Salesforce VP of Competitive Intelligence, 9 Battlecard Building Tips, Learning to Say No

Paul · May 14, 2023

Keeping focused and making an impact

Sometimes you need to show people how bad things are for them to change

Don’t assume your senior leaders know how bad some problems are. They might understand the problem on a basic level (CRM data is messy; our competitive intel is scattered all over the place) but until you prove the impact of those problems, don’t expect things to change.

Some projects are too big for you to take on all by yourself — you’ll need leadership buy-in for those. That’s your cue to paint a data-based, coherent picture of the problem with a path forward.

As Dan puts it: if it’s not their top priority to fix, “make it their priority.”

It’s all about keeping focus and making an impact

When Dan and Adam chatted at last year’s IntelliCon, the Salesforce team’s MO was focus and impact. A year later, the more things change, the more they stay the same.

“We draw a very clear line and say (…) these are the things that we can prioritize because we’re going to deliver the most impact.”
Dan Hamilton

Identify the areas of the business where you’ll have the most obvious and most consequential impact, and focus on those.

Get involved in deals you need to win today

The strategic versus tactical push-pull will never go away. Let the market and organizational priorities dictate which of them should get the lion’s share of your time and effort.

“You can sit back and do all these academic things when things are great because you’ve got the time to do it. But in today’s market, we have to win deals now.”
Dan Hamilton

The Salesforce compete team makes their bones on doing just that — supporting their sales teams to help win deals now.

And support doesn’t just mean pointing the rep towards a battlecard. It’s about taking a 360 view of the market landscape, understanding the customer, and then working with a sales rep to close deals.

It’s Dan’s favourite part of the job. Maybe that’s why he — and his team — is so damn good at it.

Nine Battlecard Tips You Can’t Live Without

nine sales battlecard tips every competitive intelligence professional needs to know about

Battlecards are your most fundamental deliverable as a competitive enablement professional.

They’re the fastest path to value, your entry point into sales, and something tangible to point at.

No matter where you’re at in your sales battlecard building journey, these nine tips will keep you on track.

Identify your audience

Keep your content up-to-date

Source content from internal and external sources

Tell a story rather than make a point

Get feedback early and often

Don’t create content for the sake of it

️ Understand your competitors and how to approach them ️

Shift from bullet points to storytelling

Prioritize relevancy over frequency

Now that you know the high-level stuff, time to get in the weeds. Check out our blog and dive deeper into all nine tips.

Coffee & Compete Community Corner

Two elite product marketers and compete pros for the price of one in today’s Community Corner.

What’s the biggest learning Klue’s Competitive Enablement Manager Brandon Bedford has learned in his first 18 months as a product marketer?

Learning how to say no.

Being all in on his job and building something at a startup is what fires Brandon up more than anything. But say yes to too many disparate requests and you’ll be less effective at your job.

Head to Maggie’s post and check out the link in comments for a link to the full episode

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