Unlock Sales Success: The Ultimate Guide to Sales Battle Cards

This article is a guide to sales battle cards, explaining how they can help sales teams succeed. It covers what they are, why they are important, how to create them, and different types of battle cards available.

What Are Battle Cards?

They are reference guides designed to help salespeople do their jobs better. Think of them as cheat sheets. The visual aids contain vital information about your company, such as competitors, product features and customers. A battle card arms sales representatives with essential details that help them sell products and services effectively.

Thanks to these cheat sheets, the sales team is always ready to answer questions or address concerns sufficiently. When well done and employed correctly, battle cards make sales professionals more confident. The tools promote preparedness.

Salespeople don’t have to guess when customers confront them. Using the information on the cards, sales professionals know the right things to say to connect with buyers and close deals.

Battle cards give your personnel an edge, allowing them to handle competition with ease. Although the tools largely focus on selling against certain competitors, they can accomplish various other goals, as you will learn later in this guide.

Why Should Your Sales Team Use Battle Cards?

Sales battle cards sound like must-haves for your business, and they are, for several reasons. These tools make work less complicated for salespeople, regardless of their experience. Whether you have seasoned professionals or fresh talent looking for growth opportunities on your team, battle cards can make a big difference in how they approach their duties.

Provide Competitive Advantage

You can always expect a sales battlecard template to have a competitor category, with details about a particular rival. As sales experts are out there trying to get customers, they have to contend with other companies with similar offerings. Critical information about these competitors gives your team an advantage it can leverage when pitching to potential buyers.

However, professionals might not always have the time to follow what several different rivals are up to. A well-designed battle card highlights a competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, enabling your salespeople to answer questions about rival products or services.

This 2021 Competitive Intelligence Report states that 71% of businesses have experienced enhanced sales victories as a result of utilizing sales battlecards.

Boost Efficiency

During interactions, battle card simplifies work for sales reps. When customers or prospects ask questions, all it takes is referencing the guide to see how to respond. It saves time by availing key information to salespeople when engaging with customers. If a potential customer wants to learn certain things about a product, a salesperson doesn’t have to spend time searching for the correct details.

According to WebStrategies, when you provide your reps with sales battle cards outlining proper protocols, they can effectively handle customer objections, resulting in a success rate of 64%.

Make Better Pitches

When sales teams are trying to convince prospective customers to spend money, their pitches must be compelling enough. Battle cards make this possible. With the information at hand, sales representatives can make their case to buyers. By ensuring your personnel is well prepared before going out to meet customers, you give them a fighting chance against the competition.

Due to the ability of sales battle cards to be customised, you can provide information about different buyer personas, allowing the team to approach each prospect as necessary.

Improve Customer Engagement

The way sales reps interact with customers influences their success. Today’s consumers look for meaningful conversations, not just marketing messages. Sales teams can provide what customers require if they understand what that is.

For example, a battle card can offer details, such as the product used and the current challenges with that item. Using this data, a salesperson can have an informed discussion with a customer and get vital feedback that will help your brand make the required changes.

Reduce Training Time

Another way to make the most out of sales battle cards is by using them when onboarding new employees. The tools are perfect for giving new members insights into what the existing team does. Consider a fill-in-the-blank battle card template as a blueprint of how your salespeople work.

When new workers have this, then they know the tactics used to deal with competitors and customers. With the roadmap laid out, it takes less time to onboard new professionals than if they were working with a blank slate.

Your sales team’s performance is integral to the bottom line. 

Successful sales representatives help drive revenue. However, with the competition your business faces, this achievement is not always smooth sailing. Your salespeople must juggle various duties to keep up with rivals.

Answering customer questions, staying up-to-date with competitors’ features, and pitching to prospective buyers are a few of the sales team’s responsibilities. The right sales tools make all the difference. They give your representatives an advantage by acting as guides while handling various tasks.

With the proper use of battle cards, your salespeople can stand out from the competition. If you are considering incorporating battle cards into your sales strategy for the first time, then learn a few fundamentals of how the tools work. As with any arsenal in your business-running toolkit, sales battle cards are only effective if you know how to use them.

How to Create the Perfect Sales Battle Card Template?

You know the difference that sales battle cards could make in your business. How do you create one, though? With the numerous battle card templates out there, knowing what works and what doesn’t will help you pick the most suitable option for your business. The Gong battle card template is one way to give your salespeople a competitive advantage, regardless of the sector you are in.

When it comes to fill-in-the-blank battle cards, you must be careful to find a template that offers the necessary talking points and company data. Note that the information provided should be helpful. Here’s what to factor in when creating or customising a battle card template for your team.

Define Your Needs

No two sales teams are the same. Even different professionals in the same company will have varied approaches to dealing with customers and competitors. So, identifying the specific needs of a particular sales team lets you know what to include in the templates.

Talk to your team to learn about the challenges they deal with in the field. Using templates saves you the trouble of coming up with a sales battle card from scratch.

Set Goals

Why are you getting battle cards for your sales reps? Are you aiming to increase sales? Improve customer engagement? Decrease onboarding time for trainees? The issues your salespeople talked about will guide you in establishing objectives.

For example, the goal for your latest battle card can be to boost sales of a new product by 10%. Objectives tell you if the tool is working as it should.

Choose Categories

The information you intend to have on a battle card determines how to segment it. These topics should address the customer pain points, product strengths and competitor details, among other information. Categories can change from card to card as per use case.

Update Content Regularly

Sales battle cards are only useful if they provide the latest information. Over time, your products or services change. The same goes for your rivals. Therefore, you need to update battle cards constantly to ensure the entire team is working with current content.

Effective sales battle cards are concise and clear. Even when comprehensive, they offer easy-to-follow details. Given that your team will need to access the cards often, and sometimes briefly, the guides should be simple. Visuals can help liven up battle cards. However, they shouldn’t be so distracting that they take away the tool’s primary value.

Which Battle Cards Does Your Team Require?

Although a few things are standard, battle cards are not all the same. They depend on need. Hence, the battle card template for a competitor is different from a product’s. If you wish to leverage the full power of sales battle cards, then you must be ready to invest in the right tools. The following are the main battle cards for sales teams that you can consider getting for your business.

Competitor Battle Cards

Given that every brand strives to be better than its rivals, it’s not surprising that the competitor battle card is the most common. It can contain details about one or several competitors. Products, pricing and customer profiles are some details you can find on this cheat sheet.

The point is to provide the salespeople with crucial information on a rival to use to convince customers why you are a better alternative. You must conduct competitor research and analysis to create an effective battle card.

Product Battle Cards

Sales reps do well when they know what they are talking about. If your salespeople can’t answer basic questions about your product or service, then they are likely to fail. Product battle cards have details like features, price and benefits of a particular item.

You can have one or multiple products on a card. A comprehensive battle card will also explain what problem the product solves. Why should a customer buy that item? Use cases help drive the point home. Tell consumers how your product dies differently than the competition.

Service Cancellation Battle Cards

If you provide subscription services, then you must invest in these tools. You should know why a customer decided to do away with your offerings. A service cancellation battle card can get feedback on a customer’s experience.

Find the pain points in your service and the solutions customers recommend. Salespeople can use the information they have to convince subscribers to renew their contracts, or at least, not cancel.

Objection-Handling Battle Cards

Sales teams in all industries face objections. The best way to deal with them is to know how to counter them. Battle cards can prepare your employees by showing them common objections and the best way to respond. With the correct strategies, sales reps can address concerns and hesitation from customers.

If it’s your first time using sales battle cards, then you must give your team time to get familiar with the tools. Although they might appear simple, battle cards can be difficult to adapt. So, train employees on the benefits of sales battle cards and how to capitalise on them effectively.

Battle cards are essential tools for sales teams that can help your experts grow the business.