Most Battlecards Suck. Make Yours Unstoppable.

From stale PFDs to strategic weapons. How to build battlecards your reps actually want.

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Imagine a quarterback entering the season's most important game without ever seeing the playbook. He doesn’t know what the defense is likely to do, where the gaps exist, or how to execute the best play in that moment. Essentially, he’s playing blind, and nobody wants that. The likely result? Fumbles, interceptions, and quite possibly, a season-ending loss.

But sales and marketing teams do this every day. If you aren’t providing competitive battlecards to your AEs, you’re asking them to figure out how to position against the competition on their own and hope for the best. Battlecards provide just-in-time intel to help AEs win competitive deals.

As competitive pressure increases across industries, battlecards have become essential. Having the right battlecard at the right moment can make the difference between winning and losing. But here’s the catch: just because you create them doesn’t mean your sales team will use them.

Reps will only use battlecards if they are up-to-date, easy to find and understand, and filled with insights they can actually use. If the information is stale, hard to access, or worse, wrong, they’re out. AEs want to win. They’ll use the tools that help them do that, and competitive battlecards should be one of those tools.

Battlecards: Your Strategic Secret Weapon

As sales cycles grow longer, buying committees get larger, and new competitors enter the arena, battlecards are more critical than ever. Marketers have worked hard to build awareness, create demand, and ensure the market knows who we are. But that work doesn't matter if sales can’t close. We need to ensure they have the tools necessary to win each deal.

So, what is a battlecard?

A battlecard is a concise, strategic tool that equips sales reps with key intel about the competition. They provide fast access to information AEs need to confidently answer questions and handle objections.

What a battlecard typically includes:

• Key features and benefits of your product

• Key features and benefits of your competitors’ products

• Common objections and how to handle them

• Competitor-specific talk tracks

• Landmines: How to set and respond to them

• Proof points to validate your claims

When done well, battlecards have been shown to increase win rates by up to 30%*

Without effective battlecards, your sales team may struggle to articulate your unique value or counter the FUD competitors spread. That means lost deals, longer cycles, and frustrated reps.

Battlecards: The Underdog in the Product Marketing Toolkit

Despite their value, battlecards are often misunderstood and underused. Why? Because they’re too often treated like a checkbox. Created once, dumped into a sales enablement folder, maybe trained on, and then never updated. Because they aren’t fresh and easy to use, your AE’s won’t leverage them, especially when the stakes are high and time is tight.

Here’s how I address that:

1. Build them as decision-support tools. Think about UX and how the information is being presented. Can the AE scan it in 30 seconds and get what they need? If not, start over.

2. Focus on real rep needs. Ensure your battlecards aren’t too vague or go too deep into the product. I’ve seen battlecards that feature a complex feature comparison matrix that only a product marketer could love. Others are so high-level they miss the point. Find a happy medium. Interview your sellers. Ask them: “When you’re up against Competitor X, where do you get stuck?” Build your battlecards around those moments.

3. Assign ownership. Sometimes battlecard creation, training, and updates fall into this no man’s land between product marketing, sales enablement (if product marketing doesn’t own), and rev ops. As a result, battlecards are created and then orphaned. Make someone accountable for keeping battlecards updated and tied to pipeline and closed business impact.

4. Match battlecards to how reps think. Your reps don’t need a card for every product. They need one for every competitive situation. So build your battlecards by rep need, for example, “when I’m up against Competitor X in this vertical with this use case, what do I say?”

5. Tie them to revenue. Battlecards can sometimes be seen as tactical and internal, without connecting the dots to closed won. This is a miss. When done right, battlecards absolutely move the needle. Track usage and win rates. Use them in call coaching and measure their impact.

6. Use call recordings to inform content. Most companies leverage tools to record AE calls. Whether notetaking apps, basic call recording for training, or even AI apps, calls are recorded and generally available for review. Spend time listening to those calls. Understand where AEs struggle, and produce the battlecards to help them get past any challenges.

7. Train your team. It’s not simply enough to create them and hope they are used. You need to train your sales team on how and when to use them. Do a small focus group with your trusted AE advisors first, get feedback, make changes, and then train them to effectively use the content.

Battlecards are underutilized because they’re misunderstood. When done right, they build confidence, reduce ramp time, sharpen positioning, and win deals. But only if we treat them like the strategic asset they are.

Ready to Build Your Battlecards?

Done right, battlecard content is the most consumable and actionable competitive content you can create (ignoring that you may have a competitive Slack channel). Using a consistent, repeatable battlecard structure to organize your competitive intelligence is the first step to success. I use the Fact, Impact, Act (FIA) framework:

Fact: Competitive truth. A feature gap, price discrepancy, or missed capability. These statements alone won’t win the deal, however, they set the groundwork for the next step.

Impact: Why it matters. What that fact means to your customer. In this section, you are sharing the impact of the competitive insights. This context sets up the sales team to drive home the value of your solution.

Act: What to do or say. Guide your AEs with what to do, say, or show their prospects to reinforce the intel and leverage it to win. Use talk tracks and follow the prompt, follow-up, and validate approach.

Facts alone don’t tell the whole story, and when you provide some context, you get a bit closer. To win against the competition, you’ll need to provide your AEs with facts with context, the impact of that context, and enable your team with actions to win deals.

With that framework in mind, you can start the process of building your battlecard.

How to Build:

1. Know your audience. Who are you creating battlecards for? Are they for the BDR/SDR team to use in early qualification calls? Or for your best AE who might need more in-depth information or strategic positioning?

2. Source your intel. Review publicly available information via the competitors’ websites, social media, and PR accounts. Read their news and articles about them. Hit up G2, Reddit, and TrustPilot to read what customers and prospects reveal there. Check out Glassdoor to understand what employees and others are sharing about the competitor. Look at your CRM for information. Listen to call recordings. Scrub your win/loss interview transcripts. And talk to your internal teams. Note: I do not encourage my teams to go through the sales cycle as a fake prospect with a competitor. While others may do this, I don’t like this practice and don’t condone it. There are firms you can hire to do this, and that is fine. But asking an employee to do it crosses a line for me.

3. Tell a story. Don’t just use bullets. Use the FIA framework to create a compelling, memorable narrative.

4. Test before rollout. Every product marketer has a trusted group of AEs they work with to uncover insights and test messaging/positioning. Use those advisors to test your battlecard before making it publicly available.

How AI is Transforming Battlecards

AI is revolutionizing how we build and use battlecards. Here is how smart teams are leveraging AI today:

1. Auto-Generated Intel

AI tools can help monitor competitor websites, news, pricing changes, and reviews. Based on this information, you can automatically generate first drafts of battlecards based on pre-defined formats. Tools you may want to use include Klue, Crayon, and Kompyte.

2. Real-Time Enablement

Creating PDFs that live in a folder on a drive may not be the best solution. Modern sales enablement platforms now listen to live or recorded calls, detect when a competitor is mentioned, and surface just-in-time guidance the exact moment your AE needs it. Tools include Gong, Chorus, Salesroom , and Regie.ai.

3. Personalized Battlecards

Using CRM data and engagement tools, AI can dramatically tailor battlecards based on industry, persona, stage of deal, and known competitors in pipeline. Vendors include Highspot and Allego.

The future of competitive enablement isn’t a static PDF. It’s an AI-powered co-pilot that listens in and helps your reps say the right thing, at the right time.

Final Thoughts

Your AEs don’t need more content. They need the right intel at the right moment. Battlecards, when built and deployed with intention, can be the strategic weapon that tilts competitive deals in your favor.

So stop checking the box. Start building battlecards that win. And if you need a template or want someone to pressure test your battlecards, reach out to me today.

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