Accounting Excellence? Let us be the judge of that!
As a winner of ‘Fast Track Firm of the Year’ at the Accounting Excellence awards (for two years in a row no less!), flinder has again been asked to judge at the Accounting Excellence awards.
flinder CEO, Alastair Barlow, will be casting a close eye over entries in both Fast-Track Firm of the Year and Client Service Award categories.
Thinking of entering? You’d better get your ducks in a row! Alastair has very high expectations. But don’t be scared off – he’s also super clear on what he expects to see – and also the things that are a big turn off to him and his fellow judges.
Here’s Alastair’s 5 must-haves for a winning award entry!
1. Tech - so what?
Tech is great, but it's an enabler. And everyone uses it! Your tech stack will not impress me. What makes you different to the other 42,000 firms? What value has it released for you, your team or your clients? If you get this part right, it will impress me.
2. Include relevant metrics
It's impossible to judge fast-growth without metrics; clients, revenue, revenue per client, expansion, NPS, team numbers etc. We need to see these to judge the growth of your business. Don't be too precious about this - we're here to judge you, not take your business.
3. Forget superlatives
You have extremely limited space - use your word count wisely. The number of accountants overusing the wrong words is staggering. Keep it simple.
4. Show me evidence
Just like metrics, we need to see evidence. If you're claiming something, back it up somehow - a client testimonial, a team quote. You can (normally) include a supplementary appendix so if you can, use it. But keep it short and well-presented - we don't want war and peace, we want straight to the point.
5. Read your f****** application
Please do the judges a favour and put your application through a spell check and have someone independent read it, both from an impact and grammar perspective. Numbers may be our thing, but a poorly submitted application is hard to read. And use bullet points and well-spaced paragraphs. It's much easier to take in than seeing a 200 word paragraph of text.
Good luck to everyone entering this year!
