You may be sitting there thinking winning an international award may be too difficult, but that is where you are wrong. Not only do the Stevies have hundreds of categories to pick from, but with the chance to win gold, silver or bronze for each, your chances of winning are actually higher than most domestic awards. Not only are the awards winnable, but they are credible as well.

If that isn’t enough, the trophy is impressive too.

Entry Format

Now that you have decided to enter the International Business Awards, ensuring that you know what boundaries you need to negotiate to ensure you stand out from the crowd is of vital importance.

Depending on the category, you will need to submit an essay ranging from between 200-650 words, which can be assisted with supporting documents to boost your submission. If you are entering teams or individuals into a category, you will need to double check if you are required to provide a list of bullet points providing a brief summary of achievements.

The 2022 edition of the International Business Awards includes a brand new category – Achievement in Diversity & Inclusion. Successful nominations in this category will describe one or more of your organization’s initiatives since the beginning of 2020, to make your organization more diverse and inclusive for customers, employees, partners, suppliers, and/or other stakeholders. 

To make sure you are fully clued up on entry tips, check the official website to give you the advice of the organizers, with superb entry preparation tips to assist with your submission. Be sure to check that your story fits with the eligibility dates, and that you have as much content as possible to help support your argument as to why you should win.

Tips on Entering The International Business Awards

If you are still undecided as to what to enter, here are a few tips from Boost MD Chris Robinson, that can ensure you pick the right troops to take into battle.

Going by gut instinct or by who shouts the loudest are not ideal ways to decide which stories to enter for an award.  You’ll need to take a little more care in choosing your best stories. The extra effort will pay big dividends in the long term, and will hopefully result in a gold Stevie at The International Business Awards.

So remember, often the obvious choices are not actually the right choices. But how do you do this filtering in practice?

We have a few generic brainstorming session formats, but there is no one-size-fits-all. You can use post-it notes scattered on a whiteboard, or a grid on a flip chart if you like. It doesn’t really matter about the format of your session, but it must have the following ingredients:

1)      It must get everyone around the table who might know about the best stories.

2)      It must facilitate the brainstorming process so that all the stories are tabled – good and bad – without filtering at this stage.

3)      You must agree to a scoring system that everyone buys into.

4)      You must then rate each possible story using this scoring system.

5)      You must double check the highest scoring stories as a group and come to a consensus at the end.

Now you can confidently say that the most important decision has been made. Better still, everyone will leave the room happy with the decisions made.

When you have sorted the wheat from the chaff you need to match-make your best stories against the categories and awards available. There are literally hundreds of categories to choose from – so why not match-make your stories across all the programmes you are eligible for?

What Now?

Now that you have pulled teeth around a table and decided what you are entering, it is time to compile your award entry and submit. Writing an award-winning entry can be a tedious task, and this is where Boost Awards can lend a helping hand. Boost Awards is the world’s first and largest award entry consultancy. It’s team of awards experts have helped clients, ranging from multinationals to SMEs, win over 2,000 business awards.  

If you need help gathering the right sort of evidence of success and uniqueness, writing your award entry or preparing a presentation to judges, then feel free to contact Boost and our team of awards experts. We have a long successful history of writing winning entries for The International Business Awards and with our expertise, you can significantly increase your chances of winning.

I wish you the best of luck entering this year’s International Business Awards. 

Phil.

(C) This article was written by Phillip Stock and is the intellectual property of award entry consultants Boost Awards