The sales team needs battle cards. They are a staple in most B2B sales teams. And they serve one purpose: To help sales reps convince prospects to pick your product over the competition.

In a competitive world full of smart and hard-working people, what sets you apart from this competition stays forever in the minds of your customers and helps you grow in business. To prove a point to close a deal in business, the Sales has to come up with new ideas and tools and win the battle against competition. One such critical tool in the sales arsenal in this never-ending battle is the Battlecard.

What is a Sales Battlecard?

Battlecards are short, sales-ready documents that provide a deeper understanding of a specific
competitor’s marketing strategy, key sales messages, product information and tactical value propositions to use when selling against your competitors. It provides your sales team with a competitive displacement “cheat sheet”. They break down the necessary information effectively and efficiently.

Why does the sales team need battle cards?

Battlecard is the tool that’ll help you convince prospects to pick you over the competition. It arms you
with specific information that can help combat buyer’s objection. In simple terms, when sales reps have stats, figures, and other specific, substantive information to point to while combating potential
customers’ objections, it’s more likely that they’ll be able to close deals.

Who creates Battle Cards?

The onus is on the marketing team in your organization to create the Battlecards. However, it is not an
easy task to create this all alone without inputs from various stakeholders. Product Managers, Pre-sales, Business development, and to some extent, customer support should share responsibility with the Marketers to create such battle cards.

As an end-user, you are expected to share feedback with Marketing team constantly so as to keep
sharpening this battle card to enable the sales to face the battle with great confidence.

Final Thoughts

New competitors prop-up quite often and existing competitors change their products or offers. Your
battle cards will need to change as and when competition changes. So, you should be continually
sharing feedback on what’s working (and what isn’t) and updating your sales battle cards accordingly. It is a live document that should be evaluated regularly to ensure that it’s a relevant and useful tool for your sales team.

At the end of the day, the sales battle card needs to work.

Easily said than done. It is not an easy task to create a strong battle card. I have shared my thoughts on what, why, and who about the battle card. With respect to how to develop a battle card, I recommend this article by ForteConsultancy