Competitive Battlecards 101: Key Takeaways and Quick Dismiss Sales Battlecards

Katie Berg

Key Points and Quick Dismiss Battlecards

Our Competitive Battlecard 101 series is back! We’re featuring the Key Points/Quick Dismiss competitive sales battlecard. This battlecard template will help your sales reps quickly crush any seeds of doubt a competitor has planted in the mind of a prospect. 

Key Takeaways and Quick Dismiss Sales Battlecards Situation: 

A prospect is at the beginning of their search for a new solution. They have reached out to your sales rep asking to learn more. The rep eagerly gets on a call with the prospect and pitches them. Then the prospect says, “I am also looking at Competitor X. How do you compare?”

Does the rep panic? Stumble? Or start going off on a diatribe extolling the differences feature-by-feature? 

No. They calmly refer to the Key Points and Quick Dismiss Sales battlecards. They scan the information and reply to the prospect with a brief answer that dissuades any further comparison. 

What is the Key Takeaways/Quick Dismiss Sales Battlecard?

The Key Takeaways and Quick Dismiss sales battlecards serve two separate purposes. The Key Takeaways card is a directory of sorts, that showcases six different links to important resources or other cards.

Our more successful customers break it down into three sections:

• How does competitor X position itself?
• How is competitor X known?
• How can you exploit competitor X’s weaknesses?

This central overview card provides every rep who comes across it with a jumping-off point to dive deeper into more tactical advice.

The quick dismiss card on the other hand is all tactical all the time.

It should contain two to three hard-hitting points intended to sow serious doubt in your prospect’s mind. Starting with a direct power statement as your heading, underneath should be a short paragraph or bullet point list reinforcing that statement.

When to Use the Key Points/Quick Dismiss Sales Battlecard

Once a competitor has been identified in a deal (see the How to Spot a Competitor Battlecard template), the sales rep needs a Quick Dismiss. It’s designed for on-the-spot use to swiftly knock a competitor out of a deal or at least to colour the lens from which the prospect sees them moving forward. 

It helps the reps frame where the competitor is weak and you’re strong and vice versa. As the one building the information, you need to know what’s worked in the past, and what hasn’t.

Why do you win? And why do you lose? These are tough questions you may not have the answers to for every situation.

But, when you get it right, this will shut down all further conversation about your competitor.

Building the Quick Dismiss/Key Points Sales Battlecard

The process of putting together a standout Key Points/Quick Dismiss competitive sales battlecard is relatively straightforward. However, it does require that you’ve done some initial background research too and probably already have some preliminary battlecards built. 

View our complete library of battlecard templates here. 

Step 1 – Identify your competitors

The first step is to identify which competitor(s) you need to create competitive content for. These competitors can be tier one, two, or three companies that your sales reps are likely to encounter and for which they need data.

Step 2 – Research your identified competitors

The Key Points/Quick Dismiss battlecard framework is similar to other competitive battlecards in our library. So, if you’ve already done preliminary research, or created a Why We Win & Lose sales battlecard, your analysis is nearly complete. 

If not, here is the basic information you will need to gather before you start constructing the battlecard. 

• Reasons your company wins against Competitor x (provide examples/stories on your strengths)
• Reasons your company loses against Competitor x (provide examples/stories on your competitor strengths) 
• A brief summary of the company

Examples are key to emphasize how your product or service trumps the competition. We recommend using real-life customer stories when possible to provide validity to your claims. 

Step 3 – Start building your battlecards

Once the research stage is complete it’s time to start creating a short, snappy competitive sales battlecard, with valuable information that your sales reps can digest in seconds. 

Key Points/Quick Dismiss Battlecard Tips:

• Write from the salespersons’ point of view. Reps may have to read verbatim if they are in the middle of a call and there is no time to put it in their own words.  
• The Summary part of this battlecard could come from your Company Overview battlecard because they both provide generalized intel on a competitor. 
• Summarize unfavorable customer reviews about your competitor and explain why this point is important to the prospect. Then link to the actual review as proof. 
• Get feedback from your sales team once the battlecard has been used. If it is not resonating with them, find out how to improve your content and tweak it. 

Competitive Sales Battlecard Library

If you’ve come this far and you’re still looking for more on battlecards and templates, check out our Competitive Sales Battlecards 101.

Blog > Battlecards