Start Thinking About Your Competitors

Here’s a question every salesperson should consider:

How well do you know your competitors?

When we speak to sales teams, we tend to hear 2 answers:

A1: I know who our 1-3 competitors are.

A2: I know who our 1-3 competitors are and exactly how to handle conversations with their users.

That’s a big difference.

People who answer along the lines of A2 tend to have a deep understanding of the subtle differences between their company and their competitors, like:

• What their competitors’ users are still frustrated with.
• Their competitive advantages.
• Their competitive weaknesses.
• Their users’ dealbreakers.
• Their users’ green flags.
• (Most importantly) What will get the prospect to happily choose you over them.

The more of these you know, the better you’ll be able to think on your feet during a conversation and the better you’ll be able to actually help your prospect.

Here’s the tough part - many companies expect their teams to just work all of this out on their own.

There’s a much better way to do this, though.

We like encouraging sales teams to use battle cards.

The aim is to create a one-page doc that’ll organize your competitor research and give you and your team a visual tool to use on calls (or while writing emails and messages).

Here’s what our battle card template looks like:

‍

Get a copy

If you’d like to use this template, feel free to click the link above. It’s a view-only doc, so just hit “File → Make a Copy” to get your own editable version.

Here’s how battle cards can help your sales:

• They’ll help you think faster.
• They’ll help you have better conversations.
• They’ll help you have more specific conversations.
• They’ll help you know exactly what to follow up with.
• They’ll help you have a better understanding of the market.
• They'll help you get everyone on your team to use the best messaging.

‍

We’re excited for you to start working with this template, because it makes your comparison to your competitors easier to understand, leading to a well-built and thorough plan of action.

Step #1: Steal this template directly by opening the link and making a copy for you to use.

Step #2: Fill it out for your top competitors.

Step #3: Begin working with it to understand where you stand amongst your competition.

‍

{{download-all}}