Episode 126 – How To Become An Award-Winning Business
Awards don’t apply to just individuals, it applies to businesses as well. It gives added credibility to your company therefore, potential clients can trust you and invest their money. In this episode, Adam Stott explains how you can become an award-winning business, and how awards can help your business become credible to a lot of clients. Listen to learn more.
Show Highlights:
- Adam Stott as a judge in the SME National Business Awards
- Adam Stott’s criteria for judging
- How to make your business a nominee for an award
- Ways on improving your presentation to the judges
- Examples on how to impress an award-giving body
Links Mentioned:
Transcript:
Please note this is a verbatim transcription from the original audio and therefore may include some minor grammatical errors.
Adam Stott:
Hey everybody, Adam here and welcome to Business Growth Secrets! Got really a cool episode to be doing with you today. Today I was asked to be on a webinar today with the SME National Business Awards. So, for this year, for 2020, I am a judge of the SME National Business Awards. This means I am judging the candidates that put themselves forward for awards.
We did this cool training today where we got anyone that wants to apply for an award could come onto the training and speak to me as well as about another five or six judges that were judging the awards this year. What I thought be really cool is to do a podcast not just about my perspectives on what should win the award. Actually all the other judges because they all had different opinions of what they’d be looking for and I thought, that I’d bring these to you for the podcast today.
So, if you ever wanna win an award and you want to win an award for your business then you can have a much, much better chance by following this and the bits of advice that we’re gonna show you today. As it should be really useful for you all and in addition to that, let’s talk about awards and why would you want to win an award.
Well when it comes down to it, you’ve got branding and branding is you controlling the perception of your business. So, it is the perception other people have in your business when they can’t obviously see all the details, all your business and everything you doing but what they do is people form an outside perspective of your business based on your brand. And become an award-winning business, makes it so much easier for you to show people that you’re credible, for you to show people that they should do business with you, and it really elevates your brand. I always of said for a long time if you put to businesses next to each other and all things being equal i.e.
You’ve got client looking to purchase from one of the two businesses and one is an award-winning and one isn’t, then the award-winning businesses is gonna get the business. You know, that simple brand preference and understanding the logical mind of business and I think that is so easy for businesses to win awards but they just don’t know why there would want to win award or how easy it is and I’ve got loads of clients. So, shout out to couple client Dan Salmon, great guy, won tons of awards as one of Britain’s best travel agent. He’s won so many awards he’s done awesome, counselling for motoserv, Dan’s companies called never wasted journey if you want to look him up. Counselling for Motoserv UK that won tons of awards, probably 16-awards.
We got Pam Bangle from bangle’s construction consultants [00:02:25.05] won tons of awards as well. I’ve won lots of awards in the past with multiple different businesses. I’ve won entrepreneur of the year Europe and a finalist in the Amazon business awards entrepreneur of the year, other awards like that. And it really does a good job of elevating your brand. And a lot of businesses a lot the time don’t realize that they could be entering an award and actually bring a small award-winning brand into the business very very early. What I’m gonna do is share with you what people are saying earlier on.
So, I was asked as a judge what the things that I’m looking for in order to decide who the winners are. I said, that really what I would be looking for is preparation and this is an important thing because whenever I’ve entered an award, I’ve always made sure that I’ve done a lot of preparation prior to the awards. I’ve made sure that I’ve been really prepared, I put lots of information the business up and lots of documents on the business I’m and respecting the judges time because the judge doesn’t have much time to look through all the award entries save if you collate all the information you put it in one place, it makes it easier for them.
So, preparations are big thing. The second thing I was looking for is innovation. How is your company innovating, how you doing things differently, how you standing out from the market, how are you making yourself just doing things differently and putting things in different perspective because I really respect innovation, I think it’s an important thing. And the third month for me, is oversee preparation innovation and then watch a return in investment marking strategy because if you want grow a business, you got to understand how you put a hundred pound in and get thousand pound out. How to put £1000 and get £10,000 how do you create return investment in your market and because if you get that nailed you can create some massive results and really scale and grow your company.
So, I think there are the things I was looking but listen to other judges, they were looking for different things and I thought that, obviously I give you three tips there of how you can get better, but let’s hear a little bit from some the other judges.
I thought there was a lovely lady June, and June was talking about really putting the team into your presentations talking about your team and really showing how your team are working together and showing soundbites from your team about why they love being a part of the mission or love being the part the culture of the business and they love driving results. So, featuring your team, getting testimonials from your team and soundbites from team something that people don’t think of, it’s something that can add some weight.
Certainly, that’s gonna help you with some of the judges on an award entry. [00:04:47.25] People that play together stay together. From a team perspective and she was talking about how do you what the old saying that they go out to you have different things. You do together what’s the culture like and you know how do you built for the long term to build a really good culture and try to highlight that and I think that was really an important thing that she come up with as well.
Then we had to chat from business growth from client’s Bank, he was talking about the accounting side which is of course is important, you got to know your numbers. So not just relying on the judge to go and look you up on company’s house but actually providing all your numbers and providing forecasts and management accounts and showing that you’re organized and you know the future growth strategy of your business is another important thing.
That was an important one from [00:05:34.08] and somebody else is talking about the recruitment process for your team, the training process for your team, the training process for your team, how do you bring people and recruit them and train them and make sure that you develop your existing people if you can point that out that’s another thing that really really good. And then we had another judge that was really wanted to hear the story and this comes back to understanding that your accountant, the person wants the numbers and accounts side, they are gonna be very influenced by the numbers.
Okay, we can’t avoid that that’s a left brain thing and we need to cater for the left brain judge but we also need to cater for the right brain judge and that’s somebody is when he the story, this struggle, how did you build the business, what was happening as you build the business and document the story and document not only the story of what you got to where you are right now but where you’re going in the future as well. I think that’s really important and I think that was really evident across the different judges how they thought differently and what they wanted to see was very very different.
So other kinder soundbites from today’s training that we did together with everyone was understanding that entering multiple awards. If you’re gonna enter multiple awards, just make sure you cater for the category that you are applying for. So, don’t just cut and paste and use the information you put in one application to the next application to the next application, write a specific process as to why you believe and you feel that you should win the award that you are entering and make it different every time. One thing that I contributed was, look, at the end of the day you know its massive for your branding, so a little bit time and effort you put in now can pay you back dividends by putting in the time and the preparation which I think is really really important.
Somebody from the group asked the question that was someone was thinking of applying, should I put in about awards of one? Well yeah absolutely. You’re building a picture of success and have you been recognised in other places then let’s hear about it. You know so if you won multiple awards from other bodies and other organisations, you should put that in there. You know I think the judges are people and they’re looking you know for an indicator of what sets you apart and if you got other awards in other places that’s important. And we had another question from somebody else about you know reviews.
So, let’s talk about review, they we’re so should we include trust pilot reviews? Absolutely, include whatever reviews you’ve got but go further than reviews. Look at case studies, like case studies of how you’ve changed someone’s life through your product or service. Case studies of how you’ve helped someone, you’ve helped them develop and grow. These are really important things as well and then video testimonials is absolutely important. Get a video testimonial keep them nice and short, one minute of someone that’s experienced your products and had a great result. And then somebody else is asking well, can we do a video about our entry?
Of course, you can, include links to video to keep in nice and short and succinct and make sure that you’re getting across a couple of points that you wanna get across. And if you do all of these things, there’s is a lot of effort there right? So, some people are like it’s a lot of effort but there’s a lot of awards at there and once you done it a few times you just adapt the process, keep entering awards and you’ll keep bringing awards into your business you’ll keep building your profile, you keep building your brand, you keep growing your business, and you’ll keep standing out in the marketplace.
Other people are talking about use social media presence, well it’s kinda not about having your, which is obvious you don’t wanna just be posting like what everybody else is like, [00:08:48.17] like everybody else does. We want to see people that thinking outside the box that doing things differently that are bucking the trend and if you can encapsulate all of that in an application my friend, you’re gonna walk away with the award and you’re gonna be winning the trophy.
You know, and I think that it’s a cool thing to talk about for today’s podcast, I think it adds some value to people and if you’re taking notes, you should better take a hell of a lot of notes about how you can get there and turn your business from whatever you are now into an award-winning business and pick up the trophy. Just imagine how awesome it feels when you’re lifting the trophy and you’re on stage in front of people, and you’re now recognised as an award-winning business, sometimes it can be the catalyst for your success, it could be the thing that gets you going, it can be the thing that starts the process of you going on to more more success and really starting to build your momentum to more results.
So, I’m gonna leave it there, it’s a content-packed episode for you. It’s nice short, hopefully by lots of notes and you put that in place and gone enter some awards and if you want to enter an award at the SME National Business Awards where I’m the judge, you can go over to their website and go and check it out and of course with these episodes now, if you want to catch up my episodes, you can catch up with them on iTunes, Spotify, but you can also catch up on the website and all you have to do is go, adamstott.com/podcast/ so you never miss an episode. You keep getting this information. You keep growing and keep thriving. So hopefully you enjoyed today’s podcast and I look forward to seeing you very, very soon to your success and hopefully become an award-winning business from today.