In our last post we spoke about one of the more surprising aspects of winning awards – that being the very positive effect it had on employees within the business. On the flip side of this we’ve also heard great accounts of how award success has changed the reactions of those on the outside, most notably peers and potential new clients.
It isn’t always easy to identify why an individual or company has rejected a proposal in the past or just doesn’t seem to want to do business with you. On a rare occasion you may get the chance to discuss any areas where you failed to meet their requirements and learn where you fell-short in gaining their complete confidence, but most often you simply have to second-guess about what you’d have to do differently next time around (should you be given the opportunity).
When speaking about award wins our clients have described how it opened many doors for them and made it much easier to start dialogues with prospects who had hitherto been unapproachable. The endorsement of being award-winning (or in some cases even just award nominated or shortlisted) seemed to be all it took to become ‘worthy’ of at least an initial conversation with someone they had previously (and unsuccessfully) been targeting.
Most notably in the case of our clients who run charities, validation by the awards judges had illustrated transparency – a rubber stamp of sorts to say that an independent body had looked at the organisation, tested it and found excellence in the way that it raised and used donations. Manufacturing companies and service providers spoke of a similar effect where they felt that they had instantly become more visible and ‘on the radar’ of potential new clients as if they had, without knowledge, just passed an initial level of assessment.
Another very lovely client of The Awards People made a great analogy between award success and Trip Advisor-type ratings, saying nomination related to allocation of one star, short-listing more stars and winning being an instant propulsion to five-star status!! We all had a bit of a giggle at this but in truth there is little else out there for most B2B companies to prove the quality of their goods and services other than testimonials and what better testimonial than to have been considered ‘outstanding’ by a totally independent and very demanding judging panel?
Whilst we assist all of our clients to make the very best of their hard-won awards, the story we’re hearing consistently is that news of success travels fast and brings with it a renewed degree of interest – the key perhaps to opening new doors and keeping them open for fruitful conversations.
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