Tweet

Finalists were announced yesterday in the 5th Annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, an international competition recognizing excellence in disciplines that are crucial to business success.  

Organizations as diverse as Apple, Capital One Financial, India’s Tata Motors, and Telecom Italia are among those recognized in the customer service awards, call center awards, and sales awards categories.  Organizations with Finalists in multiple categories include CIGNA Government Services, Austria’s Competence Call Center AG, Direct Alliance, the UK’s Everything Everywhere, Marsh U.S. Consumer, PetRays, Canada’s SMART Technologies, and SurePayroll. For a full list of Finalists, visit www.stevieawards.com/sales. 

Stevie Award winners will be announced during a gala banquet on Monday, February 21 at the Eden Roc Renaissance Hotel in Miami Beach, Florida.  Tickets are now on sale. 

Entries were up 60% this year for consideration in more than 90 categories, including individual and team sales categories as well as individual and team customer service and contact center categories. Several new categories were added this year, including 12 categories to recognize new products and services for sales, contact/call center, and sales professionals as well as seven categories to recognize the achievements of solution providers to these professionals.    

Members of the Awards' Board of Distinguished Judges & Advisors will select Stevie Award winners from among the Finalists during final judging later this month.   Finalists were chosen by business professionals worldwide during preliminary judging.

Sponsors of the 5th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service include American Support, Infogroup, The Sales Management Association and ValueSelling Associates.

Tweet

Voting is now open for the People's Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Customer Service.

Vote now for your favorite providers of good customer service at http://www.stevieawards.com/Service.peopleschoice. 

Winners of the People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Customer Service in eight industry categories will be determined in mid-February and honored at the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service gala in Miami Beach on February 21.  These are the world's premier sales awards, customer service awards, and contact center awards.

Last year more than 87,000 votes were cast and people's choice winners included FedEx, Hilton Worldwide, and Macy's, among others.

Who should win this year? You get to decide - vote now!

Tweet

Enter the 2011 Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, the world’s premier awards, with more than 90 categories recognizing call center, customer service, and sales excellence.  To enter,

1.    Review the online entry kit
2.    Choose your categories and write your nominations
3.    Submit your nominations

Questions?  Contact us at info@stevieawards.com.

Finalists will be notified and announced next week, and this year's Stevie Award winners will be announced at a banquet in Miami Beach, Florida on Monday, February 21.  (Attendance is not required to win.)

The Stevie Awards are pleased to announce that we have partnered with Meltwater News to bring you live, updated feeds of press clippings about the Stevie Awards and business awards in general.

There are separate scrolling feeds for each of our four awards programs:

The American Business Awards feed is here, where you'll find clippings about the premier business awards program in the U.S.A., with news about the program's marketing awards, PR awards, web awards, human resources awards, IT awards, and more.

The International Business Awards feed is here, and it contains worldwide coverage of the IBAs and their management awards, corporate awards, new product awards, and more.

The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service feed is here, offering up-to-the-moment coverage of its sales awards and customer service awards.

The Stevie Awards for Women in Business feed is here, full of recent clippings about this year's honorees.

We're a week away from the October 15 early-bird entry deadline for the 5th annual Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, and here are some thoughts about this year's competition.

Despite challenging economic conditions worldwide, I expect to see strong growth in the number of entries in the customer service awards categories.  Every organization worldwide wants to be known as providing great customer service, and winning a prestigious award such as a Stevie Award can be a useful tool to illustrate that one's peers, and perhaps customers, agree that you're achieving that.

Entries to the sales awards categories may be another matter, however, and I think that presents an opportunity for smart organizations out there.  Sales people love a pat on the back.  Strong commissions aren't enough to satisfy most sales professionals.  But many organizations hesitate to seek recognition for their sales teams when sales growth is stagnant or tepid at best.  And frankly, many organizations can't claim to be beating sales records in the current economic environment. 

And that's where the opportunity lies.  If your sales people are holding their own, if you have compelling stories to tell about the problems they're solving and solutions they're providing, then by all means, nominate them in the sale awards categories.  You're likely to have less competition than you would in years when all boats are rising.