...............I rank 4.
2. San Diego CNC............................I rank 3 to 4.
3. San Diego machine.......................I rank 7.

The key is to get ranked on the FIRST page when people do a search. Most people will not go to the second page.


I can go into more detail if you're interested. Just let me know.


PS; http://www.nameboy.com/ will help you determine what url's are already taken.

[trubleshtr]

Thanks SanDiegoCnc, That was one aspect I never considered.

Thanks to everyone elso too for your advice. The one thing I love about this site, is that it's a great 'sounding board'.

[strat]

SanDiegoCnc wanted to say thanks .... great advice....

[bkukowski]

googlebombs dont work anymore?

[SanDiegoCNC]

Anytime. :cheers:

[Twistr]

To follow up on SanDiegoCNC... you want an unique name. If the name is composed of words that are very common, then the search engines will come up with many "hits" for those words. For example, the use of the word "precision" will come up with many hits. You actually want a very unique word that the only solution for Google or Yahoo is to find YOUR url and few others. Of course this isn't super possible unless you come up with something off the wall. Think Xcingular. SO... my suggestion is to come up with a word that you can't find by searching on Google. Once you submit it to the search engines, you'll be the only game in town for that search. Our product name is invert-a-bolt and even though the words are common by themselves.... when connected by hyphens it becomes a unique word that is not used elsewhere in the world. Sometimes we get rid of the hyphens, making it invertabolt.... but that also is a unique name. Kleenex is another example. What's that? Everyone knows, but it is a made up name. You can think of lots of made up names that are commonplace now that everyone uses them.:idea:

[SanDiegoCNC]

I somewhat agree twistr. If its an established brand or trademark name, it makes all the sense in the world. The problem is when someone that doesn't have clue one is looking for a service then it makes sense to put the most common words together to form a company name, hence SanDiegoCNC. Anyone looking for a CNC machine shop in San Diego will hit my website. I don't have to pay to get ranked and the name is easy to remember.

In my case, its a win-win solution.

[Evodyne]

Trublshtr,

In the poll I voted for "Industrial Automation Maintenance", as it specifically mentioned automation-making it more descriptive of your actual work. Although these types of names are good for the guy looking through the phone book, I don't think it will make much difference in the long run. Why? In your line of work-the bulk of your work will come from referrals and, if you do good work, repeat business.

I've worked in the automation business for years-mostly with PLC based projects. The firms I was with got a foothold in with some good customers, and the business just rolled in regular as clockwork.

So, in my opinion, your reputation is more important than any name.

A couple of things I've seen: One place assigned risk to every possible thing they could see that could go wrong. And to cover the risks they bumped up the cost in their proposals. Dumb. They had their bases covered, but never got any work-too expensive.

Another place started out small with incredible talent. Success came very fast and soon they started hiring and growing. But they thought if they ever said no to work that someone else would get a foothold. So they overbooked, work got shoddy, jobs came in late, etc. Moral: growth is not always good. Or perhaps more accurate: Growth is O.K, uncontrolled growth can kill you.

Finally, know when your in over your head. I found this out the hard way and it cost me dearly. Going out on your own should be fun. You should expect it to be challenging, but it shouldn't put you in an early grave.

O.K, my user name - Evodyne - is the name of the company I hope to get off the ground in the relatively near future. I've been doing software for years and got into artificial intelligence stuff several years back. I developed some optimization software based on a form of genetic algorithm known as Differential Evolution. I intend to sell A.I components to software developers based on my earlier work, hence the "Evo"-short for evolution. I'm a sci-fi movie buff and in the Terminator movies Cyberdyne Systems created the A.I based Skynet that attempted to take over the world. So as an inside joke to myself I dropped the Cyber and added the Evo. Hence Evodyne. The full name will be Evodyne Soft Systems. "Soft Computing" is a generic term that covers new methods for problem solving: genetic algortihms, neural networks, fuzzy logic, etc. But what's in a name?

I wish you luck and success.

Lance

[CuttersCov]

"Another place started out small with incredible talent. Success came very fast and soon they started hiring and growing. But they thought if they ever said no to work that someone else would get a foothold. So they overbooked, work got shoddy, jobs came in late, etc. Moral: growth is not always good. Or perhaps more accurate: Growth is O.K, uncontrolled growth can kill you."

This is great advice. In my neck of the woods my brother owns a lawn and landscape business, and I have worked for him for several years. We were discussing the possibility of me starting my own lawn care and I was looking at bidding on a church that he used to do. The church had expanded and the lawn grew to almost double its previous size. In theory you would think that the price of the lawn service had almost doubled. So my brother called up and talked to the secretary about putting in a bid. She told him he was too high and then proceeded to tell him that they had a bid in for HALF as much as he used to cut the old lawn for!!

Normally you would think that someone was lying in order for the price to drop. But we see it so often in the lawn service business that we knew it was true. People will outbid other people because they think if they have work they are making money. Almost always its ignorance. Some business owners don't calculate out their bottom dollar and don't understand what it takes to make money, in the end they are hurting everybody.

One thing I have learned if you never sacrifice quality the work is always there. And if you get to the point where you are too overbooked you aren't charging enough. I learned in one of my finance classes (don't know if it's still true to this day) but apartment complexes increase the rent based on the amount of apartments that are rented. They have a 95% capacity if it's over that they aren't charging enough and if it's below that they are charging too much.

Sorry I didn't mean to be so long winded. I think Lance gave some great advice and I thought I would add my two cents.

As for the business name I agree with the people suggesting that you use something shorter. If you are listed in the yellow pages in the section entitled, Lawn Maintenance (for example) then does it make sense to have a business titled AAA Lawn Maintenance?

One more thing--be different in your advertising. Input "lawn maintenance" in google and look at some lawn sites I bet 99.9% of their site is based around the color green. Then look at mine www.cutterscove.com (still under construction) and you tell me which one you will remember. I wanted to be different, but not so drastically different that you couldn't tell who I was or what I did. (At least I hope I'm different enough )

And for you business card--please for the love of God do not do two things:
1. Print them off your computer.
2. Do nothing but text with no flash or flare.

I think two things when I see cards like these "he's a hack" and "no determination"

You can find places cheap on the internet to print your card and they do quality work. There are also places that will design you a card, please don't use templates that says, "no originality".

If you want I'll design you a business card for free on the condition that you mail me 10 of them for my portfolio. (I did mine it's in the lower right corner of my website and you can check out one of my submissions in the sheet cam contest (more to come))

Last piece of advice, I swear , if you don't agree with anything I have to say at least do one thing and that's be original when it comes to your advertising.

-Matt

PS- Didn't mean to bring up lawn care so much since I know this is a CNC forum but the basic rules still apply.

[trubleshtr]

Hi Matt,
Thanks for the advice, I already printed business cards off on my computer, you are right, they look like CR@P, I won't use them, too emmbarrasing.
I am slowly learning all the little ins and outs of firing up a new business, there's so much too learn.
I've started 'word of mouth' through our vendors at work that I am available 'after hours', weekends and such, and that I am trying to get my feet wet, I toyed with a web site, but think it maybe too soon to bradcast my services just yet as I do have a day job that is currently paying my bills, I would hate to give the impression I am available when I am not ie. 9-5pm, so i am stressing to people that I am an after hours service company in start up mode, If things take off, I'll consider quiting my day job
I can email you a business card I came up with.... if you want to play around with the design?

[Evodyne]

trubleshtr,

Good luck man! Just don't sell yourself short to make up for what you think might be a shortcoming-weekends or evenings only. They are paying for what you know and what you can do-not when you can do it.

Evo

[ynneb]

Well at least the "Advanced Industrial maintenance" can be abreviated down to "AIM"
That now enables a bussiness card and logo that can be build around maybe a target theme. You could have 3 pullys in front of each other as a target and maybe a router bit as the arrow.

[trubleshtr]

Thanks for everyone's input, I have come up with yet another new name, that I think I will run with......

Challenger Mech-Tech

Feel free to comment, you won't hurt my feelings

ps. yennb I think it was your suggestion on the whole Mech Tech thing???
CHEERS and thanks

EDIT: Sorry AL the man it was actually your post regarding the whole mectec thing, my apologies....I'm sure Yennb was thinking it also though