Let’s cut to the chase: A sales battlecard is an internal document, typically a one-page cheat sheet, of high-value talking points created specifically to help your sales team close deals. On a high level, sales battlecards should:

  • Be easy to skim on the fly during conversations with prospects
  • Include responses to common objections and frequently asked questions
  • Focus on your company’s most impactful value propositions
  • Provide facts and statistics to back up your claims
  • Be used by your entire sales team to ensure consistency

A battlecard is not …

  • A long-form script
  • Based on opinions
  • Set in stone after the first draft
  • To be used once in a while

Traditionally, battlecards have been viewed as sales tools for aggressively selling against a specific competitor. Although this is a common use for battlecards, there are other applications that may be a better fit for your sales team:

  • Comprehensive
  • Product/Service-specific
  • Partnership-specific
  • Persona-specific
  • Challenge-specific

Let’s look at what goes into creating this sales enablement resource.

How to Make a Sales Battlecard

1. Talk to your salespeople and sales leaders about their needs.

Before you can create a new battlecard, you need a clear idea of what sales challenge you are looking to address. Here are some common challenges you could help diagnose and handle:

  • Your newest salespeople needing guidance on your overall competitive advantage and value propositions
  • Sales reps having a hard time selling against a specific competitor
  • The details and benefits of a new product, feature set, or service being complex or difficult to describe
  • Your prospects not understanding the value of your partnerships or integrations
  • Your team struggling to break into a new market

2. Set a goal.

On a basic level, a battlecard is a sales tool that empowers sales to close deals. Based on the challenges you uncovered above, what sales goals can you set to monetize your battlecard’s performance? Some examples include:

  • Increase contract value by 5%
  • Increase upsell success for new products/services by 10%
  • Bring in 7 new customers per quarter from a specific vertical
  • Lose 15% fewer deals to a specific competitor

3. Collect details.

No one person or department should be the gatekeeper of your battlecards. Rather, you should collaborate with sales, marketing, customer service, and operations/product subject-matter experts to collect information. You will need input from these different roles to maximize the impact of your message.

For example, the sales team can provide insight on common questions asked by prospects; the operational or product team can provide insight on capabilities; and the marketing team can provide insight on high-converting value propositions.

When gathering information for your battlecard, explore the following:

  • Customer profile(s) and persona details
  • Product/service overview
  • Wow factor features/offerings
  • Top pain points you solve
  • Common prospect “aha” moments
  • Top objections from prospects
  • Pricing details
  • Competitor-specific talking points
  • Unique value proposition(s)
  • Relevant case study or use case details
  • Weaknesses or potential drawbacks

4. Draft messaging.

After you’ve collected all the information to meet your sales team’s needs, it’s time to begin writing the messaging for the battlecard. Your sales team will use this document to prepare for sales calls and refer to it during talks with potential clients, so make sure your messaging is clear and concise.

Here are some best practices for battlecard messaging:

  • Use bullets: This will help reps quickly find the details they need in a pinch. Although this is an internal document, skip jargon and marketing-centric headers. Use phrases like “top features,” “pricing,” “customer stats.”
  • Keep it conversational: Give reps the ability to read straight off the battlecard with messaging written in your brand’s style, tone, and voice.
  • Base messaging on persona needs: Anticipate your personas’ expectations and expertise when you choose certain terminology (for example: highly technical terminology versus benefits-focused terminology).
  • Back claims up with evidence: Using case studies, customer quotes, and performance metrics will make your value propositions more persuasive.

5. Design a template.

Creating a consistent layout that can be used or adapted for your battlecards will support your sales team’s adoption of battlecards. Why? Because they’ll know where to find particular information. For example: If your pricing details are always in the top right corner, your sales team will be able to answer pricing questions faster because they won’t have to hunt for the information they need.

Here are some best practices for battlecard design:

  • Limit it to one page: This will prevent reps from needing to scroll or click through a document during conversations with prospects.
  • Clearly separate sections and use obvious headers: This will help reps quickly find the information they need to answer a prospect’s question.
  • Brand it: Using your brand’s fonts and colors will help make your battlecards feel more official and convey the importance of the document to your team.

How to Use a Battlecard

Setting clear expectations with your sales team about how, when, and why to use your new battlecard is critical to its success.

Your sales managers should help determine your own best practices for using a specific battlecard. Sales reps commonly use battlecards in two ways:

  1. To prepare for sales prospecting calls
  2. To reference during sales calls

The key is to train your sales team. Training should include mock sales calls with leadership to test the accessibility and ease of use. You should strongly consider any requests for design changes that the sales team makes during training.

Follow these best practices to ensure successful use of your battlecard:

  • Make it easily accessible: Store your battlecard somewhere the sales team already spends their time. Typically, the best option is within your CRM where salespeople take notes and update lead records. If your team has to dig to find the battlecard in messy shared folders or, even worse, their desktops, it may be hard to get the team to fully adopt your battlecard as part of their process.
  • Track usage: Consider using a tool such as HubSpot Documents to track stats like number of opens to get an idea of how often the battlecard is used.
  • Make updates regularly: Your battlecards are not perfect. Over time, you may find that there are better value propositions, new company details, or different competitors that require updates to your messaging. This document should evolve with your sales team’s confidence, abilities, and goals.