I’ve spent more than 18 years helping businesses get attention, but there’s something I’ve become increasingly interested in along the way.
Giving people a reason to believe you deserve that attention.
That’s one of the reasons I’ve created Winfluential, which I’ve officially unveiled this week at the National Entrepreneurs Convention at ICC Birmingham.
The name may be new, but the thinking behind it has been building for years.
I’ve worked with countless entrepreneurs who are genuinely exceptional at what they do but remain relatively unknown outside their existing customer base. They’re the proverbial best-kept secret, which I’ve never particularly considered a compliment.
If you’re genuinely one of the best businesses in your industry and hardly anybody knows, that’s a problem.
There’s only so much you can say about yourself
Look at almost any business website and you’ll see familiar claims. Experienced. Innovative. Customer-focused. Experts. Market-leading.
I’m not saying those claims aren’t true. I’m saying they’re self-declared.
There’s a world of difference between you telling somebody you’re one of the best businesses in your industry and a credible third party reaching the same conclusion.
That’s where the right awards become interesting.
I’m certainly not advocating entering everything with a shiny trophy and a black-tie dinner attached. The aim isn’t to see how many logos we can squeeze into your email signature.
I’m interested in credible third-party recognition and what a business can do with it.
A strong finalist position or award win can provide proof, support PR, create content, strengthen sales conversations and help position a business or entrepreneur as an authority.
The problem is that most businesses approach the whole thing without much of a strategy.
The deadline shouldn’t dictate the strategy
The traditional awards process often begins when somebody spots a deadline.
An email arrives. Someone scrolls through the categories, finds one that sounds vaguely appropriate and decides to have a go. Then comes the scramble for evidence and the inevitable question: “Who’s going to write the entry?”
I think we need to start much earlier.
What’s happening in the business right now? What have you achieved? Where have you grown? What have you changed? What have your people accomplished? What have you overcome? What are you doing differently and, importantly, where’s the evidence?
Once we’ve identified what’s genuinely interesting and potentially award-worthy, we can identify the awards and categories where those stories have the strongest opportunity.
That’s the first big difference with Winfluential.
The business leads us to the awards.
The Podium PRocess
I’ve built Winfluential around a five-stage methodology I’ve called the Podium PRocess.
First, we IDENTIFY the opportunities. That means understanding what’s happening inside the business and finding credible awards and categories where you’ve got a genuine story to tell.
Then we UNCOVER the material. We dig into the narrative, numbers, evidence and examples that give the entry substance.
Next we CRAFT the entry and POLISH it, challenging the claims, sharpening the story and making sure the strongest material hasn’t been buried underneath paragraphs of generic marketing guff.
Then comes PRESS.
This is where my 18+ years in PR gives Winfluential another dimension.
If you become a finalist or win, I don’t want the opportunity to end with a trophy photograph and a few days of congratulations on LinkedIn.
I want to know who needs to hear about it, whether there’s a media story, what content we can create and how that independent recognition can strengthen your authority and visibility.
A finalist position or win is third-party credibility. If we’ve earned it, let’s make it work.
You may already be sitting on the story
One thing my PR career has taught me is that entrepreneurs routinely underestimate what’s interesting about their own businesses.
They’re too close to it.
The problem you solved was simply something that needed sorting. The employee you’ve developed was just somebody doing their job. The remarkable customer result was what the customer paid you for. The growth was because everyone worked hard.
From the outside, those things can look very different.
There may already be something inside your business worthy of recognition. The first job is finding it.
That’s what Winfluential is here to do.
And if you’d like to know where you currently stand, I’ve created an easy place to start.
Find out your Winfluential Score.
GS