What is a sales battle card?

And why do I need them?

In this episode, John and I talk about the pros and cons of Sales Enablement Tools, including a list of three that you MUST have in your wallet to win sales.

 

We’ve been hearing about sales training that involves “battle cards.”

Wow, what a great idea!  And also, wow, what a terrible idea!

Reasons Battle Cards are Great Sales Tools, if Used Properly

We’re all in favor of sales enablement tools, which are references your salespeople use to get up to speed and use key information about your company, products, services, customers and competitors.

Great reasons to think of sales enablement tools as “battle cards:”

• Concise
• Easy to understand
• Graphic & visual

After all, the more information they have, the better they will do, right?

Not so fast. . .

Caveat – Sales is Not A Game!

There are also good reasons sales enablement tools should not be thought of as “battle cards:”

• Sales is NOT a battle!
• You and the customer are ON THE SAME SIDE.
• Treating sales as a game could trivialize customer concerns or prevent careful listening.

Many aviation salespeople without training also suffer from an “us versus them” mentality, and this analogy might actually contribute to that problem.

If you’ve ever watched kids playing with battle cards, they are slapping cards down as fast as they can do the calculations.

Unfortunately, (or fortunately!) aviation consumers don’t like games. They don’t like to be treated as opponents.  And they’re sure not going to let some salesperson “win” a game they’re playing with their hard-earned money (or budget.)

No reference tool should ever be more important to the sales process than listening to, and truly understanding, the customer.

This is one great reason that new salespeople tend to do really well. If they don’t know much about the product or service, they spend MORE time and energy working really hard on customer research and make no assumption about what they think they know.

In fact, the exercise of creating sales battle cards will cause you and your team to dig deeper into your products’ strengths and weaknesses, to dig out (or create) some great case studies, and to do some research and develop competitive intelligence.  You’ll learn product features, have a new curiosity when you have conversations with prospects.  You’ll learn more about your target customers, and have all of this committed much more deeply than a textbook exercise.

So, with that caveat, here are three “battle tools” that will improve the performance of your sales team, and how to make a sales battle card of your own!

Battle Card #1 – Key Statistics

Create an easy reference sheet that includes the basics about the company, the primary products, the ideal customers, the main competitors, and the expectations customers have about what the brand can do for them.

• Key statistics
• Success stories
• Customers
• Competitors
• Expectations

Battle Card #2- Feature Comparison

Many of your customers will be doing their own comparison about how your products stack up against the competition. You can do this work for them and lay it out in a simple matrix.

• Key features
• Main competitors
• How they stack up

Battle Card #3 – Objection Analysis

Brainstorm the most common questions and objections your customers bring up in discussions, and spend some time writing out thoughtful answers.

• Top 5 or 10 objections
• A deep understanding of each objection
• Methods to counter it

Building (regularly reviewing and updating) these three battle cards with your sales team is a great way to ensure everyone is up to speed on important facts, and that your team is consistent in the information they’re communicating to prospective customers. Sales objection games are a great confidence-builder for new salespeople!

This is also a great vehicle to communicate changes.   When you roll out a new product upgrade or acquire a new customer you can use as a reference, update and redistribute your Battle Cards and review them in your next sales meeting!