Q: What are the benefits of getting awards?
The benefits of winning awards are significant and will contribute considerably to your future success.
Awards will:
• raise your profile and enhance your reputation
• instil trust – the vital ingredient for success
• fulfil your business and personal potential
• acknowledge the recognition you deserve
• attract new business or personal opportunities
• allow you to put up your prices
Let’s look at three of these benefits in more detail.
Profile and reputation
Winning business awards can bring you great free PR. The organisers and sponsors want to trumpet your success because it reflects well on them, and they will send out press releases, run ad campaigns and link your website to theirs (which can boost your Google ranking too). You can leverage the glory to further advantage through your own PR and marketing, sending a press release to the media, putting the winner’s logo on your website and (in the case of an award we’ll come to later) even flying the King’s flag from your premises!
Trust
Think how important trust is to a business. A major aspect of Amazon’s success is down to the reviews filed by customers. These give online shoppers a vital unbiased guide to the best products, and the five-star rating system is a direct bond of trust between supplier and buyer. You probably won’t be surprised that research shows 70% of consumers look at product reviews before they buy and trust them 12 times more than manufacturers’ product descriptions. Business awards are in effect objective reviews of your outstanding performance, invaluable to business growth and success.
Put up your prices
Superior quality and price often go hand in hand. First, companies need to make a fair profit to survive, and raising prices enables them to plough money back in to improving their product or service, for the benefit of their customers. That’s the quality that sets them apart and wins them awards. Second, the kind of innovation, service and high standards that win awards make for finer products that command a higher price. Putting up your prices is an acknowledgement that the market has judged your offering to be superior, and that is something that customers will value.
Financial benefits
- Large award-winning companies enjoyed a 48% increase in operating income and a 37% growth in sales when compared to non-award winners. Smaller award-winning companies saw a 63% increase in operating income and 39% growth in sales compared to non-winners.
Source: British Quality Foundation based on experience in the USA. - A study compared the financial performance of 120 award-winning companies across Europe against their industry competitors, tracking their results over 11 years. The award winners showed improvements after just a year of winning their first award. Source: University of Leicester for the British Quality Foundation and the European Foundation for Quality Management.
- Three years after receiving an award, the 120 award-winning companies outperformed their rivals by an average 17% for sales and 36% for share value. By the 11th year, the award winners were, on average, growing sales by 77% more than comparison companies and operating income by 18% more. Source: As above.
These facts and figures relate to the British Quality Foundation’s UK Excellence Awards and European Foundation for Quality Management’s Excellence Awards.