How to Win Business Awards: The Insider Guide to Writing Nominations That Succeed

Winning a business award is not a matter of luck, relationships, or company size. In independently judged award programmes, the outcome is determined almost entirely by the quality of the nomination — specifically, by how clearly and compellingly it documents genuine achievement against published evaluation criteria. This guide shares the insider knowledge drawn from analysis of thousands of nominations across the Best of Best Awards programme: what separates winning nominations from unsuccessful ones, and how to give your submission the best possible chance of success.

Understand Exactly How Your Nomination Will Be Judged

The single most important preparation step is to read and genuinely understand the evaluation framework before you begin writing. At Best of Best Awards, the 7-point framework — Innovation and Creativity (20%), Business Performance (20%), Leadership Excellence (20%), Customer Impact (15%), Sustainability and CSR (10%), People and Culture (10%), and Overall Excellence (5%) — is published publicly precisely to help nominees structure strong submissions. Every section of your nomination should be oriented toward providing the most compelling evidence possible for the highest-weighted criteria.

Many nominees make the mistake of writing their nominations as marketing documents — leading with brand story, corporate history, and aspirational language — rather than as evidence submissions. The judges evaluating your nomination are experienced industry professionals. They are not impressed by marketing language and they are trained to identify it quickly. They are impressed by specific, quantified, independently verifiable achievements described in clear, direct language.

Developing Your Evidence Strategy Before You Write

Before opening the nomination form, invest 30-60 minutes gathering the strongest evidence available for each evaluation criterion. This evidence inventory exercise typically reveals evidence that the leadership team had not previously articulated clearly — and it produces nominations that are significantly stronger than those written without this preparation.

For Innovation and Creativity (20%)

Identify the most genuinely novel thing your organisation has done in the past two years. Not "we updated our processes" but "we developed a proprietary algorithm that reduced client onboarding time from 14 days to 4 hours, a 71% improvement that has since been adopted by three other organisations in our sector." Specificity, novelty, and measurable impact are the three characteristics of strong innovation evidence.

For Business Performance (20%)

Compile your key financial and operational metrics for the most recent 2-3 year period: revenue growth rate, profitability improvement, market share data, client retention rate, operational efficiency improvements, and market expansion milestones. Where possible, contextualise these metrics against industry benchmarks — growing at 30% in a market that grew 5% is a significantly stronger achievement than growing at 30% in a market that grew 40%.

For Customer Impact (15%)

Gather every piece of independent customer data available: Net Promoter Score results with comparison to industry benchmarks, review platform ratings and review volume trends, customer satisfaction survey results from third-party platforms, testimonials from named customers willing to be identified, and case studies with quantified customer outcomes. Customer impact evidence is often the most convincing section of a nomination because it comes from the people who are not obligated to say positive things about your organisation.

Nomination Writing Techniques That Actually Work

Use the STAR Format for Achievement Descriptions

The STAR format — Situation, Task, Action, Result — is the most effective structure for describing specific achievements in award nominations. Situation: describe the specific challenge or opportunity that existed. Task: explain what needed to be accomplished and why it was difficult or significant. Action: describe what your organisation or individual specifically did. Result: quantify the outcome with specific metrics and, where possible, compare to pre-intervention benchmarks and industry comparators.

Name the Evidence, Don't Just Describe It

Rather than writing "our financial results were independently verified," write "our FY2025 results were audited by PwC and showed revenue of AED 340 million, representing 47% year-on-year growth." Rather than "industry analysts have recognised our technology," write "Gartner placed us in the Leaders quadrant of their 2025 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure Platforms, one of only six companies globally." Named, specific sources transform claims into verifiable evidence.

Address Every Criterion — Don't Skip the Lower-Weighted Ones

A common mistake is to focus entirely on the high-weighted criteria (Innovation, Performance, Leadership) and neglect the lower-weighted ones (Sustainability, People and Culture). A nomination that scores 90% on the top three criteria but 20% on the bottom three will score significantly lower overall than one that achieves 80% across all seven. Ensure that every criterion receives substantive, evidence-backed coverage.

The 10 Most Common Nomination Mistakes (and How to Avoid Them)

1. Submitting without reading the evaluation framework — Read the criteria before you write a single word.
2. Leading with corporate history rather than recent achievement — Focus on the past 2-3 years, not the company's founding story.
3. Using general language where specific data is available — Every general claim should be replaced with a specific metric.
4. Failing to include independent evidence — Self-reported data is dramatically less credible than independently verified data.
5. Neglecting the Sustainability and People criteria — These criteria together represent 20% of the total score.
6. Writing in marketing language rather than evidential language — Judges are not the target audience for your marketing; they are expert evaluators.
7. Submitting incomplete forms — Incomplete submissions are not forwarded to the judging panel.
8. Failing to contextualise achievements against benchmarks — Help judges understand why your results are exceptional, not just what they are.
9. Missing the opportunity to tell a compelling story — Data without narrative context is harder to evaluate than data embedded in a clear story of challenge, decision, and impact.
10. Waiting until the last moment — Nominations submitted with adequate preparation time consistently outperform rushed last-minute submissions.

What to Do After You Win

The most commercially successful award winners treat recognition as the beginning of a sustained programme of value extraction rather than a one-time event. Within the first 30 days of winning, update all digital touchpoints with the winner badge, issue a press release through both the awards programme's media network and your own PR channels, post across all social media platforms, update email signatures, and prepare a written case for how the award will be referenced in client proposals and sales processes.

In the months that follow, develop case studies that reference the award recognition as third-party validation of your achievements. Train your sales and business development team to reference the award naturally in relevant commercial conversations. Apply the award recognition prominently in any new marketing campaigns, website redesigns, or brand refresh initiatives.