Content and campaigns
Walk me through how you’d create a competitive battlecard. What information do you include and how do you keep it current?
Keep the card to one page a rep can scan mid-call. Put when you win and when you lose at the top, then discovery questions that expose the rival’s gaps, the top objections with spoken answers, one proof point, and how the rival prices.
Source it from call recordings and lost deals. Keep it current with a named owner, a date, event triggers, and a quarterly review.
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What a battlecard walkthrough gets scored on
The question has two halves, and most answers spend all their time on the first. What goes on the card shows your judgment about what reps need. How you keep it current shows whether you understand why battlecards fail. Staleness kills more cards than bad design does. A card that was right in March and wrong by June can do more damage than no card, because a rep repeats the wrong fact to a buyer.
Two competencies carry the score, cross-functional influence and market expertise. Influence shows up in sourcing, since the best material lives in call recordings and with top reps, and from getting reps to flag changes. For what makes a card useful to a rep in the moment, see turning competitive intel into battlecards.
What goes on the card and where each piece comes from
| Section | What it holds | Best source |
|---|---|---|
| When we win, when we lose | Two or three lines on the deal types that go each way | Closed-won and closed-lost notes, win-loss interviews |
| Discovery questions | Questions that surface needs where the rival is weak | Top reps and recorded calls from won deals |
| Top objections and answers | The two or three objections heard most, with spoken replies | Call recordings and rep interviews |
| Proof | One customer result a buyer can check | Customer success and case studies |
| How they price | The pricing model and what buyers report paying | Rep reports from deals, review sites |
| Owner and date | Who maintains the card and when it was last checked | You |
Notice what is missing. Company history, funding, and a full feature list rarely help a rep mid-call. The rival’s own website is the weakest source of all, since it was written to win the same argument you are trying to win.
A routine that keeps the battlecard honest
- A named owner per card. Shared ownership with no name attached tends to decay.
- A visible date. Reps trust a card more when they can see it was checked recently.
- Event triggers. A pricing change, a major launch, or a new loss pattern means an update within a week.
- A scheduled review. Quarterly for the top rivals, twice a year for the rest.
- A way for reps to flag changes. One thread or form, with a promise to answer within a set time. When reps see their flags turn into edits, they send more.
- Retirement. Cut cards for rivals who no longer show up in deals.
A spoken walkthrough from a game backend company
“I’d keep it to one page, since a rep glances at it during a call. We sell matchmaking and game servers to mid-size studios, and the rival that shows up most is a larger backend platform. At the top of the card goes a plain statement of when we win and when we lose. We win with studios shipping competitive multiplayer, where latency decides reviews. We lose when a studio wants one vendor for everything, including analytics. Then three discovery questions that expose their gaps, like how the studio plans to handle a launch-day spike in players. Then the two objections we hear most, with answers a rep can say out loud, one proof point from a studio that held steady through a big launch, and a note on how they price. I’d build it from recorded calls and closed-lost notes, and I’d leave out anything I could only find on their website. Each card gets an owner and a date. I’d review the top three rivals every quarter, update within a week of a pricing change, and answer any rep flag within two days.”
Admitting where you lose is the line interviewers remember. It tells them the card came from deals, and that reps will trust it. Reps already know where they lose, and they notice when a card pretends otherwise.
Where battlecard walkthroughs go wrong
“I’d make it comprehensive. Company overview, funding and leadership, product features compared line by line, strengths and weaknesses, pricing tiers, target customers, recent news, and objection handling. I’d store it in our enablement tool and update it whenever they launch something.”
Every section can be defended, and together they make a document no rep will read mid-call. The maintenance plan, updating on launches, misses the changes that matter most, such as a new loss pattern that never appears in a launch post. Cut to what a rep needs in thirty seconds, source it from deals, and describe a routine with an owner and a date.
Follow-ups on building a battlecard
| Question | What sits behind it | Reply |
|---|---|---|
| How do you get honest input on where you lose? | Access to hard evidence | Read closed-lost notes, listen to lost calls, and ask reps one on one, since few will admit losses in a group |
| A rival changes pricing mid-quarter. What happens? | Whether the routine works under pressure | The trigger fires, the owner updates the card within a week, and reps with open deals hear about it directly |
| How many battlecards is too many? | Focus | More than reps can remember exist. Most teams need deep cards for two or three rivals and a short note for the rest. |
| How do you know reps use the card? | Measurement | Listen for its lines on recorded calls and watch win rate against that rival over a few quarters |
More questions in this category
Frequently asked questions
- Should a battlecard admit where we lose?
- Yes. Reps already know where they lose, and a card that hides it loses their trust quickly. Pair each weak spot with a way to handle it.
- Who should own battlecards, PMM or sales enablement?
- Usually PMM owns the content, and a named sales partner checks that the language works. Enablement often owns where cards live and how reps are trained on them. What matters most is that one person’s name is on each card.
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