Aug 24, 2013

sales battle cards

In my previous post about competition analysis, I was talking about a system to collect and disseminate information about the company's competitors.

Rather than piling up PDF brochures, Powerpoint presentations or scanned articles originated by the competitors, and have your sales people read through them in order to understand what they might be facing during a sales negotiation, you can collect all this intel in a unique, easy-to-update structure, under the name of Battle Cards.



The sales Battle Cards should include [and be later updated with] as much data as possible from the list below: 
  • Identification and contact data 
  • Decision makers and any recent management changes 
  • Years on market 
  • Company size and evolution [employees number] 
  • Financials and yearly evolution 
  • Portfolio of products 
  • Pricing 
  • Products comparison 
  • Customers 
  • Strengths 
  • Weaknesses 
  • Partnerships 
  • Target segments 
  • Future expansion plans 
  • Sales channels 
  • Sales tactics 
  • Sales speech
  • Better yet, sales message when they're competing against you 
  • What your sales team answer should be 
  • Your confrontations' history: wins and losses, plus the reasons you were or were not selected over them. 
Store these standardized files together with any presentations, brochures or offers you were able to download or get.  

Besides the obvious benefit of handing this powerful tool to your sales force, your company builds a central knowledge base, making every single sales meeting count for something, even without a deal being closed. 


Not only do these help you win deals, or enable you to quickly handle customer objections, but they must be included in the initial sales training for the any new comer.

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