Battlecard

What goes on a battlecard?

Klue, which sells competitive intelligence software, suggests these sections: a company overview, how the competitor goes to market, how to tell you are up against them, questions to ask, "landmines to lay", objection handling, pricing, why you win and lose, and answers to fear, uncertainty and doubt. Few battlecards need all of them. Sellers tend to lean on the questions to ask, the objection answers and the honest list of where you lose.

For an MSP, the competitor is often the incumbent provider the prospect is unhappy with, the in-house IT person, a cheaper break-fix firm or a vendor selling direct. Each of those needs its own card.

Do battlecards help win deals?

The best-known numbers come from Crayon's 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence report, a survey with more than 1,000 responses. Of businesses that kept battlecards, 71% said the cards had helped them improve their win rate, and 93% of those said the increase was more than 20%. The same survey found 53% of businesses said most of their deals were competitive. These are self-reported answers, not measured results.

The same report has a warning: 26% of businesses with battlecards were unhappy with how much their sales team used them. A card that is out of date, too long or written in marketing language stays in the folder.

What does a battlecard look like?

Here is a sample one-page battlecard for an MSP competing against a break-fix provider. Replace the bracketed parts with your own.

Section	Sample entry
Who they are	Local break-fix firm, bills by the hour, no monitoring or fixed monthly fee
How to spot them	The prospect says "we only call someone when something breaks"
Questions to ask	How many hours of downtime did you have last year? Who checks your backups work? What does your cyber insurer ask you to prove?
Where we win	Fixed monthly cost, monitoring, Cyber Essentials support, one team that knows the setup
Where we lose	Very small offices with few devices, where hourly billing is cheaper
Their claim and our answer	"You only pay when you need us." Answer: [Your MSP] fixes problems before staff notice, and the monthly fee includes the hours you would have been billed
Proof	[A client quote or case study with figures they agreed to share]

How do you keep a battlecard useful?

Keep one card per competitor and keep it short. Update it after every deal you win or lose against that competitor, using what the prospect actually said. Write each line the way a salesperson would say it out loud. Put the date on the card so everyone can see when it was last checked.

How Yori helps

Yori, the AI marketing assistant for MSPs and resellers, has a Battlecard Service that plans and drafts a card for a specific competitor or scenario, with positioning, differentiators, objection answers and proof points. It writes from your Brand Profile, so your own services and messages are already in the draft. It works from what you give it, so add your win and loss notes and the competitor's own pages, and check every claim about them before the card reaches your team.

Pro is £49 a month with 25 monthly credits. The free trial has 25 one-time credits and needs no card. Start the free trial and run the Battlecard Service on the competitor you meet most often.