How do car dealers apply for awards: A Complete Guide

Do Car Dealer Awards Really Mean Anything?

In the competitive world of car sales, dealer awards can look impressive. A shiny trophy in the showroom, an awards logo on the website and another badge added to an advert can certainly help create an image of credibility and success.

But have you ever stopped to ask how some of these awards are actually won?

You might imagine a team of independent judges travelling around the country, anonymously visiting dealerships, inspecting cars, experiencing the sales process and finding out how customers are really treated.

That's not necessarily how it works.

Many industry awards require dealerships to enter themselves, choose the categories they want to compete in and prepare a submission explaining why they believe they deserve to win.

That can involve presenting sales figures, customer satisfaction scores, reviews, marketing achievements, community involvement and carefully selected examples of the dealership's successes.

In other words, dealerships can spend considerable time and effort telling an awards panel why they're a great dealership.

At DS Cars, we've decided not to play that game.

We're not particularly interested in preparing polished applications, attending jumped-up awards dinners or chasing another trophy for the cabinet.

And we're certainly not convinced that someone judging information from behind a desk — who may never have set foot in our premises, looked around one of our cars or experienced DS Cars as a customer — is necessarily the best person to decide how good a dealership we are.

We already have judges.

They're called our customers.

They're the people who actually walk through our door, spend their hard-earned money with us and experience how we do business.

So rather than asking “How do we win another dealer award?”, we'd rather concentrate on a much more important question:

“Would our customers recommend us?”

If the answer to that is yes, that's an award worth having.

We don't chase trophies. We earn trust.

What Are Car Dealer Awards?

Car dealer awards are designed to recognise dealerships that are considered to perform particularly well in areas such as customer service, sales, marketing, innovation and community involvement.

They can be organised by automotive publications, industry organisations and other commercial bodies, with different awards placing importance on different criteria.

Sounds great. But there's a bit more to it.

Many of these awards aren't simply handed out after an independent panel has travelled around the country anonymously visiting dealerships and experiencing them as genuine customers.

Dealerships can be required to enter themselves, select the categories they believe they have the best chance of winning and submit information explaining why they deserve recognition.

That might include customer satisfaction figures, sales performance, reviews, marketing achievements, community activities and examples of what makes the business different.

Essentially, you're making a case for why you should win an award.



And that's the bit that doesn't particularly appeal to us at DS Cars.

We're certainly proud of what we've achieved, but we'd feel a bit daft sitting down and writing an application telling a panel of judges how brilliant we think we are.

We'd rather leave that decision to the people who actually matter — our customers.

They don't judge us on a carefully prepared submission.

They judge us on the car they bought, whether it was accurately described, whether they received honest advice, whether they were treated properly and whether we'd still be there to help if something went wrong afterwards.

And unlike some award judges, they've actually been through our door.

So while other dealerships are perfectly entitled to enter awards and celebrate winning them, DS Cars has chosen a different approach.

We don't need to tell a judging panel why we think we're good at what we do.

We'd rather our customers tell you..

How Do Car Dealer Awards Actually Work?

Applying for a car dealer award isn't simply a case of someone secretly assessing dealerships and then announcing who they believe is the best.

In many cases, the dealership has to put itself forward in the first place.

That can mean choosing which categories to enter, completing an application, gathering supporting information and putting together a submission explaining why the dealership believes it deserves to win.

Sales figures, customer reviews, marketing campaigns, business achievements and other carefully selected evidence can all form part of the submission. Essentially, the dealership is being asked to present the strongest possible case for itself.

Some awards may go further, with interviews, additional checks or even site visits. Others can be decided largely from the information submitted to the judging panel.

And that's where DS Cars takes a different view.

We don't spend our time preparing carefully polished award applications telling judges how wonderful we think we are.

We'd rather let our customers decide that.

After all, the people buying our cars have actually dealt with us. They've visited us, spoken to us, seen the cars we sell and experienced how they're treated before, during and after their purchase.

For us, that's a far more meaningful test of a dealership than how impressive we can make ourselves sound on an awards application.

So rather than asking:

"What do we need to write to win an award?"

We'd rather ask:

"What do we need to do to make sure the customer would recommend us?"

There's a big difference.

At DS Cars, we're not interested in chasing trophies or convincing an awards panel that we're a great dealership.

We'd much rather convince you.

What Criteria Do Car Dealer Awards Look At?

Dealer awards can be judged on a wide range of criteria, including customer satisfaction, sales performance, business growth, marketing, community involvement and innovation.

On the face of it, that all sounds perfectly reasonable.

But there's an important point that often gets overlooked: much of the information being judged may be supplied by the dealership itself.

A dealer can highlight its strongest customer satisfaction figures, showcase successful marketing campaigns, provide examples of community involvement and present statistics demonstrating growth or performance.

In other words, part of the process can become about how well a dealership presents itself to the judging panel.

That's not how we want DS Cars to be judged.

We're far more interested in what happens when a real customer walks through our door.

Did we describe the car accurately?

Were we straightforward about the price?

Was there any pressure to buy?

Did we try to load the deal with unwanted extras?

And most importantly, would that customer happily recommend DS Cars to someone else?

Those are the measurements that matter to us.

We don't prepare statistics and polished submissions to convince an awards panel that we're providing great customer service. We concentrate on providing the service and let our customers tell everyone else whether we've succeeded.

There's also something slightly odd, in our view, about being presented with an award for being a fantastic dealership by judges who may never have walked through your showroom door or experienced your business as a customer.

That's why DS Cars chooses not to enter these award competitions.

We're not interested in being the best dealership on an application form.

We're interested in being the dealership our customers come back to, recommend to their friends and family, and trust when it's time for their next car.

That's recognition worth having..

What About Dealer Awards?

Applying for industry awards can take a surprising amount of time and effort. Dealers are often required to compile figures, prepare written submissions, highlight achievements and essentially make the best possible case for why they deserve to win.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with that — it’s just not something we’re interested in doing at DS Cars.

We’ve made a conscious decision not to enter the various dealer award competitions and ceremonies.

Why?

Because we believe the people best qualified to judge our business are our customers.

A judging panel can only assess the information a dealership chooses to put in front of them. In many cases, those judges may never have visited the dealership, bought a car from them, picked up the phone to them or experienced how they actually treat customers.

Our customers have.

They've walked through our door, bought our cars, dealt with us when things have gone right — and, more importantly, seen how we respond when something hasn't.

That means far more to us than a trophy.

We'd rather put our time, effort and money into preparing good cars, offering honest advice and looking after the people who choose to buy from us than preparing an application explaining to a panel why we think we're brilliant.

So you probably won't see DS Cars dressed up at an awards ceremony collecting a trophy we've entered ourselves for.

And we're perfectly happy with that.

Our showroom is our judging room.

Our customers are our judges.

Most important their reviews are the awards we're interested in.