Key Takeaways
- Battlecards fail when treated as static documents rather than living systems with continuous inputs
- Your sales team is your best source of competitive intelligence—create friction-free ways to capture it
- Assign real ownership (a person, not a committee) and set a monthly review cadence
- Use AI to synthesize incoming intel, monitor competitor changes, and make battlecards queryable
Somewhere in your organization, there's a competitive battlecard. Maybe it's in a shared drive. Maybe it's in a sales enablement platform. Maybe it's in a folder someone created two years ago and hasn't touched since.
The battlecard was probably good when it was written. Someone put real effort into researching competitors, crafting positioning, and creating talk tracks. It was useful—for a while.
Then competitors changed their pricing. They launched new features. They shifted their messaging. Your own product evolved. The market moved. The battlecard didn't move with it. Now it's outdated, and everyone knows it.
Reps glance at it occasionally but don't trust it. They piece together competitive information from their own calls, from colleagues, from whatever they can find online. The carefully created resource sits unused because it's not reliable.
This is the battlecard lifecycle at most companies. Create, neglect, distrust, ignore. It doesn't have to be this way.
The problem is treating battlecards as documents
A document is a snapshot. You create it, maybe update it occasionally, and it gradually drifts from reality. A system is a living thing. It has inputs that keep it current. It has processes that maintain it. It changes as the world changes.
Battlecards need to be systems. Competitive intelligence isn't static—your battlecards shouldn't be either. This is also true for your broader AI knowledge management approach.
This requires two things: a way to capture new information continuously, and a process to incorporate that information regularly. Without both, even the best battlecard decays.
Make it easy to capture competitive intel from the field
Your sales team is the best source of competitive intelligence. They're in conversations every day where competitors come up. They hear objections, pricing, positioning, strengths, weaknesses—firsthand, current, real.
Most of this intelligence evaporates. The rep hears something interesting, maybe mentions it in a team meeting, and it's gone. No record. No way to aggregate it. No way to update the battlecard. It's the "just ask Sarah" problem applied to competitive intel—knowledge trapped in individual minds.
Create a friction-free way for reps to report competitive intel. A Slack channel where they can drop observations. A quick form that takes thirty seconds. A voice memo they can send after a call. Whatever fits your culture—the key is that it's easy enough that people actually do it.
What should they capture?
- What competitors are prospects considering?
- What are prospects saying about those competitors—positive and negative?
- What pricing or packaging have they encountered?
- What claims are competitors making?
- What objections come up when your product is compared to alternatives?
This raw intelligence is gold. But only if it goes somewhere.
Assign ownership—real ownership
Battlecards without owners don't get updated. Everyone assumes someone else is handling it. No one is.
Assign a specific person to own each battlecard. Not a committee. Not a team. A person whose job includes keeping this battlecard accurate and useful. This might be product marketing, competitive intelligence, or sales enablement—it depends on your organization.
What matters is that there's a name attached, with explicit responsibility and time allocated for the work.
The owner doesn't have to do all the research themselves. But they're accountable for the battlecard being current. They review incoming intel. They watch for market changes. They update content when it's stale. They're the reason the battlecard stays alive.
Set a review cadence—and keep it
Even with good intel flowing in and clear ownership, updates don't happen without a forcing function.
Set a regular cadence for battlecard review. Monthly is usually right for competitive content—frequent enough to catch changes, not so frequent that it becomes busywork.
The review doesn't need to be elaborate. The owner asks:
- What new intel has come in since the last review?
- Has the competitor announced anything—pricing changes, new features, repositioning?
- Has our own product or positioning changed in ways that affect the comparison?
- Are there sections that feel stale or that reps have questioned?
Make updates based on what surfaces. Most months, it's small tweaks. Occasionally, it's a significant refresh. Either way, the battlecard stays current because someone's regularly checking.
Put the review on the calendar. Treat it like any other recurring task. If it's not scheduled, it won't happen.
Structure battlecards for easy updating
Some battlecard formats make updates painful. Everything's in flowing prose that has to be carefully rewritten. Or information is scattered across slides in ways that make finding the right section a chore.
Design your battlecard structure with maintenance in mind:
- Modular sections. Each section stands alone—company overview, pricing, strengths, weaknesses, objection handling. You can update one section without rewriting everything.
- Clear sourcing. Note where information came from and when. "Pricing as of March 2024, per competitor website." This helps you know what to verify and when it might be stale.
- Consistent format. All battlecards follow the same structure. Once you know where to find information in one, you know where to find it in all of them.
- Dated content. Timestamp the battlecard or key sections. Reps can see at a glance whether they're looking at something current or something that might be outdated.
Essential battlecard modules to prioritize: Focus on "Kill/Win" modules that reps rely on during final deal stages. Include a dedicated "Landmines" module (questions to ask prospects that highlight competitor weaknesses) and a "Quick Dismiss" module (how to briefly address a competitor if they're only a minor factor). These tactical elements can be updated rapidly as new field intel arrives.
Use AI to accelerate the work
Keeping battlecards updated is time-consuming, mostly because of the manual work: reading through intel, checking competitor websites, synthesizing changes, rewriting sections. AI can handle a lot of this.
- Summarize incoming intel. When reps submit competitive observations, AI can synthesize patterns. "Over the past month, five reps reported that Competitor X is leading with a new pricing model. Here's what they're saying."
- Monitor competitor changes. AI can track competitor websites, press releases, and product updates—flagging changes that might affect your battlecard.
- Draft updates. When new information comes in, AI can draft updated battlecard sections for human review. You're editing rather than writing from scratch.
- Answer questions from the battlecard. Instead of reps reading through the whole document, they ask "What's our positioning against Competitor X on pricing?" and get a synthesized answer. The battlecard becomes queryable, not just readable.
This doesn't eliminate the need for human judgment. Someone still decides what matters, validates accuracy, and ensures the positioning is right. But AI handles the grunt work that makes maintenance feel like a burden. Combined with objection handling practice, reps can query battlecards while building their competitive response skills.
Make the battlecard accessible where reps work
A battlecard nobody can find is a battlecard nobody uses. Don't bury competitive content in a folder structure that requires archaeology to navigate.
Put it where reps already are—integrated into your CRM, accessible through your sales tools, searchable when they need it. Better yet, make it so reps can get competitive information without even opening the battlecard.
"What are the main objections when we compete against X?"
They ask, they get the answer, they're back to their call. The battlecard is the source, but the interface is instant access. Integrate this into your sales training playbook for maximum impact.
The goal is competitive intelligence at the moment of need—when a rep is preparing for a call, when a competitor comes up in conversation, when an objection needs handling. If the battlecard is hard to access, reps won't use it, no matter how good the content is.
Battlecards are only valuable if they're trusted
They're only trusted if they're current. They're only current if there's a system to keep them that way.
Capture intel continuously. Assign real ownership. Review regularly. Structure for easy updates. Use AI to reduce the burden. Make content accessible.
That's the system. It's not complicated, but it requires discipline. The alternative is battlecards that look impressive when they're created and gather dust forever after.
You've probably seen that movie. Time to try something different.
JoySuite keeps competitive intelligence current and accessible. Reps ask questions and Joy answers from your battlecards—always up to date, always available. Combined with connectors to your existing systems, competitive insights reach reps when they need them, not buried in a folder they'll never find.
