Cameron Herold answers a question from Jamie Scarbru about whether companies should pursue third-party awards and designations. He argues that major, credible awards can significantly boost credibility, attract investors, suppliers, and top talent by increasing visibility through media validation. However, he cautions against chasing low-value awards and recommends evaluating awards by return on investment and alignment with sales, marketing, and PR strategy—use awards only insofar as they help build the business goals.
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Hey, I've got a question this week from Jamie Scarbru who owns Sales Talent Agency. Jamie asks A lot of young companies seem to focus heavily on collecting logos like the fastest growing company, best employer, etc. While I understand that many of these designations can help a company attract talent, PR and investors, there are a bunch of other designations that seem to have very little relevance and integrity. Do you see any point in spending time and energy on collecting these kinds of designations? Will it help your business or is providing the best product or service offering in the business enough? Any thoughts here? Really good question. I think that winning the major awards in your city, the industry that you work in in your country are certainly huge for credibility. Attracting investors, helping you attract even suppliers like bankers or accountants, lawyers, that kind of thing. People will want to work with you because you're a successful company and you're being marketed successfully by this third party validation. I've also found that the credibility from awards are huge in attracting an amazing, top talented team. It's really hard to attract and retain great employees if they don't know who you are. And one great way to explain who you are is have the mass media talking about you and providing the validations through the awards. I think there's also a lot of other awards out there though that companies have to be careful in how much time you're going to be spending kind of chasing down the awards or marketing yourself for those awards. So really looking at it from a return on investment perspective, but deciding how does it tie into your sales strategy, your marketing strategy, your PR strategy, Maybe the award will help you with that as well. Anyway, great question. I think it all comes down to what is it you're trying to build? How are you going to use the awards to help leverage you and help you get there? Great question. Thanks Jamie.
