One competitor on one page: where you win, where you lose, and what a rep should say.
A battle card is the page a rep opens two minutes before a call where a competitor's name will come up. The sample sets a made-up software company against one rival. The claims on yours have to come from your own lost deals and the other vendor's real price page.
Who it's for
Product marketers and sales leads whose reps keep asking what to say when the buyer brings up the other vendor. Write it from win and loss notes, once one competitor turns up in a good share of your deals.
It's the wrong tool for a market overview. Six competitors on one page means six thin columns no rep can use mid-call, so make one card per rival. It's also internal: the link never goes into a deal thread.
What a good one contains
- A line to say out loud. The example opens with a sentence a rep can use word for word, then an instruction: lead with job costing, don't fight on breadth.
- A table where the rival wins some rows. Eight rows, and Stonecourse takes two. A card where you win everything reads as marketing, and reps stop trusting the rest.
- Prices with the date you checked. The competitor's figures carry a note: from their public pricing page, checked Nov 2.
- Where you lose, with words for it. Two losses come with a "Say" line. The third has a "Do": past 60 staff, tell a named colleague or let the deal go.
- Questions that expose the gap. Five, each with a short note underneath. Once the buyer has said "at month end" themselves, no feature claim is needed.
- Objections answered as speech. One or two sentences each. The discount answer does the math: 20% off is still $1,182 a month.
- Proof with names and numbers. The win rate against this rival, two customers with one figure each, and which of them takes reference calls.
- What not to say. Three lines, starting with a false claim about the rival's mobile app.
Who keeps it right
A battle card goes stale the day the competitor changes a price. Put an owner, a date and a review date at the top, as the example does. When a rep hears something new on a call, the owner replaces the page and everyone's bookmark shows the new version.
Before it goes out, give it to your best rep and your newest. If the first says "we don't lose on that," or the second can't find the discount answer in ten seconds, fix it. One wrong fact about the competitor gets repeated to a buyer who knows better.
How to send it
To named people. It says where you lose and what reps tell buyers about a rival. Limit it to your company's domain, because sooner or later someone pastes the link into a deal thread.
Every page you publish gets one link that opens in any browser. You choose who can open it: anyone with the link, anyone with the password, or only the people and company domains you name, who sign in with Google or Microsoft. Change the page later and the link stays the same.
