Outdated Battlecards are a Thing of the Past: Automate Your Compete Program With Sparks Content
Every PMM knows the drill: A sales rep pings you before a call—“How do we compete against [Competitor]?” or “Do we have a battlecard on them?”
You drop what you're doing, dig through your compete content, and send them content—only to realize it’s outdated. Now, you’re stuck scrambling to update it, trying to review the latest insights while the rep is already heading into their call.
This isn't just frustrating—it’s an industry-wide problem. According to the State of Competitive Intelligence report, the numbers prove it:
- 58% of CI professionals struggle to keep battlecards and CI content updated, spending hours manually collecting and analyzing intel.
The Dos and Don’ts of Running a Competitive Intelligence Session at Sales Kickoff
Editors Note: This post was originally published on November 21st, 2022 as part of our Customer Corner series featuring Holly Jackson and has been updated — below is advice for CI practitioners ...
Why Competitive Enablement Is the Ultimate Key to Closing More Deals
In today’s hyper-competitive sales landscape, every deal counts. Two-thirds of sales opportunities are competitive, and here’s the kicker: these deals close 5x faster and at significantly higher ...
Webinar Recap: Elevate Your Competitive Enablement Strategy
In a world where business competition is fiercer than ever, having a strategic edge is no longer optional—it's essential. Our recent webinar, "Elevate Your Competitive Enablement Strategy with Crayon ...
3 Tips From Our Battlecard Webinar with Sam Niro
Earlier today, I had the pleasure of talking to Sam Niro, Competitive Intelligence Manager @ Talkdesk, about how she creates and rolls out new battlecards. Here's the recording of our conversation: ...
The Worst Thing a Seller Can Do In a Competitive Situation (+ More Takeaways From Our Latest Webinar)
A few days ago, I had the pleasure of hosting a webinar that featured Crayon’s VP of Strategy, Chris Pope, and Aircall’s Director of Sales, Tommy Jester. We talked about the mistakes that sellers ...
Build and Implement Your Sales Enablement Strategy (in 7 Simple Steps)
It doesn’t matter if you’re building a strategy from scratch or overhauling tired practices established by marketers of yore: Sales enablement shouldn’t be an afterthought. In fact, if you aim to ...
What Is Sales Enablement? Your Burning Questions Answered
Alec Baldwin wouldn’t be the patron saint of closing deals if, in perhaps the most cliche sales reference in cinematic history, he’d said “always be… enabling.” Sellers are hired to sell. It’s the ...
Sales Battlecards 101: How to Help Your Sellers Leave the Competition In the Dust
Sales battlecards (also known as competitive battlecards, or simply as battlecards) give your sellers the facts, tactics, and materials they need to win competitive deals. Before we go any further, a ...
The Key to Handling Competitive Objections and Landmines: “Why?”
An account executive on your sales team, Jen, is chatting with a prospect. The conversation is going well. The prospect doesn’t seem to be evaluating any other vendors. And then they say this: “Talk ...
New Data: Battlecard Benchmarks and Best Practices Based On 1,200+ Survey Responses
Sadly, the impact of good product marketing is often obscured. A flawless product launch, an inspiring positioning statement, a face-melting slide deck—you and I both know that each of these things ...
Sales Enablement Materials: 12 Types of Content That Empower Sellers
Making cold calls. Running demos. Persuading decision-makers. The life of a seller isn’t an easy one. But that doesn’t mean you—whether you’re a product marketer, sales manager, revenue leader, or ...
7 Metrics to Measure the Success of Your Sales Enablement Efforts
Whether you’re a marketer or a sales manager, there are innumerable ways you can empower sellers to do their jobs more effectively. You can provide content that helps them personalize emails. You can ...
5 Reasons Competitive Intelligence Is a Critical Component of Pre-Call Planning
Unless you’re subscribed to the Crayon blog, you’re most likely reading this because you Googled “pre-call planning.” If that’s the case, you probably noticed that there are a lot of blog posts on ...
11 Sales Enablement Statistics Everyone Should Know In 2022
Sales enablement statistics are useful for a number of reasons. Maybe you’re new to the discipline and trying to quickly learn as much as possible. Maybe you’re building a business case for the ...
6 Best Practices to Align Sales and Marketing Teams
The more closely you align your sales and marketing teams, the better. When everyone is on the same page — from content marketers and demand gen specialists to BDRs and account executives — lead ...
Sales Battlecards: 8 Tips to Help You Win More Deals
The sales battlecard is an extraordinarily impactful tool for any business in a competitive B2B market. As we'll discuss in the 2021 State of Competitive Intelligence Report (coming soon!), 71% of ...
How to Definitively Prove the Value of Sales Enablement
High-performing sales reps are not born; they’re built. To be more precise, high-performing sales reps are not built in a discrete period of time; they’re built on an ongoing basis. Call analyses, ...
How to Eliminate Competitive Battlecard Bias So Sales Wins More Deals
One sales enablement tool we all know and love is the competitive battlecard. Battlecards are an extremely impactful tool for your sales team to have in their toolbox, especially when a prospect is ...
9 Sales Enablement Tools Your Team Needs to Win a Competitive Battle
A sales rep has entered a competitive situation: are they ready to go to battle and win? A lot can go into preparing that sales rep to handle questions, objections, and deliver just the right ...
How Well Does Your Sales Team Pivot?
Remember not long ago when we’d never heard of Dr. Anthony Fauci, had no idea what Zoombombing was, only occasionally worried about getting the flu? We came into 2020 like we do most years, with ...
Battlecards 101: Measuring and Optimizing Your Battlecards
Now that we’ve covered the basics of creating battlecards and walked through driving battlecard adoption in our Battlecards 101 series, it’s time to take the next step. By now, you’ve created and ...
Battlecards 101: 5 Ways to Drive Sales Adoption of Battlecards
This post is part two in our Battlecards 101 Series. Click here to read part one. Imagine that you spent hours upon hours building an informative and detailed battlecard for your sales team. Now ...
13 Sales Enablement Tools to Increase Your Competitive Win Rate
Arming your sales team with the tools, skills, and resources they need to win competitive deals is a critical step in growing revenue. Sales enablement is the process of providing your sales team ...
6 Strategies for Partnering with Sales for Better Battlecards
You’ve crafted amazing battlecards. They have the latest intelligence, crisp messaging, and deep information on each competitor. And yet the sales team doesn’t adopt them. They have their own ...