Premier's People's Choice Award
Premier's Peoples Choice
This unique award category is presented to a BC-based small business that can demonstrate they have the unwavering and loyal support of their community.
The criteria for winning is simple: Get more votes than any other nominee. Nominees are tasked with using any imaginative, creative or traditional tactics available to them to engage customers, clients and neighbours to vote for them. At the end of the process, the business with the most votes from their community is our winner. Our winner receives the following cash prize:
Premier's Peoples Choice
Eligibility
- Businesses must be based in British Columbia
- Businesses must have 50 or fewer employees
- Nominations must be submitted online by 11:59pm on February 28th, 2022
- Past Small Business BC Awards winners are prohibited from entering the category in which they won
- Nominees must not operate businesses that are sexually exploitative or that feature sexually explicit entertainment, products or services.
- Nominees must not be associated with illegal activities
- Inappropriate, disrespectful or offensive language will not be accepted as part of SBBC Award
Judging Criteria
Our Premier’s People’s Choice Award has one simple criteria – get more votes than any other nominee. There’s no pitch involved, and our winners just need to demonstrate they have the support of their community. It’s that easy!
Preparing Your Nomination
We understand taking part in competitions like ours requires a time commitment. That’s why we want you to maximize the impact you receive from entering. Here are five tips to consider when submitting your nomination for a Small Business BC Award.
Establish Your Objectives
A great place to start is to decide upon your goals for entering the Small Business BC Awards. Maybe you want to help boost your staff recruitment, raise your profile within your industry, or improve your marketing? Our Awards program can be a powerful tool to achieve your goals. You just need to clearly define what those goals are before you begin.
Designate an ‘Awards Champion’
Throughout the years, we’ve seen businesses pass the task of administering their awards application from one staff member to the next. This results in inconsistent entries where no one person took ownership and drove the task forward. Instead, we recommend designating yourself, or a staff member, as an ‘Awards Champion’ with responsibility for handling the nomination from start to finish.
Speak to Previous Nominees
Each year, over 600 businesses are nominated in the Small Business BC Awards. Across the several month process, these businesses learn so much about the process, developing invaluable takeaways, experience and knowledge. Why not consider asking their advice? They’ll be able to share some of the benefits of taking part, how to prepare to present to our judges, and how to approach your community to gather votes.
Get Your Entry Proofread
Before you submit your nomination, task a friend or family member to read over it and provide their feedback. Try to find someone who will provide impartial feedback. They may notice an important element you’ve forgot to mention, or typos that have slipped under the radar. Your entry will sparkle if it’s error-free and provides a compelling case as to why you should win.
Rules
- Small Business BC retains the right to updates the rules of the Small Business BC Awards at any time.
- Franchisees are NOT eligible for the Small Business BC Awards
- Small Business BC staff members are not eligible to enter
- Businesses may be nominated in one or more categories as long as they meet the eligibility criteria for that category
- By entering the Small Business BC Awards, you accept our judges’ decisions will be final
- All shortlisted finalists authorize SBBC to identify them (name/picture) in connection with the Small Business BC Awards
Check out our full SBBC Awards Rules to learn more.
FAQs
I want to nominate my business for the Premier’s People’s Choice Award but I’m worried I can’t compete with bigger businesses in bigger cities with bigger networks. What can I do?
We understand that all BC communities are different sizes and that different businesses have different sized networks. To level the playing field, votes will be normalized against British Columbia Regional District Population Figures.
How does the vote normalization process work?
Each year our Awards tasks nominees to go out into their community and gather as many votes as possible. While it may appear this process favours nominees in larger communities, this isn’t the case thanks to our vote normalization process. Read our article explaining our Vote Normalization process for further details.
Will the number of votes I receive in the Premier’s People’s Choice category be published on the site or made public?
No. Vote tallies will not be made public on the Small Business BC website, or made available to nominees. Because a normalization calculation is applied to the votes to determine the Top 5 finalists, pure vote numbers are not indicative of performance in the competition.
Can I vote for a business in the Premier’s People’s Choice category more than once?
Only one vote per person is allowed, per nominee, per category: you can vote once for your favorite business in every category they’re nominated in.
Why are there only two award categories this year?
In the 2022 Small Business BC Awards, there are 4 opportunities to win an award.
Our Business Impact Award has prizing for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place and the Premier’s People’s Choice is awarded to one winner.
This format provides more value to our winners with a total prize pool of $15,000! Our nomination criteria also ensures the vast majority of BC-based small businesses qualify for participation.