A wise blog post once said聽that 鈥淭he most important metric in competitive intelligence is utility.鈥� (It was us. On this聽blog. Right here.) The content you produce, regardless of purpose or placement, must be used and consumed in order to be worth the time鈥攖o add value. To help win more deals.

Seems obvious.

Users (sales reps and accounts teams) must find meaning in the language in order to trust it. We鈥檙e talking about pros here, with their own way of doing things and a shit-tonne of experience. Battlecards are meant to back up that wisdom and conviction with targeted, tactical and smart competitive intelligence points. They know what they鈥檙e talking about, so use their words, their turns of phrase. When they鈥檙e comfortable with the script鈥攈ave faith in it鈥攖heir natural skill-set will take over. They鈥檒l win more deals. In fact, they鈥檒l win 18 percent more deals than they would without the smart and accessible competitive intelligence you provide.

The audience (buyers) must connect to the message, too. Your greatest advantage is the first-person feedback you gather in customer satisfaction exercises and win-loss analysis. Quote your customers directly whenever possible. No fancy or long-winded spiel is going to land better than their own words. Keeping it real removes any sales-speak, which is a complete turn-off.

Sales battlecards聽also, literally, need to be easy to maintain, find, share and use. 聽So often we find out-of-date decks and battlecards聽languishing in abandoned wikis. We once got asked to vet the usability of a sales battlecard聽that was over five years old. I mean鈥�