Using Competitive Scenarios To Build Better Battle Cards

Each month, Forrester analysts describe recent sales enablement trends, relate customer experiences, present best practices, and answer participants' questions.

Sales reps across the tech industry tell us that they need good competitive intelligence to help them anticipate what competitors will say to customers. Most competitive and market intelligence (CMI) teams continue to build battle cards that compare products or describe abstract differences. CMI leaders know that battle cards need to change — but how?

Build competitive scenarios

Battle cards are only relevant to sales reps if the competitive insights help avoid obstacles or answer questions that would interfere with selling activities. While CMI teams can't construct battle cards for every customer, competitive scenarios serve as proxies — focusing CMI analysts on point-counterpoint exchanges in customer conversations.

Competitive scenarios are relevant filters that focus on the competitor's tactics and effective responses. Competitive insights come into CMI teams through many sources and in random patterns. To make competitive tactics relevant to sales situations, CMI teams need to filter them so that they line up with how sales reps will use them — filters include sales channels, offering categories, customer stakeholders, and sales objectives.

Focus makes your content relevant

During this teleconference, Forrester analysts discuss the problems with battle cards today, why competitive scenarios can break down this barrier, and how to systematically tailor battle cards to competitive scenarios before you deliver them to sales teams.

Agenda:

• What do sales reps think of today's battle cards — and why do they think it?
• How can using competitive scenarios help focus you on the right issues?
• Why is it important to focus your battle cards on specific selling situations?
• When should you define competitive scenarios and build sales-ready battle cards?
• Who needs to champion the initiative to create competitive scenarios?