This article is the last of a three-part series on developing winning battle cards. We’ll walk you through how to create, drive adoption, and optimize your battle cards. In this post, we’ll show you how to optimize your battle cards using real-time data and why it’s important now. Want to learn how you can get started now?

Beyond creating & use

In previous articles, we’ve talked about how to create battle cards to create a competitive advantage and best practices for driving adoption with the sales teams. Without creating the battle cards and sharing with the appropriate groups, you won’t be able to measure their efficacy. 

The last phase of the battle card creation process is an on-going one. This crucial part many product marketers and sales enablement teams forget: continued optimization. Organizations spend a tremendous portion of their time on. 

As tedious or time-consuming as it may seem, continuously updating your battle cards is what sets you apart from the competition. Of course, there’s always a solution for optimizing efficiency. Battle cards are not a set a forget, and they don’t work on updating themselves. Most organizations spend a large portion of their time doing research, but forget that with all the research in the world, if the feedback isn’t incorporated, it’s not the full picture.  

Why change now?   

Businesses continue to grow and evolve. If not, they run the risk of surrendering to the competition. Maintaining a competitive advantage is less demanding than gaining one. Much like retaining customers is less expensive in comparison to acquiring new customers, optimizing your existing sales content is less costly than creating net new assets.

Additionally, up-to-date battle cards help increase new customer win rates at a lower overall cost – a business can maximize ROI for minimum effort. Having inaccurate or outdated information in your battle cards can cost your organization time and money.

Ready to create killer battle cards that win more deals? Download our free template and get started now.

Updating & optimizing  

Updating and optimizing your battle cards should be a routine exercise. Start by automating competitor tracking, real-time alerts, as well as team generated insights. Not all strategic information is going to be coming from the same place. However, you have a sales team on the front lines talking directly with buyers and influencers. Those one-to-one conversations hold nuggets of information valuable to all potential sales deals. 

Automated alerts can be triggered for a variety of reasons important to your business, but be sure to track the three main p’s: pricing, product, and positioning. However, it’s essential to be selective with not only what alerts you’re setting up, but who is receiving those alerts. Don’t send alerts for everything and anything that could be valuable. Make sure alerts are tailored to who will take action from them — generating alerts for everything that might be a useful short-term gain to set a baseline for what you don’t already know. Unfortunately, it is not a long term strategy and can cause information burnout or platform fatigue. 

To avoid information overload and maintain adoption and usage, evaluate your key goals and the ideal intel, you need to reach those goals. Categorizing intel can influence how your organization pulls and shares insights. Make sure the ones being captured are the ones that matter the most to you. Once the automation is part of the process, it’s time to customize based on competitor, product, or initiative. Battle cards fit a variety of needs for different teams, filters and tags can be tailored by initiative if your company is launching a product, understanding which updates are necessary to drive home a win will be crucial. But all the conversations leading up to that point will be different. 

Following the collection, creation, adoption, and usage; insights have to be shared on a continuous cycle. Marketing and enablement teams do most of the sharing, but empowering sales teams to provide first-hand knowledge and feedback is essential. Much like the typical marketing flywheel, the feedback cycle helps spin the wheel. 

Marketing and sales teams communicate across multiple channels, so make sure the notifications are sent through the most appropriate channel for that team. Not every salesperson checks their email religiously or has messaging notifications. Maximize delivery, but limit the number of notifications to the relevant ones. Enabling salespeople to share through the platforms they’re familiar with drives active participation. The smooth transition for updating your battle cards will limit the friction and truly optimize the battle cards being used in competitive situations.

Our product specialist built a special video to walk you through how improve your battle cards through continued optimization. Check out the on-demand video now! 

Want to learn more? Sign up for a free trial to see how Kompyte can change the way you compete and help you achieve your competitive intelligence goals. For more tactics to increase your marketing performance visit our Academy