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Does your business deserve an award?

Have you ever come across the words “award-winning business” in a business article or email tagline, and wondered how you could add them to your business?  Or have you been nominated for an award, but thought the work involved wasn’t worth it? 

The impact of winning a small business award can be far-reaching and often surprising.  When Phonestar won the 2008 Professional Services award for their local Chamber of Commerce, against more established businesses such as Credit Union Australia, many were shocked (including us!).  The awards had been a last-minute thing, encouraged by a business mentor and squeezed in between BAS, staff training and normal operational priorities.  Winning gave us a huge credibility boost – we weren’t doing anything differently, but suddenly our customer service promise became well known and legitimized in the eyes of prospective customers.  The media coverage we received immediately raised our profile locally, and gave us experience in promoting our business through editorials.   It also gave us the perfect reason to thank our existing customers, increasing our customer retention and new referral rate.

These rewards didn’t come easy though, with the submission process requiring a huge amount of thought and effort.  There were certainly times when we almost gave up. Instead, the submission itself ended up being edited a dozen times and was 15 pages of tightly written prose, tables and graphs, and resulted in us being finalists in 2 categories.  Then the mystery shopping element had all the staff on their toes jumping at the sound of the telephone – not entirely pleasant, but a great reason to remind our team we were there to give our customers great service all of the time.  This year we have actually used the awards process as part of our annual business planning and skills review of our staff.  While we have been named as finalists in 3 categories including Professional Services and Best Small Business, this review will benefit our business no matter the final result.

 So what makes an awards submission jump from being a dry business document to winning that coveted award for your business?  And how do you choose the award that will be right for your business?  These are the points we feel most important to consider:

1.       Start locally or within your industry.  Your local Chamber of Commerce is likely to run annual business awards in many categories, and your industry association awards will give you a valuable yardstick against which to measure yourself.

2.       Think about what your business does really well.  We were initially discouraged from entering “Professional Services” because that’s not what phone companies do, right?  But we knew we were a customer service company first and phone company second, and getting that across made us stand out.

3.       Read and understand the awards criteria and questions really well.  You will only have a small number of words to get your message across, so make them count by addressing the questions being asked.

4.       Put yourself in the judges shoes and try to understand what they are looking for.  Though anonymous,we knew the likely judges were independent business leaders and Government small business advisors, so we made sure we illustrated how Phonestar excelled in fundamental small business practices.

5.       Wherever possible, provide evidence and examples to back your claims. For example, what does professional service mean? We used this example - a real customer who lost $1000 per day in lost sales due to configuration delays and poor technology advice.  By having a Phonestar account manager, she no longer loses sales and doesn’t waste her business time on hold.

6.       Check grammar and spelling.  It may be obvious, but remember this document is the key tool being used to judge you and the simplest mistake is likely to reflect on your business.

7.       Finally, get the most out of your submission by re-using it.  We’ve used part of our submission for marketing material, editorials, training materials and internal process documents.  It can also be used as the basis for other awards submissions.

 

Good luck, and I look forward to seeing your business name up in lights.

Phonestar wins prestigious Service Award

Phonestar has taken out the prestigious Professional Services Award for 2008 in the Redlands Chamber of Commerce Business Achievement Awards.

This year's awards included a record number of participants, and the other finalists in the Professional Services category were Credit Union Australia, Sunstate Business Solutions and Quinn and Scattini Lawyers.  The judging panel comprised of three highly qualified, experienced and completely independant judges; Gary Waugh, from leading business specialists, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, Don Drane, Senior Regional Development Officer of Southside Centre for Department of Tourism andRegional Dvelopment and Industry, and  Well-known local identity Kath McNeilly, OAM.

Karyn Burger, one of the Directors of Phonestar, accepted the award of behalf of the other Director and staff.  In her acceptance speech, she thanked the other finalists and business represented, in particular the Aussiehost Customer Service program which has assisted the company to achieve the outstanding customer service levels that won them the award.  "Customer service is our passion, and we built Phonestar to offer our customers exceptional service and integrity in an industry that generally puts customer last", she said.  "We know we're succeeding when our customers continually express suprise at our personalised and responsive service, and we're deeply honoured to receive this Award against such a high calibre list of finalists".

Photo courtesy of Bayside Bulletin / Redland Times

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