This year’s Telstra Best of Business Awards has fewer doors and higher stakes.

Last year, there were seven categories to choose from. This year’s been whittled down to four.

Last year, if you were an eligible business under 200 staff, you could enter as many categories as fitted your story with seven categories to choose from. As long as you met eligibility, you could enter as many as you liked.

Not anymore. One entry, one shot, one category. Choose wrong and there’s no back up plan. Once you’ve selected your category you can’t change it. It pays to think hard before you decide.

What’s changed

• Accelerating Women, Building Communities, Championing Health and Promoting Sustainability have been absorbed into Change, covering thriving businesses making a purposeful and positive impact for Australian people, communities or the planet.
• Indigenous Excellence has become First Nations.
• Outstanding Growth has become Growth.
• Embracing Innovation has become Innovation.

Four categories sound simpler. It isn’t. It’s more concentrated. If you entered the sustainability category last you, you we up against other sustainability entries. This year, you’re going up against community health charities, gender equity campaigners and climate tech founders, all in the ring for the same single Change trophy. Judges will be comparing apples, oranges and the occasional mango, all under one heading so being prepared with quantifiable and quantitative proof is a good place to start.

How to pick the right one

Change – no more vague claims that ‘we’re doing good things for people’. You need a specific problem, a specific cohort you’ve helped, all backed up with data, evidence and proof.

First Nations – keeps its own lane and the brief hasn’t really changed. It’s for First Nations-led, owned and operated businesses succeeding through entrepreneurialism, innovation and inspiring the next generation of all Australians. But more than just an owner, you have to show commercial traction and leadership.

Growth – doing double duty and it covers businesses, new or established, achieving outstanding growth contributing to the Australian economy and community. That widens the field of entrants – scaleups and steady decade-old operators are now in the same bracket, so a two-year-old business with explosive percentage growth is up against an established player with a much bigger revenue base. If you’re in the early phases or growth stage, don’t count yourself out because percentage growth isn’t the be all and end all. You need context for what that growth meant, jobs created, markets opened, and supply chains strengthened. Evidence is your friend.

Innovation – for businesses leveraging technology to create new paths, processes or products solving modern challenges for Australia, with a big emphasis of solving modern challenges. A clever app isn’t innovation. An app that fixes a genuinely painful, named problem for a genuinely definable group of Australians is.

But first you have to nominate your business. Nominations close July 28 Telstra Best of Business Awards | Telstra

Now you’ve done that and you get the nomination email; choose carefully which category you’ll enter.

Another change is the stages. Stage 1’s had a complete personality transplant. It used to be a quick multiple-choice sort, tick some boxes, find out if you’re through. Now it’s a full eligibility and integrity screen, covering everything from revenue and growth bands to legal disputes and prior Telstra affiliations, bundled into building your business profile, bio and all, plus photos.

If you’re kicking the Telstra Best of Business Award’s tyre, and not sure if it is worth your while or the best category, pick my brain for a bit and I will tell it to you straight. BOOK HERE.

Look out for my next newsletter that will cover what I mean by evidence. It’s not a screenshot from your social media of someone saying how tops you are.

When writing your award, make sure AI doesn’t let you down.