How to create award winning material

Roy Casey, Director of Success Train, shares a little of what he has learnt over a decade of developing submissions for tenders, PQQs and awards.

It is vital for your entry to be broken down into relevant sections of factual information reflecting the entry criteria and the questions being posed.

Submissions should be mapped against the set criteria for the category by using headings, titles or making sure the criteria keywords appear in a brief and compelling summary.

Roy explained that he regularly sees submissions reading like great sales pitches or PR articles but not bearing enough relationship to the category criteria.  Award entries should be mapped out differently – approaching them as if they are a good Pre-Qualification Questionnaire submission will probably generate better results.

It is important that award entrants provide tangible supporting evidence of outcomes and achievements with images, illustrations, 3D Models, performance test results, KPIs or benchmarking reports.

However, when providing tangible evidence it is crucial not to miss clues in the criteria and not to rely on the evidence alone and fail to grab the judges’ attention with the written submission.

Roy also said he often sees entrants writing ‘see information above’ or leaving questions blank when they feel the question is being asked repeatedly. It is better to repeat information than to fail to give judges anything to mark.

Finally, Roy advises that the draft be written in a Word Document and then copied and pasted into the online form. He also highlights the importance of not exceeding the word count limit as entrants could be disqualified for going over.

It takes time and energy to submit awards entries, but the effort can return huge profile and PR benefits and act as a catalyst for motivating employees and project teams and provide independent third party evidence for future PQQs and tenders as well as attracting new clients.