The Anatomy of a Battlecard Template: How to Build One People Will Use

When there’s talk about competitive intelligence, the one term that usually pops up is “battlecard”. 

It’s the one format associated with this narrow field of product marketing, and over the years it has become a staple in most tech companies that are powered by sales teams. 

And it’s well deserved - battlecards will tilt the sales conversations between a prospect and a sales rep towards a positive outcome - a closed sale. 

Now, if you try and search for battlecards, you’ll find a lot of battlecard templates, spreadsheets, and Notion fill-in-the-blanks pages.

They are all great.

But to craft an amazing card template or situational battlecard that your colleagues will use it has to be done from the ground up and follow the rules in your organization:

• It has to be in the right medium
• It has to be accessible when needed
• It has to have the right information needed
• It has to be clear and legible
• Optionally, but recommended - it has to be tracked

Ironically, here I’m going to suggest a battlecard template format that you can use — but I also want you to edit and change it so it fits your organization the best.

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What is a Sales Battlecard?

A Sales Battlecard is a piece of content used by sales professionals to gain a competitive edge during sales engagements. 

To tip the probability of a sale towards them.

It's a summarized and easy-to-reference guide that contains key information, tactics, and strategies to help sales teams effectively sell against selected competitors and close deals.

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The importance of battlecards

The best Battlecards are important because they hold all the minimal-viable information needed for a sales rep to present their product when facing a known competitor.

All sales reps are already trained on scripts, product sales pitches, and the internal sales process — but they also need to know how to speak about their own product once they know who they are competing with.

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How battlecards help your sales team?

Simple. Battlecards are there for the sales reps whenever they see they are competing against another service or product provider. 

You can imagine battlecards like cheat sheets you’ve used in high school where you looked up the right answer for the question on the history test. In this case, your sales rep is looking for the right answer or information to convey back to the prospect

How battlecards improve the sales process?

Battlecards are amazing with competitive deals — deals where your prospect is evaluating your solutions against one or more alternatives solution providers. 

Since the battlecards are easy to consume, have the right information, and are easy to access, the sales process is shorter and more successful! Sales will use these assets in real-time so they have to be useful and be ready just in time to serve their functionality and purpose.

In the end, the sale is what matters for the survival of your company.

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The role of battlecards in objection handling

Battlecards are primarily used for winning deals over a selected competitor but they should have a dedicated space where you tackle most common objections. Your sales rep can tackle objections pre-emptively or wait until it’s brought up in the conversation.

For example, you might say that your company’s weakness was not holding a certain cybersecurity certificate, but since Q2 this year, you’ve obtained it. Or when they pit you against a competitor saying that they are more affordable, you’d like your sales team to say that they are a great company but your service or product solves the problem in a different approach.

! Unsolicited opinion: Never bash your competition — it will make you look defensive and insecure.

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The importance of including case studies in battlecards

Last but not least, your team should always have access to testimonials, case studies, and success stories that they can share with the prospects right after a call. 

Peer reviews hold more weight than your claims. The more similar your prospect is to the industry and problem of your use case, the better. This will garner you more social credibility and build trust faster.

Any other awards such as “Top performer” or software certificate are a welcome addition too, but they pale in comparison to narrative-driven stories of your happy customers.

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Types of Sales Battlecard Templates

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The Atomic Battlecard 

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Atomic Battlecards is what we came up with at Grow + Scale while working with an enterprise client.

The name idea comes from the book Atomic Habits (James Clear) where it’s defined as the fundamental unit in a larger system.

You can imagine it as an 80/20 solution battlecard - the one that will solve 80% of your problems when facing competitive objections. It should be the one to create first before moving to more segmented battlecards.

In the Atomic Battlecard, we include all the essential elements that are drivers to a close-won result. 

Klue breaks down and defines more of these elements in their resources here. I’ll quickly go through them and name why are they important. 

• Approach to Market Battlecard — a quick look at verticals and departments your competitor sells to.
• Company Overview Battlecard — Basic information about the competitor’s company
• Questions to Ask Battlecard — similar to Landmine questions but could also include questions to get to the prospect's pain points faster
• Product Overview Battlecard — essential information about competitors' product offering
• When to Engage/ Not Engage Battlecard — Qualifiers and disqualifiers of your prospect
• Pricing Battlecard — broken down pricing tiers about your competitors
• Positioning Battlecard — Highlights your unique position to serve a client vs your competitor
• Win-Loss Battlecard — Pull direct insights from Win/Loss interviews with your customers
• Why We Win & Lose Battlecards — Main points on where you’re stronger (or weaker) than a competitor
• Attack & Defense Battlecards — embedded talk tracks that will help you handle certain objections
• Preemptive Advantage Battlecard — eliminate the competition before it’s brought up on the call.
• Landmines to Lay Battlecard — A landmine was an old term for questions to ask that expose competitor’s weaknesses and create doubt. They are also known as trap questions.
• Counter FUD — A sales battlecard template gives your reps tools to navigate Fears/Uncertainty/Doubt a.k.a. FUD your competitor might say about you. 
• How To Spot a Competitor — keywords and phrases that will reveal the competition present in the deal
• Key Points/Quick Dismiss — helps sales reps quickly crush any seeds of doubt a competitor has planted in the mind of a prospect. 

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Based on this information, you can build a battlecard(s) in a lot of ways. The main goal is for salespeople to use it and improve their win rate against a competitor.

At Grow + Scale, we use the Atomic Battlecard layout and then adapt it to a customer's needs.

Most often they use a specific battlecard for:

• Line Of Business (LOB) Battlecards — for example, they need a battlecard that will let them talk to the engineering team, product leader, or a strategic stakeholder
• Audience Level Battlecard — Battlecards for Small/Medium Business (SMBs) are going to be different than the ones for enterprise level. For example - enterprise clients will put a lot of weight into integration to their current stack (which is often locked-in) and security assurance than a smaller startup.
• Industry/Account-Based Battlecard — Big deals with giant corporations take months to close and negotiate. But they also bring the most revenue to the company and are the “Moby Dick” most wanted accounts to have. For those situation, we’d research and prepare internal (and external if need be) materials to support and open up the bandwidth to sales and marketing teams to finally close that mammoth deal.

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The importance of including case studies in battlecards

Last but not least, your team should always have access to testimonials, case studies, and success stories that they can share with the prospects right after a call.

Peer reviews hold more weight than your claims. The more similar your prospect is to the industry and problem of your use case, the better. This will garner you more social credibility and build trust faster.

Any other awards such as “Top performer” or software certificate are a welcome addition too, but they pail in comparison to narrative-driven stories of your happy customers.

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How to Create a Sales Battlecard 

Before you start building you have to understand your goal — help sales teams win more deals.

That’s the sole purpose of the sales battlecard. 
To do that you will have to:

• Understanding your product or service - you will have to become a PhD of your own product and know it inside out - all the strengths and weaknesses and what makes it the best in its own niche.
• Defining your target audience and the pain points - your product solves a particular problem or brings value to a specific audience. You need to know who you are serving and how much of an impact you’re making. The marketing team with personas should be able to help too.
• Pull insights from primary and secondary research - you’ll have to farm information from our own sources (documentation, interviews with sales, customer success or CRM notes and recorded calls) and public sources (secondary research)
• Choose the right medium and format - every team and organization has its own tech stack and adapting to it is better than introducing a new system with new frictions. Use the vehicle and format your sales team already knows and likes to use.
• Fill in the battlecard - populate your battlecard format with relevant information that is useful and effective.
• Teach your team how to use it  - Schedule time with the sales team to introduce the asset and teach them how to use it - anything from how to access it, where to find the right information, and how to use it on a call. 

Learn more on how to build your first competitive intelligence program or check the 7-day competitive enablement email course.

The Anatomy Of an Efficient Sales Battlecard Template

Let’s go right to it. As I’ve mentioned before, a good battlecard should be. 

Keep in mind that the template here is a suggestion or one example of a best practice. You shouldn’t just use it as the default result but rather adapt it for your product or service.

Right now let’s go through the components of a Sales Battlecards. To get the template download the Atomic Battlecard.

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The Title

The title will clearly identify what type of battlecard this is and when it was last updated (May 2023). 

In our case, it’s a quick overview battlecard that shows a quick reference between your company and the competitor - ACME Corp. Since it was built in May 2023, we should revisit and update it at least 3 months from this date (September 2023) or earlier depending on competitor movements. 

*If you’re actively gathering data, you’ll identify major changes before 3 months. Your team might have a reaction to the news when you share a regular competitive newsletter with them.

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The Main Positioning

Next is the main positioning between you and your competitor. 

Identify and compare your tagline and write down one key difference between you and your competitor. This should be one thing that makes you unique and valuable in your customers’ eyes. The more you can relate to potential customer pain points the better.

Every company has to own the right messaging and differentiators that make it unique to the rest of the solutions. 

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And here’s a filled-in example.

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The Battlecard Main Area

This is the main quick competitive summary between you and your competitor. 

• Pricing will give you an insight into competitors offering along with breakdown of their tiers if applicable. (Competitor pricing may change without warning so it’s important to keep monitoring their pricing website)
• Your Competitive Framework / Competitive Advantages tells you exactly which value propositions are a better fit compared to your competitor. This could be speed, UX/UI, rich integration, faster AI, or other talking points you’ve identified in your research.
• Competitor Strengths and Weaknesses will show where a competitor has the upper hand compared to your product. Teach your team how to get around on the expanded battlecard with suggested talk tracks.
• Challenges & Objection Handling is a space where you have a prepared answer on how to deal with the most common competitor objections. 
• Discovery Questions / A.K.A Trap Questions are questions a salesperson should ask a prospect to elicit doubt about the competitor's solutions. These questions touch competitors’ weak points and deposition them as the best fit. It’s important to never bash your competitor and speak down about it - it will make you look defensive and insecure. Instead, it’s better to acknowledge, reframe and reposition the common objection into a positive point.
  For example check out the Objection Handling Tracker I’ve made with Stefanos Karakasis.
• Stats / Case Studies is the last element on this one-pager where you’ll have listed case studies or other pieces of credibility that reinforce and support your product as the best-fit solution. This could also be links to review websites, and certificates, although case studies and testimonials are often the best choice.

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That would be enough to start. As mentioned previously, the competitor battlecard should be different for your particular case. 

The idea is to figure out what are either knowledge gaps or poorly communicated value propositions on a competitive sales call. Then add those solutions in the battlecard that solves that issue and are easy to find and communicate.

For an expanded and filled-in battlecard, check out the PiedPiper vs Hooli atomic battlecard below.

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Feature Comparison (De)Positioning

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This is where you bring out and present yourself as a better solution based on business objectives. 

The framework to adapt would be: 

Business Objections → Your Solution → Your Competitors Non-Ideal Solution

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For example:

Business objection: Close more deals faster

Your solution: Better deal tracking, native CRM integration, Automatic Follow-up Notifications

Competitor solutions: name the features where they can’t solve the problem as effectively

There you go. 

To see a full filled-in battlecard with more fields, download the expanded atomic battlecard below.

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Klue’s Battlecard Template

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Jason Oakley, ex-Klue product manager turned PMM consultant has its own tested template that I am a big fan of. 

Let’s break down their key features.

I’ll be comparing Multiplier vs Deel - companies that help out with outsourcing talent hiring and payment solutions. This is completely made out information - I’m just trying to show off another example of a battlecard template. 

Here’s the filled-out Battlecard

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Jason’s Quick Overview Battlecard Elements

• Company Overview - a look into competitors company information
• How to Spot Them - keywords and phrases that reveal the identity of who you’re going against on a sales call
• Quick Dismiss - A one-sentence deposition statement about the competitor’s weakness
• Objection Handling - A talk track on how to tackle objections aimed at you
• Why We Win - your strengths
• Why We Lose - your competitor’s strength
• Win Stories - space for use cases, customer win stories, and testimonials
• Questions to Ask - trap questions to inflict doubt about your competitor’s offer
• Pricing / Packaging - your competitor’s pricing information at a glance

Klue is a master at creating battlecards and they are worthy to take a deeper look at!

Wishing you the best with your sales battle and more deals closed with battlecards - they are often a reliable sales tool and a shortcut to competitive and sales enablement success.

If you want to give it a go and build an MVP competitive intel program, try our free 7-day Competitive Enablement with Battlecards email course!