About Forrester
Forrester Research, Inc. is an independent research company that provides pragmatic and forward-thinking advice to global leaders in business and technology.
A theme that frequently shows up in survey data and during interviews with purchasing executives is that customers care more about how tech vendors sell than what they sell. Tech customers now put...
For months, I’ve blogged about the reasons why battle cards are important, ways to evaluate battle cards, and most recently, the need for standards to tighten their value and give battle card...
Insights Into Building Battle Cards That Help Sales Reps Win Deals
Sales reps need battle cards to anticipate and counter competitors' claims in sales conversations, but today's battle cards are little more than side-by-side product comparisons. Sales enablement...


Competitive & marketing intelligence (CMI) leaders are currently being torn between two points of view. But, these two views cannot be reconciled, and CMI leaders cannot sit on the fence! I...
Engineering Valuable Content For Sales Enablement Success
Market intelligence teams typically support sales enablement executive decisions around key sales strategies like coverage models, channel alignment, and prospect targets but rarely support sales...
To accelerate the work of sales enablement professionals in overhauling sales battle cards, Forrester organized a group of experienced practitioners who helped create Forrester’s battle card...

The words of "War," Edwin Starr's 1969 Motown classic, began ringing in my head this morning. It was brought on by a Harvard Business Review blog post by Steve W. Martin, "Why Sales and...
For those of you following Forrester’s project to create industry standards for battle cards, I want to give you a glimpse into the group’s progress and remind you about Forrester’s...
Successful sales enablement reaches beyond just sales. Marketing functions such as customer and market intelligence (CMI) supply materials to your direct sales teams. This content can significantly...
It's a shame to get old! My oldest child recently announced that he and his wife are having a child themselves. On one hand, I am thrilled at the prospects of having a smiling infant in the...
Insights Into Building Battle Cards That Help Reps Win Deals
To justify your investment, sales battle cards must help sales outmaneuver competitors and ultimately increase their overall win rate in competitive deals. Given the siloed way competitive insight is...
Leaders of competitive and market intelligence teams know that something is wrong. They tell Forrester this every day. They describe it as being similar to when your car doesn’t drive quite...
I hear you! My earlier post about battle cards, and my title in particular, confused some readers. By outlining some of the problems with battle cards that have surfaced in our current research on...
Designing And Delivering Content For Sales Conversations
Competitive and market intelligence (CMI) teams produce battle cards that help sales reps anticipate and respond to competitors' claims. Sales reps, however, don't value today's battle cards, which...
Insights Into Building Battle Cards That Help Sales Reps Win Deals
Sales enablement professionals are increasingly stepping up to fix the massive inventories of battle cards at their companies that provide inconsistent value to sales reps. These battle cards...
Sales reps use battle cards to anticipate and respond to competitors’ tactics in sales conversations. In our research, we found that, the competitive insights in today’s battle cards are more often...
During my daily conversations with technology vendors about battle cards, I am encountering leaders that are taking a different approach. Sales leaders are taking responsibility for the portfolio of...
During the past few months, our sales enablement team has researched and written about battle cards. We've spoken with more than 40 companies, including CMI leaders and sales...
Engineering Valuable Content For Sales Enablement Success
Today, business and customer intelligence (BCI) leaders and teams at tech vendors gather information about target companies and key decision-makers, and their deliverables consist of data —...
Technology vendors are disconnected from their customers. If the problem were simple, such as changing message themes, tech vendors could easily adapt. When looking at tech vendors, the...