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KEY POINTS
- Taxation Awards 2011 will take place on 26 May.
- Potential kudos to be gained by winning.
- Completing the entry encourages team spirit.
- Sense of achievement.
People say ‘It’s not the winning, it’s the taking part that counts’. I am not sure that this is true. Try telling that to the Australian cricket team that lost the Ashes series this winter (or summer depending in which hemisphere you are reading this article), or indeed to Andy Murray after Rafael Nadal had beaten him in the semi-final at Wimbledon last July. Even a bunch of seven year olds in a sports day running race know that the winner gets all the glory.
Taking part is just a means to an end and that end is winning. This is as true of award ceremonies as it is of competitive sport – and which awards ceremony is at the forefront of any self-respecting tax adviser’s mind? The Taxation Awards of course.
Since 2000, the Taxation Awards have provided members of the tax industry with the opportunity to put themselves forward as the best in their field. The 2011 event takes place on 26 May at the Park Lane Hilton and, promises as always, to be a superb occasion.
As well as affording excellent networking opportunities, the evening provides an excellent dinner, a first-class entertainer (last year Hugh Dennis graced the stage), dancing, and casino.
The question is, have you put in your entry yet? If you haven’t, there is still time to get one in. There is a wide range of categories including best VAT team, best international tax team, as well as awards for the best tax team in a boutique firm, big four firm, general practice and law firm.
See the dedicated website for full details and the entry form.
Take the plunge
Perhaps you are reluctant to enter the awards because the entry submission seems daunting and you wonder if it is really worth the effort. Chris Jones, managing partner of Sagars, winner of last year’s best general tax practice award (and also in 2007), thinks it is.
He says the awards are a ‘credible way of raising our profile and gaining wider, relevant exposure for the work that we do. Much of our new work comes from client referrals and winning or being shortlisted for a Taxation Award is a powerful endorsement of our expertise when clients and professional contacts are talking about us’.
Similarly, Joss Dalrymple, national head of private client tax at Smith & Williamson, says the awards are highly regarded so ‘if you are shortlisted or, better still, win an award, you succeed in getting external endorsement from a highly respected publication and organisation’.
The firm’s private client tax team won the best high net worth team award last year.
The ‘kudos’ that would be gained by winning also contributed to the reasons why Mazars decided to enter the awards. Chris Blundell, the partner who leads the firm’s employment tax services team (2010 winner of the best tax team in a large practice), says he also felt it would help with ‘team cohesion and spirit’ generally.
The employment tax services team first entered in 2009 and got as far as being nominated, which was great, but it made sense to enter in 2010 to ‘see if we could go that extra mile and win’, he adds.
Another team that had entered in 2009 and been one of the runners-up, was ASE plc. Michelle Malone, tax manager at ASE plc, says that ‘As the Taxation Awards are so well regarded within the profession, we felt that entering would be a great way to raise our profile within the tax sector’.
The success of being nominated encouraged ASE to enter again.
Preparation
Having decided to enter, the team has to submit its entry form. This is done online via the awards website with an attachment in Word format or pdf. Probably the most important thing to bear in mind when putting the entry together is not to take a ‘we are the best’ approach.
Mike Truman, head of the judging panel and Taxation editor, says, ‘Client testimonials are a useful way of providing evidence of a team’s success, but it is also good to see how the team works together and, for example, how it makes innovative use of technology’.
Previous entrants have often taken a team approach to putting their entries together, saying that this can be morale boosting in itself as the team realises the volume of good work it has done and the expertise it has.
As Michelle Malone says, the process ‘made us realise the areas of value we provide to clients and what differentiates us from our competitors’. So much so, that it was ‘difficult trying to choose what to include and what to leave out due to the word limit’.
‘Completing the tax award application is a good example of how we all work well together’, says Sagars’ marketing manager Victoria Doyle.
‘We brainstormed ideas to decide what tax work and case studies warranted inclusion in our application. Our techies love a good excuse to talk about tax so they were enthusiastic from the outset, but helping them to realise that their approach, expertise and service is special, in comparison with that of some other firms, can be tricky.’
Thinking of things to include in the application was not difficult, she says, ‘because we’d made genuine progress during the period in question and had plenty of client testimonials and evidence to draw upon. Deciding what to leave out in order to stay within the word limit was the hard part’.
Mr Dalrymple says that Smith & Williamson decided to go for the high net worth category as this is one of the firm’s ‘core strengths’.
Explaining how the team drew up in its entry, he says, ‘We highlighted the work of our new bloodstock and equine team which is doing very well and which works closely with our well-established landed estates team. We also talked about our offering to entrepreneurs which draws on our particularly broad offering spanning private client and corporate services.'
Compiling the entry for Mazars employment tax services team was a joint effort. Mr Blundell says everyone was involved in obtaining quotes from clients, a task which turned out to be enjoyable because the clients approached were all happy to give them a good testimonial.
And the winner is…
Being nominated for the award is fine, but naturally nothing quite equates with winning. Chris Blundell says that Mazars took a table and brought a mixture of members of staff and clients. He says there were rumours flying about that the winners had been forewarned, so not having heard anything, he was not expecting to win. However, hearing the firm’s name read out as winner was ‘fantastic’ and it was marvellous to celebrate with clients.
Bringing the award into the office the next morning was ‘a bit like bringing home the FA Cup,’ he says, and the good feeling persisted for some time.
‘It was an amazing experience to win’, says ASE’s Bett Twiggs. ‘We really didn’t expect to win our category and it made us feel great.’
She describes the evening as ‘brilliant’, saying it was a good opportunity to meet people from other firms and the entertainment was fantastic: ‘we didn’t realise that tax could be so funny!’
But what if you’ve won before, as is the case for Sagars? ‘Winning for a second time confirmed to everyone connected with Sagars that we’ve made progress and we’re still doing a good job, it’s a feeling that you might have been lucky once but not twice’, says Chris Jones.
Proof that winning is never boring.
Putting the award to use
‘We were eager to share our award success with our clients and contacts so we e-mailed everyone the day after the event and lots of our supporters were quick to reply with messages of “congratulations” and “well deserved”’, says Kate Naylor, corporate tax partner, Sagars.
The win gives clients ‘confidence in the firm’ and it has been integrated it into all of its marketing communications: reception presentation, new work proposals, newsletters, email footers and local advertising.
However, Ms Naylor reckons that ‘perhaps of most impact is when we are showing people around our offices and they see the award, photographs from the ceremony and judges’ comments for themselves’.
‘Make no mistake, winning the tax award is a great boost for all of our team members’, says Fergus Beadle, tax partner, Sagars. ‘There was a great sense of achievement and pride for a long time after we broke the news that they were all part of an award-winning team – again!’
Smith & Williamson maximises use of the award win by including it in email sign-offs, on the firm’s website, in tenders, on advertisements, etc.
Joss Dalrymple adds ‘Winning these awards is also great for staff morale. We make the point internally that the awards recognise that to do a job well needs support from an entire team and people at all levels, so to get external recognition in this way is fantastic.’
Winning the award has ‘provided huge benefits to the team and the firm and continues to do so’, says Michelle Malone.
She refers to potential clients finding it impressive adding that ‘award success has been a unique marketing tool’. As she says, ‘it is easy for someone to say they can provide valuable services, but that can be difficult to prove. Being an award winner shows that we are capable of doing what we say and are really as good as we state’.
Overall, the award has been ‘motivational for the winning tax team’, says Mr Blundell, and created a sense of ‘friendly rivalry’ with the firm’s other tax teams. Entering ‘seemed a tall order at first’, but success is achievable and you will never know whether you could win if you do not try.
The whole awards experience is clearly valuable if you win, and even the process of completing the entry form can help the team realise the value of the work it does.
Be bold, go to the Taxation Awards website, and submit your entry.
