The Ultimate Guide for Creating the BEST Sales Battle Cards
In this dynamic arena of cut-throat competition in the B2B SaaS world, every step taken is a tactical dance to convert a prospect into a client. The representatives in the digital sales room face various difficulties in standing out against their competitors.
There can be numerous unknown factors among competitors’ service offerings, strengths, weaknesses, sales strategies, testimonials, market differentiators, and so on. Any of these factors can prove to be a threat if left unacknowledged. Even a tiny piece of information about the competitors can make a great difference.
Unveiling the Power of Sales Battle Cards in the B2B SaaS World
A sales battle card is a tiny cheat sheet that holds powerful insights and strategies to better understand the competitors and thus, win over potential clients. These are like ‘secret scrolls’ that help sales representatives reach treasured clients in this daring marketplace. Your B2B SaaS world is nearly incomplete and of no use without it.
Once you get the hang of utilizing them to their maximum potential, sales battle cards can be extremely beneficial. They are not meant to be just ‘filled up’. These need to be filled up with extremely concise and crucial information. The goal should be to curate such amazing battlecards that the digital sales room can’t operate without.
Significance of Sales Battle Cards for Success
The importance of sales battlecards stems from their ability to provide virtual sales rooms with the information and resources they need to surpass the competition and convert prospects into clients. They work as a valuable tool for sales enablement and sales acceleration.
Sales battle cards strengthen a business’s overall competitiveness by allowing sales teams to establish the unique value proposition of their services, overcome challenges, and present the organization as a market leader, encouraging success amid intense competition.
A Step-by-Step Guide to Create Your Customized Sales Battle Cards
It may be a lot of work to do to create various sales battle cards from scratch, but it is worth all the effort. This step beforehand will cause you a lot less work during the actual client interaction. Let’s work out the step-by-step process of creating your customized Sales Battle Cards.
Make a Choice for the Template
A sales battle card template is a pre-designed framework that showcases vital information in an intricately structured format that comes in handy for the digital sales room. Many people like to build an extremely customized template, all from scratch while some are satisfied with the ready-to-use ones. Its goal is to facilitate the sales team with the necessary required details that may help them with sales acceleration and conversion of prospective customers into clients.
Here are some steps that will lead you better:
- Firstly, include a header with the name and logo of the company.
- Make a brief introduction with an overview of the purpose of the particular sales battle card.
- Mention with whom it is concerned i.e. a virtual sales team or a sales executive or a sales manager.
- Mention its fundamental features like product/service offerings along with the benefits that make it exceptional to the users.
- Mention the pain points or needs of the customers that are addressed by the benefits products/services.
- Make a note of the competitor concerning the particular product/service along with their SWOT analysis.
- Consider the most common objections and write the effective ways of handling them. Be concise but clear.
- Mention relevant success stories with the particular product/service of their interest.
- Add important data and visuals that can be helpful.
- Finally, add an impressive and catchy line for CTA.
- Do remember to update these points regularly after consulting your sales team.
However, you need to go through all the other points as well, to get a comprehensive understanding of everything you need.
Choose Your Categories
Throwing light on the areas where your company and your services/products outshine your competitors in the B2B SaaS universe. It helps the sales reps team emphasize the hurdles you’ve overcome so far along with the competitors you’ve already outshone.
Here are some of the categories that you may want to mention excelling in front of your clients.
- Features
- Quality of Product/Service
- Value/Benefit Provided
- Affordable Price Listings
- Marketing Relevance
- Market Presence
- Discounts and Coupons
- 24*7 Customer Support
- High Personalization
This is your place to shine light from beneath their cracked armor. However, it is equally important to be completely transparent and honest with your customers. Too many negatives or positives can flicker their trust in you.
Layers of Competitive Analysis
The more your digital sales rooms know about your competitor’s portrait, the better. A competitor portrait consists of diverse layers of multifaceted elements just like an enemy territory. To unravel the strata of information, various steps of analysis are needed.
Begin your evaluation by superficially overviewing their websites. Understand the crux of their existence by being clear about who they are and what they offer. Sales Battle Cards helps sales reps to identify the key competitors and differentiate between direct and indirect competitors as well.
It assists in gathering and comparing information among various competitors including their products, services, pricing, target market, strengths, weaknesses, key differentiators, and market share. It assists sales reps in anticipating the potential objections to which clear responses and counterarguments can be provided.
Strengths and Weaknesses
Take a closer look into the competitor’s attributes which set them apart from other B2B SaaS brands. Discover what makes them unique, whether it’s a strong brand image, a wide variety of products, or technological expertise. Besides, draw attention to the places where they may struggle or falter — the cracks in their armor.
Market Visibility
Analyze the impact every competitor has on the market. Examine their strong areas, geographical coverage, and stake in the market. Assessing the extent of their existence helps with the detection of prospective openings for market penetration.
Viewer Engagement
Discover all the elements that make up the backing of these devoted customers. Examine customer retention tactics, loyalty schemes, and signs of maintaining long-term customer interaction.
This information let us know what additionally helps them to keep up with the customer’s attention span. Loyal customers play a pivotal role in sales acceleration and understanding competitors’ mechanism of retaining may prove to be a jackpot for you.
Sales Strategies
Explore the multiple set channels that each competitor is utilizing. Stalk all their social media, i.e. Instagram, Twitter, Threads Facebook & LinkedIn. Notice what are they posting? Are they indulged in some Q&A sessions? Are they sharing some infographics or other types of valuable content? Evaluate the basis of their content strategies, resources, and thus, all of their sales acceleration
Then, do the same to evaluate the magic behind their email marketing. Analyze the frequency and content of the emails and newsletters. Discover what kind of email they send- promotional, informative, or personalized messages.
Besides, the most important part, inspect their deal-closing tactics, price negotiation strategies, customer support service, post-purchase surveys/feedback, and objection/criticism handling techniques. This fresh insight can serve as a guide as they hone their own sales techniques, adjust to market changes, and create tactics that appeal to their target market.
Feedback & Testimonials
Research consumer testimonies, feedback channels, success stories, applauses, grievances, resolutions, and internet reviews to see what people are saying about all of the competitors.
Analyze what are the elements that are being liked or disliked from their perspectives. Are clients complimenting them or are there frequent complaints? The client base as a whole provides a clear picture of where your competitors stand.
Understand Your Audience Better
Considering your target audience has to be the first and foremost step in this journey. Sales enablement is intertwined with the idea of personalizing the content of various sales battle cards as per the target audience. It is crucial as the relevance and functionality of cards regarding their users will determine how useful these are.
Knowing and understanding your audience before crafting the sales battle cards is the only smart move. Create comprehensive buyer personas that describe your ideal consumers. These personas should include details of their jobs, responsibilities, challenges, objectives, and decision-making processes. Each persona’s particular attributes should be addressed in the sales battle cards.
By prioritizing audience, sales teams can customize the content of their battlecards to directly engage with the requirements, pain points, and goals of the targeted customers. The productivity of the engagement during sales interaction is enhanced by this modification.
Prioritise Relevance of Battle Cards
A sales battle card that works for a frontline sales representative who deals with one set of prospective clients group may consist of more concise and highly accurate information which may differ from another sales team dealing with a completely different set of customers.
Additionally, higher designation personnel like sales executives or managers may require in-depth insights for strategic planning. Tailoring battle cards to meet the specific needs of each virtual sales room ensures that they receive the most appropriate and actionable information.
Now You Are All Locked and Loaded
Equipping your virtual sales rooms with highly personalized battle cards is the most strategic move towards winning a battle among all your B2B SaaS competitors. These are the weapons that you need to use tactically at all stages.
Designing great sales battlecards is a challenging and evolving process that involves teamwork, adaptation, and a dedication to constant development. Your business may equip its sales force to tackle challenging selling circumstances with confidence and competence by following the crucial steps suggested in this guide.
FAQs
- Why are sales battle cards so important?
Sales battle cards act as a quick reference snippet for your sales team who are helps them close a deal faster with wittily anticipated doubts and objections. It helps understand your competitors as well as customers better.
2. How often should one update the sales battle cards?
Regular updates are a part of the process. It helps the sales team to keep improving with the improving competitors. It also loosens the burden of your extremely busy sales team of regularly self-checking various competitors’ profiles.
3. Who should be involved in updating sales battle cards?
Collaboration among departments is indispensable. To obtain and modify information, sales, marketing, product management, and customer support teams should collaborate. Frequent feedback from frontline sales reps is extremely necessary.
4. Which one is better: digital or physical sales battle cards?
Each one has its advantages. While digital sales battle cards are extremely easy to customize and update, physical ones are a set of better reminders.
5. Does competitive intelligence play a role in sales battle cards?
Yes, it aids the sales reps team to better understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of particular competitors. And it also helps to position your brand better.
