{"id":183240,"date":"2025-04-13T23:51:15","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T23:51:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/winning-ways-how-to-win-an-award\/"},"modified":"2025-04-13T23:51:15","modified_gmt":"2025-04-13T23:51:15","slug":"winning-ways-how-to-win-an-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=183240","title":{"rendered":"Winning ways &#8211; How to win an award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<h3 class=\"page-article-date\">28th November 2024<\/h3>\n<p>First published in\u00a0<em>Managing for Success, t<\/em>he magazine of the Law Society Leadership and Management Section, Issue 106<\/p>\n<p>Who doesn\u2019t love an award? It is a wonderful boost to the ego, and recognition for hard work, dedication, innovation, and going above and beyond.\u00a0 But drafting entry submissions is time consuming, so how can you ensure that you stand the best chance of success?<\/p>\n<p>Sue Bramall has participated in several panels to judge awards for law firm marketing, and she shares her top 7 tips.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tip 1 \u2013 Avoid the spammy awards<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Awards are often on the agenda of law firm marketing meetings, and it is important to start by highlighting that there are two very different sorts of awards available to members of the legal profession.<\/p>\n<ul>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>Those which involve a credible independent process of evaluation in order to determine the award, usually involving a judging panel or some auditable data, and do not require an entry fee; or<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>Those which are known in the marketing community as \u2018spammy awards,\u2019 as they are usually pay-to-play, so accompanied by a request for payment, and rarely have any transparency over the so-called selection or research process.<\/li>\n<p>&#13;\n<\/ul>\n<p>Thankfully you can easily check if an award is \u2019reputable\u2019, \u2018spammy,\u2019 or \u2018semi-spammy\u2019 as FirmWise maintains a list which you can check at <a href=\"https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/sunubfs3\">https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/sunubfs3<\/a>. They currently list 348 such awards, and add to this all the time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tip 2 \u2013 Choose the right category<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Having verified that the award you wish to enter is legitimate, the next step is to carefully review the award categories to determine whether your entry might be a good fit for one.<\/p>\n<p>Read the entry criteria carefully, as they will usually say what judges are looking for.<\/p>\n<p>Do some research on the previous winners, to see how you compare. There might not be much information on the awards website, but if the firm has a good PR team they will have shouted about their success. If you can find their press release, you might glean some clues about why they were successful.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tip 3 \u2013 Be honest about whether you could win<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Entering an award is time consuming, so there is an invisible cost. There is also the lost opportunity of doing other marketing or business development that might give you more than a line on an awards website.<\/p>\n<p>So, before you decide to devote the resources, make sure you are convinced that you have a good chance of winning. Ask yourselves the question; how are we better than the other entrants? It is that old marketing chestnut; what is our USP?<\/p>\n<p>Remember that the judges will look at your award submission alongside several others. What information is going to make yours stand out and get the most votes?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tip 4 \u2013 Make it easy for the judges<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Have some sympathy for the judges who have to sift through the pile of entries. I have yet to sit on a panel where \u2018length of document\u2019 was one of the judging criteria, but it seems many firms think this is a winning approach.<\/p>\n<p>If there is not a form to complete, refer back to the awards criteria and use this to structure the order of your submission, and keep to those points only.<\/p>\n<p>If there are five criteria, then I will be looking at performance in these five issues only, and I don\u2019t really want to hunt for the data or wade through reams of unnecessary information (especially legal directory quotes).<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tip 5 \u2013 Quantify your successes<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Awards (especially for marketing or business development) are usually looking for evidence that you have been successful and achieved results. Focus on what you have actually accomplished \u2013 if you have only recently started on an exciting project, save your energy and plan to enter the award next year when you can boast about the results.<\/p>\n<p>Sharing key performance indicators and metrics is very powerful. Which firm would you give the award to in these examples?<\/p>\n<p><em>Criteria 1 \u2013 tender activity<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>Firm A \u2013 \u201cwe introduced new systems to improve our tender submissions\u201d; or<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>Firm B \u2013 \u201cwe improved our tender win rate from 34% to 42% over the last twelve months.\u201d<\/li>\n<p>&#13;\n<\/ul>\n<p><em>Criteria 2 \u2013 profile building<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>Firm A \u2013 \u201cwe joined a number of networks and grew our profile on social media\u201d<\/li>\n<p>&#13;<\/p>\n<li>Firm B \u2013 \u201cwe increased the number of networks the firm is actively represented in from 24 to 30, and grew the number of social media followers from 6,000 to 12,500\u201d.<\/li>\n<p>&#13;\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Tip 6 \u2013 Polish your entry<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Document presentation is not usually a criteria, and you don\u2019t need to go to the expense of graphic design, but a smart document certainly helps to create a favourable impression and can be advantageous if the content of the awards submissions are similar.<\/p>\n<p>Although may people only work online, I still like to print out submissions (for eventual recycling in my compost bin) and scribble notes on them.<\/p>\n<p>Remember that your entry might be printed and so could be sat alongside the other submission documents. How might it look if it carries no branding, or images, but those of your competitors do?<\/p>\n<p>Graphs and charts can be a great way to display performance, as they make it easy for the judge to assess progress. Relevant images also make it easier on the eye, and can bring a story to life.<\/p>\n<p>Remember to ask a colleague to proof read the document for you and double check that you have covered all the criteria.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Tip 7 \u2013 Don\u2019t miss the deadline<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Get your submission in on time.<\/p>\n<p>Good Luck!<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bernersmarketing.com\/blog\" class=\"button red small less\"><span>Back to Blog<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>28th November 2024 First published in\u00a0Managing for Success, the magazine of the Law Society Leadership and Management Section, Issue 106 Who doesn\u2019t love an award? It is a wonderful boost to the ego, and recognition for hard work, dedication, innovation, and going above and beyond.\u00a0 But drafting entry submissions is time consuming, so how can [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183241,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[4096,8023,4666,19837],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-183240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-legal","tag-award","tag-ways","tag-win","tag-winning"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Winning ways - How to win an award - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=183240\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Winning ways - How to win an award - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"28th November 2024 First published in\u00a0Managing for Success, the magazine of the Law Society Leadership and Management Section, Issue 106 Who doesn\u2019t love an award? 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