Ready for another Hugoversity book review? One of Harvey & Hugo’s newest Pack members, Jenny, has read and reviewed Louise R Turner’s Glory: The magic formula for winning more business awards.
Predominately aimed at small and medium-sized business owners and entrepreneurs, this book is more like a handy pocket guide to pulling together the best possible award entry. It makes you question your strengths, focuses on whether your accomplishments are, in fact, award-winning, and then guides you through the process to produce a compelling entry that should bag you that gong.
The author quite rightly points out that award entries are an art, not a science, and how you approach and compose them plays a huge part in whether you will be successful.
She draws on her years of experience in public relations and communications, claiming that of hundreds of award entries her consultancy has written, upwards of 80 per cent were named on a shortlist and, of those, half were crowned as winners.
She knows her stuff, but what is the winning formula?
It starts with a simple question – why?
Before entering anything, whether it be an individual or collective category, you must ask why. Why are these awards a good fit? Who will see the outcome? What will being shortlisted or winning do for you?
There are many benefits – the external kudos, networking benefits, staff pride and moral boost, leverage for new business or funding, and the recruitment of the best talent – who wouldn’t want to work for an award-winning business after all?
Then comes the nitty gritty, crafting that compelling entry. What is interesting here is that the first piece of advice the author gives is for whoever is writing the entry to step away from the keyboard.
Why? Well, as Benjamin Franklin once said, by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.
It is vital that you really understand what it is the judges are looking for when selecting the winning entry and then carefully craft your key messages and identify what makes you stand out from the crowd, supported with evidence.
What did we think?
It was an interesting read, and while for the purpose of this review I read it in full, it isn’t really designed for that. It is more of a pick and flick guide to award entries – so you may only really want to read the part about writing them, or how to prepare for them.
What is great is that the author has provided checklists and exercises at the ends of chapters (?) that can help hone those award entries and what you can do if you win to take advantage of bagging the gong.
What did we learn?
This book taught me the importance of taking a step back. There is a lot of research and information needed before you get to the entry stage and if done properly, that final writing hurdle will be easily achieved.
