how to win business awards

As a client, if you were to ask how to win business awards, I would tell you it’s important to understand why you want to win, before you get into the process of entering.

Any credible business award will mean opening your business to the judges who will want to explore all kinds of things, including the financial performance as well as employee and customer satisfaction.

If your business isn’t doing a great job across the board, then fix that before you even start to think about how to win business awards.

In addition to this, you’ve got to invest a fair amount of time into the awards process.  It’s a combination of substance and style that will be judged.  Think of it like the best dog at Crufts: as well as having all the right attributes for its breed, it also needs to be presented confidently by it’s owner.

This confidence is an important element of how to win business awards – do the right things and do them with confidence and you’ll get a much better result than simply filling the forms in hurriedly and hoping for the best.  It’s a serious undertaking to win an award and so it must be taken seriously too.

Every year my clients win various business awards (often without telling me they’ve even entered).  That’s because they take their business seriously and they make a serious entry into the business awards.

How to Win a Business Award – 5 Key Factors

Here’s my take on some of the most valuable things you can do for the best chance of winning an award…

1 – Enter!  Most businesses don’t bother entering – so they stand no chance of winning.

2 – Figure out what the judges are looking for and give it to them.  Ask them what the judging criteria will be, what evidence they’ll be looking for etc.  Don’t be shy!

3 – Network!  Get known by the judges throughout the year, spend time talking to them so that they get to know you and your business before the competition starts.  The ability to “schmooze” is something you’ll spot a lot of top business people have; relationships make the world go around.

4 – If the competition requires a written entry, do it professionally.  Take time, review it and make sure the presentation is of a high quality.

5 – Presenting to judges?  Prepare something with images & words, deliver it from the heart and practice.  Passion in business is often overlooked and yet it’s so often the defining difference between a dull presentation and one that makes you go “Wow!”

Once you’ve won an award, use it to get free publicity locally – in newspapers, on the radio, local TV or wherever else you can.

Put the award on your website, use the logo on your stationery and make sure the world knows that you’re a winner.  It’s a public endorsement for your business.

If you want to develop your business so its ready to win a business award, get in touch for my free 15-minute Double Your Business Audit – it’s a rapid deep-dive into . your business so you can figure out exactly what it’ll take to give you explosive growth and that all important winning feel for the judges to put you first.