Around 71% of companies that use sales battle cards state that they have gained more sales wins eventually.
To attract modern buyers, it is important for sales teams to possess the right knowledge and be competent to market their products. A sales battle card is an internal marketing document, generally a one-page quick guide, of high-value points created exclusively to assist your sales reps to close the deals. Let’s take a closer look at how to create one.
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What are Sales Battle Cards?
Sales battle cards are graphical aids that compare your company’s service, product, pricing, and/or features to one or several competitors. Usually, it is a one-pager and is a quick mode to present a synopsis of different competitors. It is intended to portray how you stand up against them in critical areas of value and performance.
The objective is to provide sales representatives with sales-ready replies to the most significant queries and needs a prospect might have. These cards provide data that aids them to win deals. It helps to create uniformity across your sales department and ensure that your service reps deliver correct information consistently.
How to Use Battle Cards in Sales?
Establishing transparent expectations with your sales reps about when, why, and how to use your battle cards is critical to the success of the whole sales process. Below listed are the best practices ensuring successful usage of your battle card:
- Make it Accessible Easily:
Store the battle card in a place where your sales team spends most of their time. If your reps have to unearth every time to search the battle card in shared folders or their desktops, it may be tedious to get your team to adopt battle cards as a part of their dealing process. - Best Recommendation:
Usually, the best choice is to stack it in your internal knowledge base where your reps can take notes and update lead files. - Update it Regularly:
As your product evolves, new opponents may emerge in the play and existing rivals may change their products or offer better value propositions. With such changes, your battlecards would need certain amendments. This document must evolve with the abilities, goals, and confidence of your marketing team. - Track its Usage:
Consider using tools like CloudTutorial to track statistics like the number of clicked cards to get an understanding of how often which battlecard is used.
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What are Different Types of Sales Battle Cards?
Essential information like your product/service, unique selling points, competitive intelligence, possible counter questions from customers, and pricing are included in sales battle cards. Based on the requirement, the following are the different types of battle cards:
Competitor Battle Cards
All the information about your competitors is encompassed in competitor battle cards. Such cards permit sales teams to gather useful information about their rivals and formulate their pitch accordingly. When faced with clients’ questions on how their product is better than the rest, this card helps them stay informed.
Product Battle Cards
Product battle cards contain all the data about the product that your sales reps would be selling. These cards are designed to be an educative resource for your sales leaders so that they can acquire info and utilize it in their pitches. Salespersons often embrace an infographic method to represent the information.
Question-based Battle Cards
Customers may have several queries regarding the product. Question-based battle cards have all the information that a prospective customer could ask the sales rep team. These cards could be small in size as compared to the rest of the cards. Your salespersons can use it to handle inquiries from your customers.
Comprehensive Battle Cards
Comprehensive battle cards comprise immense details. With this card, your sales teams do not have to look elsewhere for data on the product that they are marketing. These are the cards that entail other small and medium businesses’ products details, use cases, and popular myths.
Use Case-based Battle Cards
The information on applicable use cases is included in use case-based battle cards. These cards showcase how a product could fit into the customer’s requirements. It may contain network diagrams that a customer success team might need while having a conversation with the customer.
Partnership Battle Cards
Partnership battle cards describe the crucial features of an organization’s partnership. These cards possess the details related to the main differentiators of the partnership, challenges, and qualifying questions.
Value Proposition-based Battle Cards
The info on how customers can avail benefit from using the product can be determined with the help of value proposition-based battle cards. It seizes the information on target customers, value proposition, qualifying questions, and opportunity registration process.
Free Sales Battle Card Templates to Get Started
Designing a uniform layout for your sales battlecards will assist your sales team implement it. This will help them find particular information in a time of need.
For example, if your feature details are always listed in the left corner, your sales reps will be able to respond to feature-related questions more rapidly as they would not have to search for the info they need. Here are some battle card templates you can incorporate.
Creating Your Sales Battle Cards in 6 Steps
An effective sales battle card represents the information in a clear form and is aimed at influencing potential customers. It is not merely a reiteration of common questions or buyer personas. In fact, it tells you how to exercise the data about your product to persuade the clients to buy. The following 6 steps help you in creating your sales battle cards:
Classify Stakeholders
Crafting a battle card is not a solo task. It is a collaborative procedure that requires diverse teams. Ascertain the main stakeholders to contribute to your sales battlecard and give feedback.
Normally, it should include the marketing, product, and sales teams, and executives. Each team may bring unique skills, insight into the product, and a view of the competition that can aid the sales process.
Set an Objective
On a fundamental level, a battle card works as a sales tool that empowers your sales teams to crack the deals. Analyzing the challenges, you can set sales goals to monetize the performance of your battle card. These objectives can be, for instance, avail 5 new clients per quarter from a particular vertical or increase upsell success for new products by 15%.
Research Extensively
To create battle cards, conducting extensive research is a must. It includes scanning the market over the internet, listening to webinars, reading blogs, and examining analyst reports and databases.
Speak to your technology executives, engineering teams, and product managers to present a rudimentary set of information that will eventually find its way into preparing the battle card.
Pro Tip:
Research common sales queries: This study can gauge the potential problems your customers might have with your product. Addressing such objections (related product features or price) proactively in your sales process upsurges the chances of sealing the deal.
Examine Your Rivals
You need to gather information about your competitors’ products, their pricing, features, and warranties in your knowledge base. Such competitor analysis battle cards provide comparisons and differences between your brand and the competitors.
The data, thus assembled, must be analyzed thoroughly. This must let your sales team know where the loopholes are in your opponent’s offerings and how to grab this opportunity and pitch your product as the better solution.
Store Your Battle Cards
Ensure that these sales battle cards can be stored and retrieved from your corporate wiki for easy access and use. You may classify them as per the purpose they serve and exercise tags, so they are searched easily. Keep in mind that these cards must be discoverable and accessible by salespeople effortlessly.
Update or Audit Battle Cards
Being in this competitive world, you do not want your salespersons to refer to the wrong battle card. It can result in inaccurate information conveyed to the potential customer and jeopardize sales contracts. So, when you make a marketing calendar for the year, consider dedicating some time to audit and update these sales battle cards.
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A good battle card includes vital information about the product or service, unique selling points, pricing, competitive intelligence, and probable counter questions from clients. It must be packed with strategies on how to sell the brand and not merely a feature-by-feature assessment.
Battle cards product marketing are the visual aids comparing your organization’s service or product, pricing, and features to one or multiple competitors. Usually a one-page cheat sheet, this card is a quick approach to offer an overview of your rivals and to see how you brace yourselves up in key areas of delivering high-quality performance and value.
Competitive battle cards are a sales enablement resource that gives concise and digestible insights. These findings will be useful for your reps to win sales contracts against a particular rival.
Sales and marketing teams can go the extra mile if they work collaboratively. Sales battle cards are essential parts of marketing collateral through which your sales department can bring in much revenue.
Consider using the CloudTutorial knowledge base platform where you can create, compile, use, and update such sales documentation. Sign up for FREE and make these files accessible for your sales department to let them grab more deals.
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