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Sales battlecard templates are tricking you.
Google ‘sales battlecards’ (also known as competitive battlecards, or just battlecards) and you’ll get slick-looking Word docs, PDFs and PowerPoint decks.
They have nicely formatted little boxes with preset headings just begging to be filled with your competitive content.
Reality check: This does not improve your battlecards. All it does is encourage you to fill the space.
Sales battlecards shouldn’t be “filled up”. They should contain the absolute minimum amount of content needed to enable your sales team to convert a prospect into a client. Period.
In this article, we’ll dive into how to build a sales battlecard that your reps can’t live without, and provide examples and templates so that you can start creating battlecards yourself.
Short on time and looking for some competitive battlecard templates to use? Grab them here.
A sales battlecard is a document that enables your sellers with key information about a competitor’s products, tactics, and services so that they can compete in deals more effectively. A battlecard typically includes advantages and disadvantages, market positioning, why we win and why we lose, and objections that sales reps may encounter.
Building your first sales battlecard can feel daunting.
There’s a blank canvas staring you in the face and pressure to fill it. In the first episode of our Competitive Battlecards Mini Course, David Washer, Director of Data Operations at Klue, shared a few critical steps to get started effectively before you start filling your battlecards with a list of facts and bullet points.
Alright, enough of the theory, let’s see what a competitive battlecard should look like in action! Here are two hypothetical examples of Pied Piper competing with Stripe.
The first battlecard example we’ll look at is a ‘Why we Win’ card. As you can see in the example below, the battlecard is structured into three categories for your sellers:
This is what we call the Fact, Impact, Act framework, and recommend using this structure within all of your battlecards. It guides your sales reps to use the competitive insight effectively in deals, but is flexible enough for you to adjust the content and recommended actions within different battlecards.
If you’re looking to figure out how to source content for a ‘Why we Win’ battlecard, start by interviewing the sellers that won the last ten deals against a specific competitor and reviewing deal notes or insights from your win-loss analysis.
The second battlecard example we’re looking at is ‘objection handling’. When built correctly, this can be one of the most popular cards amongst sellers that keeps them coming back for more.
As you can see in the example below, we’re still using the fact, impact, act framework. However, given the context of this battlecard is a little different, so to is the information you provide for sellers.
In this example, you can see that the fact is introduced in the title of the card itself. Then the impact section explains why the objection a seller is facing often comes up so that your reps can prepare accordingly.
The act section of an objection handling battlecard is where things get fun as you have plenty of resources at your disposal to arm your sales reps. As always, there are the talk tracks a seller can use and pending on the validity of the objection, you can enable your reps to address, reframe, or redirect the objection.
When handling an objection your sellers also need proof points to show their buyers that they’re not full of hot air and empty promises. These proof points can be one-pagers, customer quotes and case studies, or feature comparisons (like the example above).
Pro-tip: Nothing beats proven talk tracks that have already worked in the field. When building an objection handling battlecard, embed Gong snippets of your sellers nailing how to handle a competitor’s objection. The visual element makes your cards more engaging and allows your reps to learn from their peers at scale.
In a world where content is king (or queen) when it comes to competitive intelligence, it’s the most valuable and meaningful content that moves the needle.
To provide an alternative to the over-formatted competitive battlecard templates out there, we’ve started a series called Competitive Battlecards 101.
Rather than using a single template for all of your competitors, we want to give you the tools to understand each of the individual cards that can be used to build a full and effective battlecard.
Each article gives you one new competitive card to add to your arsenal, diving into the strategy behind each individual card that makes up the full deck you see above.
The articles will be short and sweet. No fluff. Just the facts on what the card is, how to build it, and when and why to use it.
You can check out all of the battlecards in our library to date by following the links below:
There is no moment that creates panic quite like losing your house keys.
My heart rate will triple as I frantically flip couch cushions, make an estimated 27 trips back and forth to my car, and desperately fling open cupboards that haven’t been touched in over a year.
I’ll even retrace my footsteps like a detective assessing a crime scene until… that recognizable jingle in my pocket.
A jingle which is quickly accompanied by the facepalming realization of ‘why didn’t I just check my pockets in the first place?!’.
This scenario is not unlike the way many businesses attempt to find competitive intelligence. They spend time and resources scraping every corner of the internet, digging through PDFs and blog posts.
In reality, much like your house keys, the best competitive intel actually lies within the four virtual walls of your organization. Your sales team and internal experts are your best source of competitive intelligence.
Here’s how to tap into them.
Select the right people to interview so that your time is used most effectively. Ask or look for salespeople with the most experience at your company and/or in your industry.
Most content curators only need to conduct 3 or 4 x 30 min interviews initially, to cover major competitors for a product line.
Here are 5 things that you need to know before begin approaching your sales team:
Here are 5 things that we’ve learned to do to get effective intel from your revenue teams:
You need to provide quick wins and address low-hanging fruit for your sellers. That’s why they’re a great source for helping you to prioritize what content and competitors you should focus on first.
If you’re looking to focus on content prioritization, seller confidence, and identifying knowledge gaps, then use our Competitive Confidence Survey Template.
Now we’re going to dive into questions you should ask in order to fill out specific battlecards. If you’re starting from scratch and looking for some sales battlecard templates to build from, then check out our templates below.
If you’ve already got your cards ready, then read on for the questions you can ask to get intel for each.
Note: Objection Handling = your team’s re-frame of a competitor’s strengths.
As you’re conducting these interviews, you’ll start noticing common themes.
These commonalities are where you should look to help you build your battlecards using the internal intel you’ve collected.
With the right content, and the right structure (like our Know. Say. Show. framework) you’ll have everything you need to build a winning sales battlecard.
You’ve got the competitive intelligence. You’re bought into competitive enablement. You’ve even built some killer battlecards.
There’s just one, very big, problem — no one’s using them.
What’s the reason for low adoption? Well, there’s never just one reason, nor is there one quick and easy solution.
But talk to the experts and you’ll quickly find that there are tried and true methods of boosting adoption.
Here are four ways you can increase adoption of your competitive enablement content.
One sure-fire way to increase adoption? Build Better Battlecards. Watch this video series and find out how.
More than just a convenient excuse for breaking off a relationship, the it’s not you, it’s me approach works for addressing low adoption too.
Using this approach, FloQast’s Competitive and Market Intelligence Manager Ashleigh Einsiger‘s first course of action to solving adoption is to turn inwards.
“If I see adoption is low, I have to ask myself a lot of questions first to make sure that I’m doing my job right.”
Four questions in fact.
Did you make enough noise in your competitive intel Slack/Teams channel? Did you clearly highlight the new content (and why it’s important) in your competitive intelligence newsletter? Have you followed up with people individually?
Did you tag the content properly in your competitive enablement platform? Is your intel organized in a logical way? Make sure content is easily accessible (ideally one click away), and categorized so your users don’t get lost trying to find it.
Does your content meet the needs of the intended audience, in a format that works for them? The same competitive intel could be valuable for a bunch of different teams. But how that intel is packaged and delivered needs to be done in a way that’s obviously relevant to them.
Even if your reps know about your content, can find it, and appreciate its relevance, if they don’t know how to use it, it won’t get adopted. Be prescriptive in how, why and when a particular piece of intel should be levered in a deal.
This is your cue to directly connect with your users — individual reps and leadership — to ask for feedback. Ashleigh’s approach:
“What’s missing? Why are you not interested in it? Get all that feedback back and you can make those changes appropriately.”
We dove deep and analyzed thousands of anonymous battlecards. We looked at battlecards that got used a lot, and the ones that didn’t.
Battlecards that don’t include prescriptive guidance on how a piece of intel is supposed to be used and why it’s relevant are far less likely to be used than does that do.
(Check out the entire data dive in our Klue: By the Numbers Series)
Put another way, Competitive Enablement Consultant Hunter Sones says that there are two pieces of information that all good battlecards should include:
“You have proof points (research, customer quote, news article) and the context. Then next thing is what do I need to do with that information”
If you’re in charge of competitive enablement, you’ve analyzed enough deals and gotten enough feedback from reps to know which competitive plays work best and at what time. So don’t be afraid to lead the horse to water.
Sales reps don’t always love being told what to do. But when your content starts helping them tip more winnable deals, they’re sure to start loving — and adopting — your content.
While 95% of battlecards contained enough context (know), less than half included talk tracks (say) and less than one-fifth contained supporting evidence
The best compete experts use a one-two punch for collecting feedback from their stakeholders.
Punch one: talk to people one-on-one (or in small groups) and get in-the-moment feedback. Punch two: send out a competitive confidence survey collect their answers.
Surveying your team’s confidence on factors like how confident they feel selling against your competitors, and how confident they are in your product’s position in the market gives you direction for how to better enable them.
But the best part of running a competitive confidence survey is that it gauges your team’s confidence in your competitive content.
Klue Customer Success Manager Honami Kawamura says running a confidence survey with a past customer made a world of difference.
“There was some turnover in their organization. They were seeing some low adoption rates. So we ran that survey and it really helped us to identify the type of content that folks need where we don’t have yet.”
Armed with feedback, you now have a clearer idea of where you should focus your efforts. And just by asking your end-users for their input, you’re building that all-important relationship.
If all those good things weren’t enough, measuring competitive confidence over time and comparing the results can turn into a compete metric and KPI you can take to the bank.
Highspot’s Jarrod Greene and CoachHub’s Anthony Fritsch make it their mission to build a “culture of compete” at their organizations.
A big part of doing so is creating an identity for your compete program. One that helps it standout with your stakeholders and make people want to be a part of it.
Nearly all the experts we talk to give the same piece of advice: make compete fun. CSM Manager Sophie Baker says there are a ton of creative ways clients have worked to make compete more fun and enjoyable.
“I’ve seen a lot of wild stuff when it comes to making compete fun. Batman themes. I’ve seen folks recreate the Klue board game, do scavenger hunts. It might sound kitschy — but it works!”
Another can’t-go-without element of a culture of compete is colleague shoutouts. Reps who are actively sharing intel and successfully leverage compete content deserve kudos. Make sure you’re acknowledging their contributions publicly in all your competitive enablement channels.
Imperva’s Pat Wall says building a culture of compete is not a sprint, it’s not even a marathon — it’s an ultra marathon.
But start putting in the work today, following these best practices, and you’ll make your next quarter the best quarter yet.
And don’t be surprised if you start seeing immediate results. These expert tips are just that good.
It’ll come as no surprise to you that a degree in political science and a diploma in journalism hasn’t taught me anything about buiding battlecards.
So when I was tasked with producing Klue’s first-ever battlecard course, I responded with everyone’s favourite four-letter word:
Help.
Lucky for me, I’m surrounded by expert sales battlecard builders. Builders who have created thousands of battlecards for hundreds of clients.
So I put on my best journalist hat and interviewed them all — including some of our customers and industry experts.
And here are the top five most important things I learned from the battlecard builders themselves.
We’ve all fallen into the trap of delivering deliverables just for the sake of it.
But someone’s gotta break the chain of needless deliverables.
When I started working on this project, I asked my battlecard building colleagues a well-intentioned but errant question:
“What are the 15 most important battlecard topics?”
The truth is, there’s no magic number for battlecards. And the content you choose to build depends on a bunch of different variables.
Instead, focus on these three points:
The first question sets you up to build content for the intended audience. The second one helps direct your attention to what kinds of content are needed. And the third helps you prioritize which competitors to start with.
Follow these steps and you’ll set yourself up to avoid building content just for the sake of it.
You’re not a lawyer. You’re a storyteller.
Feature-function comparisons are all about making points. We have this feature so ours is the better solution for you.
But what you should be doing is positioning your solution as the best solution through a narrative woven throughout the entire sales cycle.
As Klue’s Director of Data Insights, and resident battlecard boss, Dave Washer puts it:
“When we look at content that has been built in terms of competing over the history, it always boils down to these bullet point lists that folks are supposed to use for quick reference.”
This might work for a veteran seller. But good luck trying to get a newer seller up to speed with a few short bullet points.
Instead, shift your thinking to:
The world of battlecards is one of nuance. Embrace it.
So many competitive intelligence tools think their only job is collect external intel. That is to say, intel from public-facing sources like websites, press releases, news article and social media.
Important pieces of the puzzle they are.
But the best intel — the kind that helps you win more deals and grow your business — comes from internal sources.
That’s why the best compete professionals scour their internal messaging channels, shared emails, and CRM data for intel shared by your colleagues.
(Or they just let Klue do it for them!)
Building a culture of compete and intel sharing won’t happen overnight. But here are things you can act on right away:
Beyond those points, the best thing you can do is choose a competitive platform that brings in internal intel and stores it in one centralized location.
Okay that header is a little dramatic.
But it speaks to just how important the reliability of your battlecard content really is.
Reliability boils down to two main factors:
The good news is you have complete control over both these elements.
The bad news is, if you aren’t diligent in these two factors, you’ll erode all trust in your competitive content and your compete program more generally.
In fact, it’s issue number one when it comes to battlecard building according to Datto’s Director of Competitive Intelligence Dustin Ray.
“If it’s out of date and not updated, you’re dead in the water. It’s the number one failure.”
That’s why Dustin and his team set up weekly meetings with important stakeholders (CS, PM, Sales) and review new information that might make its way onto a battlecard.
This isn’t a deep dive — those happen twice a year for all tier-one competitors.
But the weekly meetings provide a forum for intel sharing and verification.
Because if your seller uses outdated intel that you included on a battlecard, you might have lost that seller for life.
Content and structure work hand in glove.
It won’t get used if your content is strong but structured like a Great Wall of Writing.
So rule number one is don’t ever create battlecards containing huge walls of text.
Use tiles, headers, and links to other competitive content to fill out your battlecards.
The next rule is all about following the Know. Say. Show method of battlecard building. And it’s one you should start following today.
Ask yourself these three questions:
The Know. Say. Show. method is the foundation for your ‘competitive play’.
And it will serve you as you build virtually every battlecard imaginable.
Conducting a dozen or so interviews about battlecards hasn’t made me an expert.
And as I did more and more interviews, I realized the experts I interviewed didn’t self-identify as experts.
That’s because building battlecards is a continual process. As markets shift, the cards you need today might differ from the first ones you built.
What’s more, the competitors that once posed the biggest threat to your business can move up or down the priority scale quarter by quarter.
But the five things I learned above are evergreen.
Get a handle on these five tips, and you’re on your way to building better battlecards.
You’ve seen generic sales battlecard templates. You’ve endured long, boring webinars.
Tools and templates that provide you with a surface-level understanding of battlecards and nothing more.
Well, we’re here to announce we’ve created the exact opposite of that.
Introducing Competitive Battlecards 101 Course. A nine-episode video series that shows you all you need to build better battlecards.
From theory, methodology and best practices, to intel collection and building the cards you need to win more deals, we put it all together in one free course.
Here’s a look at what you can expect.
This is not learning from a textbook. This course is all about giving you a front-row seat to the experts who build sales battlecards every single day.
No Ivory Tower here, just expert insights from the experts themselves.
You have to crawl before you walk. That’s why the series’ first two videos are all about building the foundation of knowledge you need to build better battlecards.
Watch as our experts take you through all the important considerations you need to have in mind when building battlecards. Concepts like:
Sourcing the best competitive content, structuring it in a powerful way, and getting organizational buy-in are three crucial elements that underpin everything having to do with your battlecards.
We’ll show you where to find intel, how to source internally, and how to put it all together.
We go deep into four battlecard topics that come up over and over again with our customers:
The experts show you the best practices that determine whether these cards pop or peter out.
Get access to even more great battlecard resources when you signup for the video series.
Templates, videos, blogs and everything else you need to build better battlecards.
Sign up for this FREE video series and start boosting your battlecards today.
Let us know what you think — and keep your eye out for even more great video series and courses in the very near future.
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