You do not need competitive intelligence software to produce a useful battlecard. You need one page, seven sections, and 90 minutes. This guide shows you the exact template that sales reps actually open, and how to fill it in with nothing but a browser tab, a LinkedIn account, and a competitor's pricing page.
The one-page battlecard template
Every section has one job. If a section does not make a rep faster in a live call, cut it.
- 1Who they are. Two lines. Company name, category, founding year, approximate ACV, ICP.
- 2Where they win. Three bullets. The deal shapes where they beat you.
- 3Where you win. Three bullets. The deal shapes where you beat them.
- 4Landmine questions. Three questions to ask the prospect that expose a weakness in the competitor without attacking.
- 5Objection responses. The three objections you hear when this competitor is in a deal, and the one line that resolves each.
- 6Pricing and packaging. Their starting price, their enterprise tier, their contract length, any known discount behavior.
- 7Proof points. Two customer stories that sold against them. Numbers preferred. Testimonials with names even more so.
Everything fits on one screen on a phone. Anything that does not is in a linked appendix.
How to fill each section without a tool
You have more intel than you think. Here is where each piece lives.
Who they are
The competitor's homepage, their About page, their LinkedIn company profile. Ten minutes. Crunchbase fills in the ACV range.
Where they win
This is three sources blended. G2 reviews (read the 4-star ones, not the 5-stars, the mixed reviews are honest), analyst reports (Forrester and Gartner if they exist), and your own lost deals (your CRM has the answer if you annotate).
Where you win
Two sources. G2 reviews of the competitor (the 2-star and 3-star reviews show you what breaks for them), and your won-against-competitor deals.
Landmine questions
This is the hardest section. A landmine question is specific to a weakness the competitor cannot easily fix. Read their sales collateral with a skeptical eye. What do they never mention? That is the landmine. Examples: implementation time, hidden per-seat costs, limits on certain features.
Objection responses
Mine your own sales calls. Every AE can name the three things they hear when this competitor is in a deal. Write down the best response you have heard from your top reps.
Pricing and packaging
If the competitor publishes pricing, screenshot it. If they do not, most enterprise tools hide pricing, G2 reviews and Vendr often surface ranges. Capterra occasionally has exact numbers.
Proof points
Your customer success team has them. Ask. If they do not have written case studies, get on a call with the customer and write one in 20 minutes.
What done enough looks like
The battlecard is done when a rep who has never seen it can read it in 60 seconds and know what to say on a competitive call. Test this before you ship it. Pick the newest AE on the team, hand them the doc, give them one minute, then ask them to role-play a competitive objection. If they can, it works. If they cannot, the battlecard is too long or the language is too abstract.
When to upgrade to a tool
You need a tool when any of these become true.
- You track more than three competitors and updates are stale.
- Sales is asking for new battlecards faster than you can write them.
- Pricing intel goes stale within a month and no one notices.
- You want usage analytics, to know who opened which battlecard.
- You want to query your historical intel like a database.
Before that moment, a well-maintained Notion page beats a poorly-used enterprise tool.
Frequently asked
Questions worth answering
- How often should a battlecard be updated?
- Every 30 days minimum. Every 14 days if the competitor is active in your pipeline. Pricing-specific fields get updated the day a competitor changes their pricing page.
- What is the most underrated battlecard section?
- Landmine questions. Every other section is reactive. Landmine questions let the rep set the narrative.
- What is the most common battlecard mistake?
- Length. A twelve-page battlecard is a document nobody opens. A one-page battlecard is a tool.
- Should I include proof points in the battlecard itself?
- Yes, as pull quotes with numbers. A specific customer quote with a role and company beats generic praise by a factor of a thousand.
- What if the competitor does not publish pricing?
- Use Vendr, Capterra, and G2 for ranges. If still nothing, write an estimated range based on peer deployments and update when you get real data from a deal.
Stop writing battlecards from scratch
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