Competitive Battlecards 101: Counter FUD Battlecard Template

Carly Paracholski

Our Competitive Battlecard 101 series is back and this week we are featuring the “Counter FUD” sales battlecard.

If you haven’t already, subscribe to the series, to get battlecard templates sent straight to your inbox. If you want to go through the previous sales battlecard templates, you can find a running library of all of our sales battlecard templates to date here.

What is the Counter FUD Battlecard

When a competitor is involved in a deal, they are likely to plant fears, uncertainties, and doubts about you with your prospect. These fears, uncertainties, and doubts (FUD for short) create hesitation in the minds of your buyers and negatively affect their perception of your products and/or services. The Counter FUD sales battlecard template gives your reps tools to navigate these claims.

Building the Counter FUD Battlecard

When you know a competitor is in a deal, you know they’ll be saying things about you. That’s a given. Navigating those claims is the crux of what the Counter FUD battlecard sets out to do.

As we wrote in our article How to Spot a Competitor, the first step to navigating competitors in a deal is to identify them. Once you know which competitors are in a deal, your first tactical path is to establish pre-emptive advantages (read about this battlecard here).

Despite doing this, your competitors are still going to seed FUDs with your prospect. You should already know the common FUD statements used by your top competitors. These FUD statements are the first you need to build ‘compete content’ on since they’re the most often faced. Make sure all reps know how to handle these most common FUDs as a starting point.

Over time, new FUD statements will arise as your competitors find new ways to de-position your company. It’s not always worth addressing each and every one. Figure out which ones have a real impact on deals, then consider how to address them.

To start building this battlecard, we suggest narrowing down 3-5 of the most common FUD statements your sales team comes up against per competitor, and then provide an explanation for each statement. This explanation should always provide context and include a counter statement. Use the following tips when developing your counter statements:

• Reinforce Positioning: Reinforce how your reps should be positioning you in the market. You may need to work with Marketing to make sure your positioning strategies are aligned.
• Brush off and reframe: Directly addressing can provide merit to FUD statements. Use the question to talk about what you want to and use the opportunity to pivot or reframe how the prospect is viewing you. For example, if your competitor claims you’re ” just a small company not able to serve robust client needs” you could counter by pointing out their “size” is made up of largely marketing/sales people, followed up by pivoting the conversation to point out that your smaller team is focused on driving a product better suited to their niche use cases.
• Proofpoints: Use proof points to back what you have done. For example, using the previous competitor claim that your company is “small”, counter by demonstrating success with enterprise customers, growth pace, and iteration of the product.

Don’t be afraid to address concerns. The best way to do it is re-position without directly responding to the claims. Every opportunity to answer a question is also an opportunity to reframe the issue and create your own narrative.

Example: Slack with FUD statements from Microsoft Teams 

Example 2: BambooHR With FUD statements from Freshteam

Word of Caution

When using or countering FUD statements, it’s important to remember that It’s not about being combative or negative towards a competitor. That’s not an approach we recommend you use. Seed doubt in your prospects mind about your competitors’ ability to deliver, and highlight where your product is superior. Remember that building trust with your buyers is far more important than pointing out your competitors’ shortcomings.

The best practice in building counter- FUDs is to always validate these FUD statements with a minimum of three sources, before including them on your sales battlecard. We suggest taking a look at customer stories, talking directly to the sale rep who encountered this FUD, and looking at review sites for validation.

Further Reading on Sales Battlecards

The Counter FUD sales battlecard is a useful tool for your Sales team to have at their disposal. However, if you’ve been building all of the battlecards covered in our series Competitive Battlecards 101, you may notice that a lot of the content has been covered elsewhere in your battlecard arsenal.

As your template library continues to grow you will need to be thoughtful about which battlecards drive the most value for your reps, and consider how to pair them together so as to not overlap in content and to provide a comprehensive approach to tackling a competitor. Refer to your Why We Win & Lose for alternative templates to navigate competitor claims.

Sales Battlecard Library

Looking for even more battlecard strategies? Check out our full sales battlecard library here.

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

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