Sales battlecards are small snippets of vital information about your company presented concisely.
The information is centered on your product, customers, the market, and your competitors.
You can present the information on a sales battlecard as video, text, or graphics.
Typically a one-page sheet, a sales battlecard contains high-value talking points to assist sales reps in closing a deal.
Battlecards are easily scannable, easy to skim on the fly when conversing with a potential client, focus on the company’s USPs and include responses to the most frequently asked questions.
As a result, 71% of businesses using sales battlecards claim to have improved their win rates.
Steps to Create a Sales Battlecard
Discuss With Your Sales Team Regarding Their Needs
Talking to your sales team to discover the challenges that need to be addressed is the first step to creating a battlecard.
Some of the possible challenges that battlecards can address are specific competitors that your salespersons are having a hard time selling against, struggling to break into a new market, and so on.
Set Goals
Battlecards are specifically created to help sales teams close deals.
Based on the challenges you may have found, determine what objectives align with the information added to the battlecards.
For instance, your goal might be to enhance the upsell success rate by 15% or bring in 5 to 10 new customers each quarter.
Gather Important Details
The creation of successful battlecards depends on the details that you’ve collected from each department.
Collect details from marketing, sales, customer service, and even subject matter experts to ensure you deliver impactful information in the battlecard.
Utilize Battlecard Templates
Using a competitive battlecard template will save you effort and time from having to create one from scratch.
You can easily plug the details into the battlecard template for your enterprise and your competitors.
You’ll find templates for each type of battlecard that you might use, including product battlecards, value-proposition-based battlecards, question-based battlecards, competitor battlecards, and comprehensive battlecards.
You can easily customize the competitive battlecard templates to suit your business needs, and you can make your team battle-ready in no time.
Pick the Categories You Excel In
Next, you need to choose the categories or areas where you excel. It would help if you also analyzed how your competitors are outperforming you.
The topic categories or areas you can compare your organization to your competitors include customization, features, customer support, value to customers, the cost to consumers, and ROI.
The comparison must be honest so that your prospects can set accurate expectations of what you can offer them.
Select Your Competitors
Create a list of your competitors and shortlist the ones that often come up in your buyers’ journey.
After you’ve chosen your competitors, you can decide if you need to use a multi-competitor card or a one-on-one battlecard.
Multi-competitor battlecards are used if a competitor is not an endgame threat but only a passing mention in early conversations.
One-to-one battlecards are used when the competitors pose an endgame threat and prevent your sales reps from closing deals.
In-Depth Research
Ensure your competitor research is in-depth so that incorrect information about them is not passed onto your prospects.
In addition, since battlecards are a team effort, you must check with other teams across your company.
For example, while sales teams know your competitors, your marketing team knows about their online presence, brands, and reviews, and your customer support team knows the reason why they’re losing clients.
Thorough research can be conducted by checking competitors’ websites and following your competitors on social media and other news or digital media platforms.
Armed with enough information, you’ll create detail-rich battlecards that will help your sales teams immensely.
Regularly Update Your Content
The industry is constantly changing, so you must update your product offerings and features to keep up with the changing times.
Battlecards are not a one-time project but an ongoing one. Therefore, you must consistently refresh or update your information, along with your competitors’ information. This activity makes sure you have accurate information at all times for your sales reps.
The creation of sales battlecards is the first step. To reach the objectives and goals you’ve established, you need to use the sales battlecards correctly.
How to Use Sales Battlecards?
Creating sales battlecards are considered a success when the battlecards clearly state when, how, and why to use them.
Typically, sales reps use battlecards in the following ways –
- During sales calls, they use sales battlecards as a reference
- Use battlecards to prepare before making sales prospecting calls properly
When it comes to using battlecards correctly, the key is to provide proper training to your sales team.
The test of the ease of use and accessibility of the sales battlecards includes mock sales calls during the training process.
What’s more, make sure to consider requests for changes in design made by salespersons during training.
For successful use of sales battlecards, you can keep in mind the following –
- The battlecards must be easily accessible: The battlecards must be stored in a place frequently used by your sales team. The ideal option would be within the CRM, where your sales team takes notes and maintains updated lead records. It might be difficult for your sales team to adopt and use battlecards if they have to dig their desktops or look for them in shared folders.
- Regular updates are necessary: Sales battlecards are not perfect. Why, you may ask? Trends and market conditions keep evolving, along with consumer behavior and needs. Over time, you might find new competitors, better value propositions, or even a new product line launched by your company. To keep up, you must keep updating the information from time to time; ensure battlecards evolve with your sales team’s abilities, confidence, and goals.
- Monitor usage: Use tracking tools to monitor stats, such as the number of times the battlecards have been opened. It will give you an idea as to the usage of the battlecards and what changes must be made for the battlecards to be used more often.
Creating sales battlecards means equipping your sales team with information to make meaningful and impactful conversations with potential buyers.
It is key to converting prospects into satisfied customers.