Sales Enablement: Battle Cards Vs Battle Systems
We discuss the limitations with conventional battle cards and why you should build battle systems.
Battle cards are what we all turn to in a competitive situation. They help us to anticipate talking points and counter any concerns and objections. They’re our golden tickets.
Battle cards are a great thing to have at the ready if you want to help a few of your salespeople in some deals. But if you are part of or responsible for a sales team in a large organization with multiple competitors, individual battle cards may actually hinder you more than they will help. You could likely spend a lot of time customizing them for each salesperson that may not be “just right” for his or her situation.
In most circumstances, battle cards don’t provide a good return for the effort that goes into creating them.
The problems with battle cards
- Hard to customize
Battle cards can’t be created to suit each particular deal. They end up being either too specific in scope or too general. A specific battle card is great for one or two deals, but you will always be customizing it for each sales person’s needs. A generic one may not be useful to your sales teams or will put them at a disadvantage in specific competitive situations.
- Version control is challenging
Once you create and publish a battle card, sales teams typically download it and store it on their personal device. They may not frequently check for updates or will modify it for individual uses. This can inhibit the sharing of information, and it can mean that other salespeople will miss out on valuable intelligence.
- Scaling issues
Battle cards do not scale well, particularly in highly competitive industries. If your company has as few as 10 competitors, each with as few as 3 products that can compete in multiple sectors, you are likely creating a lot of battle cards. This makes managing and updating them all pretty much impossible.
- Feedback on success
There is no built-in feedback mechanism on battle cards. A salesperson cannot easily attach feedback or new information to a battle card. They can email the person who created the card, but that email is difficult to track to ensure that the battle card is updated and shared with the rest of the sales team. In most circumstances, battle cards don’t provide a good return for the effort that goes into creating them. @competeiq suggest creating a battle system instead. #SalesEnablement https://ctt.ac/0442c+ Click To Tweet
Here’s why we recommend implementing a battle system
A battle system allows sales teams to get customized information based on particular competitors or products that they are facing in each unique deal.
- It will enable them to see what information has been useful to other salespeople and to attach discussions, feedback, and expansion points on the data.
- It allows them to be sure that they are getting the latest information, from a single easy-to-find location. Perhaps it even delivers all their competitive information right inside Salesforce.com.
- It also allows the content creators to track usage and know which pieces of it are working and which are not.
A battle system replaces a battle card which typically is limited to the information that fits on a single slide, and provides a set of complete competitive data that can be viewed on a single screen—competitive profiles, product and service overviews, sales strategy, pricing, and dynamic product comparisons—all linked to other resources and ways to get help.
This is one of the reasons why we developed the CompeteIQ System. In our experience working with sales teams and competitive teams, we noticed sales teams spending lots of hours customizing battle cards, competitive playbooks, product comparisons, and other content. It’s an inefficient way to work, so we built something better: a battle system that enables companies to compete more effectively and to win deals faster.
So next time you are making or reading a battle card, a how-to-sell document, a product comparison, or any competitive intelligence content—consider if there’s a better way to do your job; a more effective way to make it work, or a smoother way to scale your solution.