Industry awards have become increasingly prevalent in recent years. Alex Blyth investigates how much serious value they can add to those who emerge victorious
The awards industry has grown to such an extent that there are now specialist agencies you can hire to help you to enter and win them. The number of awards is now almost endless and that can be off-putting to entrepreneurs who might consider entering.
The variety of awards encompasses the National Business Awards, the Queen’s Award for Enterprise, the European Business Awards, the Shell LiveWIRE Awards, the Green Business Awards and the British Small Business Champions. It can be baffling to try to work out which ones to enter and to know whether doing so will produce any benefit in return for the time and money invested.
Clear benefits
There is no dimming of enthusiasm on the part of UK entrepreneurs to enter these awards. Most are initially attracted by the potential publicity that winning may bring. Ben Gladstone, Chief Executive Officer of Conosco, the IT Services firm, won the Cisco Customer Kings award in February 2009. “We’re a small business, employing 25 people and turning over £2.5 million a year,” he says, “but this award brought us a huge amount of media coverage. We had a double-page spread in a top business magazine, an article and a video on its website, and a video on the Guardian website.”
That publicity brings all sorts of benefits, such as motivating staff, aiding recruitment and boosting sales. “We’ve won three Sage Awards, including Sage Developer of the Year and a Sage Innovation Award,” Richard Reaveley, Director at Draycir, a 14-strong software company based in Leicestershire, says. “We’ve found all sorts of benefits but perhaps most satisfying for a small company is that we were recently approached by a graduate saying he wanted to come and work for us because he knew we’d won those awards.”
Underlying evidence
Claire Mason, Managing Director of Brighton-based Man Bites Dog, believes she runs the most award-winning B2B PR agency in the UK. She was also recently listed in Management Today’s 35 under 35. “It certainly takes time to enter awards,” she says, “at least a day – but winning them gives you a tremendous amount of credibility when you are a newer and smaller player in the market. They give prospective clients a level of comfort that you may be newer and smaller but you’re also more effective and innovative than your competitors.”
It is hard to draw direct links between winning an award and increasing sales, but Dan May, Operations Director at Ramsac, the Surrey-based IT company, offers some compelling evidence that there is a link. “We’ve entered carefully-selected industry and business awards over the last few years. When analysing visits to our website, we find that the ‘About Us’ and the ‘Case Studies’ sections are the most popular but these are closely followed by the page that lists our industry accreditations.”
There are other, less obvious, benefits that businesses gain from winning awards. Carsten Brinkschulte, Chief Executive Officer of Synchronica, developers of mobile email and synchronisation, suggests joint applications with customers. “We have had success in joint awards with our customers,” he says. “Not only do we both benefit from the resulting publicity but it also helps us to further strengthen our relationship – always useful when there are potential up-sell opportunities.”
Performance enhancers
Finally, awards can be used as a catalyst for reviewing and revamping your company’s operations. Powertraveller is a Hampshire-based business with a £6 million turnover from portable power devices and battery chargers. It recently won a Queen’s Award for Innovation, and Jerry Ranger, Chief Executive Officer, says, “The Queen’s Award is perhaps the most prestigious award a UK business can win and so it involves a rigorous judging process that takes place over several months. We had to have someone on it to champion it internally and it involved a significant investment of resource.
“However, we got a great deal out of it. I got to meet the Queen, and when the Lord Lieutenant of Hampshire comes in to present the award it will be a big day for all our staff. But most importantly, it gave me an opportunity to look at how we’re performing in each part of the business. Knowing that an external judge was coming in to assess it really focussed the mind and the whole process has been instrumental in ensuring that we continue to grow, even through the recession.”
Getting it right
Not all awards will confer these benefits, and with each one requiring such a significant investment of time and money, it pays to look closely at who is doing the judging. “While product awards, such as the Sage ones we’ve won, are great,” Reaveley, at Draycir, says, “they are awarded by a panel of judges and do carry less cachet than those that are voted for by end users. So we’ve just applied for the Software Satisfaction Awards and I’m glad to say we’ve been shortlisted.”
Brinkschulte at Synchronica believes it is important to keep it simple when applying for awards. “You can’t assume that those judging the awards are necessarily experts in your field,” he explains, “so it’s important not to use too much jargon or acronyms. In the same way, we try not to overload the judges with too much information. We find that if we keep entries concise and relevant, it not only takes less time for us to put them together, it is also easier for the judges to understand why we believe we should win.”
Targetting success
John Paterson, Chief Executive Officer of Really Simple Systems – winner of the Software Satisfaction Awards 2008, Small Business CRM Software category, and shortlisted for the Software Satisfaction awards 2009 for both the SME CRM Software and Web-Hosted CRM Software categories – concludes with this advice, “Entering awards is like any sales process. You need to know what they are looking for and be certain that you can give them that.
“Invest a serious amount of energy in the ones you know you can win. Don’t waste your time and money chasing awards where the criteria is vague or is based on little more than the whim of some self-appointed panel of industry experts. Finally, remember that these awards are businesses themselves. They want you to enter, to buy tickets for the ceremony and so on. Make sure you get as much out of it as they do.”