This article is a guide to sales battle cards, explaining how they may help sales teams succeed. It covers what they’re, why they’re necessary, how to create them, and several types of battle cards available.
What Are Battle Cards?
They are reference guides designed to help salespeople do their jobs higher. Think of them as cheat sheets. The visual aids contain vital details about your organization, akin to competitors, product features and customers. A battle card arms sales representatives with essential details that help them sell services and products effectively.
Thanks to these cheat sheets, the sales team is all the time ready to answer questions or address concerns sufficiently. When well done and employed appropriately, battle cards make sales professionals more confident. The tools promote preparedness.
Salespeople don’t have to guess when customers confront them. Using the knowledge on the cards, sales professionals know the precise things to say to connect with buyers and shut deals.
Battle cards give your personnel an edge, allowing them to handle competition with ease. Although the tools largely give attention to selling against certain competitors, they’ll accomplish various other goals, as you’ll learn later on this guide.
Why Should Your Sales Team Use Battle Cards?
Sales battle cards sound like must-haves for your enterprise, they usually are, for several reasons. These tools make work easier for salespeople, no matter their experience. Whether you’ve seasoned professionals or fresh talent on the lookout for growth opportunities in your team, battle cards could make an enormous difference in how they approach their duties.
Provide Competitive Advantage
You can all the time expect a sales battlecard template to have a competitor category, with details about a specific rival. As sales experts are on the market trying to get customers, they’ve to contend with other corporations with similar offerings. Critical details about these competitors gives your team a bonus it may leverage when pitching to potential buyers.
However, professionals may not all the time 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 on rival services or products.
This 2021 Competitive Intelligence Report states that 71% of companies have experienced enhanced sales victories because of this 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 possible customer wants to learn certain things a couple of product, a salesman doesn’t have to spend time looking for the right details.
According to WebStrategies, if you provide your reps with sales battle cards outlining proper protocols, they’ll effectively handle customer objections, leading to successful rate of 64%.
Make Better Pitches
When sales teams try to persuade prospective customers to spend money, their pitches have to be compelling enough. Battle cards make this possible. With the knowledge at hand, sales representatives could make their case to buyers. By ensuring your personnel is well prepared before going out to meet customers, you give them a fighting probability against the competition.
Due to the power of sales battle cards to be customised, you may provide details about different buyer personas, allowing the team to approach each prospect as vital.
Improve Customer Engagement
The way sales reps interact with customers influences their success. Today’s consumers search for meaningful conversations, not only marketing messages. Sales teams can provide what customers require in the event that they understand what that’s.
For example, a battle card can offer details, akin to the product used and the present challenges with that item. Using this data, a salesman can have an informed discussion with a customer and get vital feedback that can help your brand make the required changes.
Reduce Training Time
Another way to make essentially the most out of sales battle cards is through the use of them when onboarding latest employees. The tools are perfect for giving latest members insights into what the present team does. Consider a fill-in-the-blank battle card template as a blueprint of how your salespeople work.
When latest staff have this, then they know the tactics used to cope with competitors and customers. With the roadmap laid out, it takes less time to onboard latest professionals than in the event that they were working with a blank slate.
Your sales team’s performance is integral to the underside line.
Successful sales representatives help drive revenue. However, with the competition your enterprise faces, this achievement will not be all the time smooth sailing. Your salespeople must juggle various duties to sustain with rivals.
Answering customer questions, staying up-to-date with competitors’ features, and pitching to prospective buyers are a couple of of the sales team’s responsibilities. The right sales tools make all of the difference. They give your representatives a bonus by acting as guides while handling various tasks.
With the correct use of battle cards, your salespeople can stand out from the competition. If you might be considering incorporating battle cards into your sales strategy for the primary time, then learn a couple of fundamentals of how the tools work. As with any arsenal in your business-running toolkit, sales battle cards are only effective in the event you understand 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 enterprise. How do you create one, though? With the various battle card templates on the market, knowing what works and what doesn’t will allow you to pick the best option for your enterprise. The Gong battle card template is a method to give your salespeople a competitive advantage, whatever the sector you might be in.
When it comes to fill-in-the-blank battle cards, it’s essential to watch out to discover a template that provides the vital talking points and company data. Note that the knowledge provided must be helpful. Here’s what to think about when creating or customising a battle card template to your team.
Define Your Needs
No two sales teams are the identical. Even different professionals in the identical company can have varied approaches to coping with customers and competitors. So, identifying the particular needs of a specific sales team lets what to include within the templates.
Talk to your team to learn in regards to the challenges they cope with in the sphere. Using templates saves you the difficulty of coming up with a sales battle card from scratch.
Set Goals
Why are you getting battle cards to 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 to your latest battle card could be to boost sales of a latest product by 10%. Objectives inform you if the tool is working because it should.
Choose Categories
The information you plan to have on a battle card determines how to segment it. These topics should address the client pain points, product strengths and competitor details, amongst other information. Categories can change from card to card as per use case.
Update Content Regularly
Sales battle cards are only useful in the event that they provide the newest information. Over time, your services or products change. The same goes to your rivals. Therefore, you wish to update battle cards continuously to ensure your complete team is working with current content.
Effective sales battle cards are concise and clear. Even when comprehensive, they provide easy-to-follow details. Given that your team will need to access the cards often, and sometimes briefly, the guides must be easy. Visuals may help enliven 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 couple of things are standard, battle cards will not be all the identical. They depend upon need. Hence, the battle card template for a competitor is different from a product’s. If you would like to leverage the total power of sales battle cards, then it’s essential to be ready to put money into the precise tools. The following are the important battle cards for sales teams that you could consider getting for your enterprise.
Competitor Battle Cards
Given that each brand strives to be higher than its rivals, it’s not surprising that the competitor battle card is essentially the most common. It can contain details about one or several competitors. Products, pricing and customer profiles are some details yow will discover on this cheat sheet.
The point is to provide the salespeople with crucial information on a rival to use to persuade customers why you might be a greater alternative. You must conduct competitor research and evaluation to create an efficient battle card.
Product Battle Cards
Sales reps do well after they know what they’re talking about. If your salespeople can’t answer basic questions on your services or products, then they’re likely to fail. Product battle cards have details like features, price and advantages of a specific item.
You can have one or multiple products on a card. A comprehensive battle card may also explain what problem the product solves. Why should a customer buy that item? Use cases help drive the purpose home. Tell consumers how your product dies in another way than the competition.
Service Cancellation Battle Cards
If you provide subscription services, then it’s essential to put money into these tools. You should know why a customer decided to dispose of 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 knowledge they’ve to persuade subscribers to renew their contracts, or not less than, not cancel.
Objection-Handling Battle Cards
Sales teams in all industries face objections. The best way to cope with them is to understand how to counter them. Battle cards can prepare your employees by showing them common objections and one of the simplest ways to respond. With the right strategies, sales reps can address concerns and hesitation from customers.
If it’s your first time using sales battle cards, then it’s essential to give your team time to get conversant in the tools. Although they may appear easy, battle cards could be difficult to adapt. So, train employees on the advantages of sales battle cards and the way to capitalise on them effectively.
Battle cards are essential tools for sales teams that may help your experts grow the business.
Read the total article here
