Winning an industry award can be very beneficial to your business. As well as raising you or your business’s profile, it can serve to enhance credibility, generate new business and help with retention and recruitment – especially when your win is then well-promoted across marketing and social media channels.
It doesn’t come easy, however. A good award entry can be time-consuming as it needs to tell a compelling story of success and innovation over the past year, underscored by hard evidence and all within the word count. It takes skill and practice but there is usually a formula and, once you get the hang of it, writing successful awards entries can become second nature.
Find out all you need to know about PA’s Wealth Partnership Awards here
The rules will vary from one award to the next. Some require a written entry about the business, some are based upon votes, some involve a face-to-face interview while others need case studies – or they can involve a combination of all of the above.
That said, there are some key themes that tend to be applicable most of the time. Over the years, at Carr Consulting, we have judged, read or written thousands of award entries – and won and lost a few too. So, here are a few tips on where entries can often go wrong and what ought to be done instead.
1. Start strong
Some awards can attract dozens of entries, making judging them a a time-consuming process – which means building up to your killer point, subtly hinted at in equivocal – if eloquent – language is rarely the best strategy. Tell the judges what you’ve done well, quickly and simply. And use plain language – not unintelligible corporate lingo.
2. In for a penny
If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing properly. An awards entry should involve several drafts to craft it into the best shape possible. Read the criteria carefully and write a relevant entry. Include what’s been asked for and reject anything that’s not relevant. Not everyone is waiting with bated breath for you to deliver your masterpiece so stick to the guidelines – including the deadline and the wordcount.
3. Stating the obvious
Sometimes entries lead on corporate platitudes that everyone should be doing as part of their day job – ‘We expect our investment team to pass the necessary qualifications’, ‘We do our best by our clients, ‘Our product is now in line with the market’. In this business, that is pretty much the basics – if you are going to win an award, you need to demonstrate how you go the extra mile.
Think about what else you have done to differentiate your business and add value to your clients. Be outstanding.
4. Back it up
A common error with awards entries involves talking about a firm’s good intentions and practices without including any evidence to back it up. Saying your business ‘puts the customer at the heart of its proposition’ does not mean much unless you can prove it in your entry.
5. Remember the basics
There are many basic points that shouldn’t need saying yet frequently causes an entry to stumble. Here are a few:
* Plan ahead because you may only get a few weeks to write the entry and most awards need stats, which can take time to pull together, so why not start early?
* Don’t copy and paste a sales aid, and don’t send an old entry that was written for a different set of awards
* Don’t draw attention to any weaknesses and avoid excessive punctuation
* Make the most of your words because the judges probably don’t need to know where you are based or that you moved office last year.
* Don’t say you are unique – unless you can prove it – and don’t say ‘fairly’ unique because that is not a thing.
And, as a final observation, please don’t be put off if you don’t win. Keep trying and ask for feedback from the judges. While many judges often want to shake things up by encouraging newer companies, they may also like to see a track record of improvement.
And don’t be put off by the other people’s excuses that the reason you didn’t win is because it’s a stitch-up with the sponsors or because you didn’t buy a table. The truth is, the entry wasn’t good enough. By preparing properly, listening to feedback and trying again there’s no reason why you shouldn’t win if you have the story and the evidence to back it up. Good luck!
Matthew Morris is a partner at Carr Consulting & Communications
Portfolio Adviser’s Wealth Partnership Awards are open to individuals, teams and companies in UK wealth and asset management and, if you work in either sector, you are invited to nominate yourself or put forward the name of a colleague or anyone else you believe deserves recognition. Category shortlists will be published in the spring and all the winners announced on 8 July 2020.
The deadline for nominations is 10 April 2020
