The sales rep was 5 minutes into a competitive call when he messaged me in Slack.
"Where's the Competitor X battlecard?"
"It's in the platform," I replied. "Just search for Competitor X."
30 seconds passed. The prospect was probably talking.
"Found it. It's 12 pages. Do you have a shorter version?"
I sent him three bullet points in Slack. He used those instead of the comprehensive 12-page battlecard I'd spent 6 hours building in our $30K battlecard software.
That's when I realized: We'd automated the wrong thing.
The Google Slides Days
Before we bought battlecard software, I built battlecards manually in Google Slides.
The process:
- One slide per competitor
- 4-6 bullet points covering why we win, objection handling, proof points
- Updated quarterly or when major competitive changes happened
- Exported to PDF, shared in Google Drive
- Sales loved them
Time investment: 90 minutes per battlecard
For our 8 main competitors, that was 12 hours quarterly, or roughly 1 hour per week averaged out.
Sales feedback was consistently positive:
"These one-pagers are perfect. I review them before competitive calls and I'm ready to go."
"Quick question format is exactly what I need. I can scan in 30 seconds."
"Way better than when we had those 40-page competitor analyses nobody read."
The problems with Google Slides:
Problem 1: Updates were manual
When Competitor X launched a new pricing model, I had to:
- Update the battlecard slide (30 min)
- Re-export to PDF (2 min)
- Replace old version in Drive (3 min)
- Notify sales team in Slack (5 min)
Total: 40 minutes to update one battlecard.
If 3 competitors launched features the same week, that's 2 hours of manual update work.
Problem 2: Version control chaos
Multiple versions floating around:
- "Competitor-X-Battlecard-v3-FINAL.pdf"
- "Competitor-X-Battlecard-FINAL-v2.pdf"
- "Competitor-X-Battlecard-Updated-Jan.pdf"
Sales reps had old versions saved locally. Hard to know who had current version.
Problem 3: No usage tracking
I had no idea if sales was actually using them. Were they helpful? Which ones got used most? No data.
Problem 4: Distribution was slow
From "competitor launches feature" to "sales has updated battlecard": 3-5 days minimum.
I told my boss: "We need battlecard software to automate this and scale."
She approved a $30K annual budget.
Evaluating Battlecard Platforms
I evaluated four battlecard platforms over 3 weeks:
Platform A ($35K): Comprehensive battle card builder with templates, analytics, Salesforce integration
Platform B ($28K): Focused on competitive enablement with certifications and tracking
Platform C ($30K): Battle cards plus competitive intelligence monitoring
Platform D ($8K): Simple battle card builder, basic distribution
All promised the same benefits:
- Faster updates (update once, distribute everywhere)
- Version control (everyone always sees latest version)
- Usage analytics (know what's working)
- Better distribution (integrated with sales workflow)
I chose Platform C for $30K. It had battle cards plus competitive monitoring, so we'd get automated competitor tracking as a bonus.
Month 1: The Template Trap
Platform C had 15 battlecard templates.
I chose "Comprehensive Competitive Battlecard" because more information = better prepared sales team, right?
The template had 10 sections:
- Competitor overview (company info, funding, positioning)
- Product comparison (feature-by-feature grid)
- Pricing comparison (models, typical deals, discount patterns)
- Market position (customers, verticals, geography)
- Strengths (what they do well)
- Weaknesses (where they fall short)
- Why we win (our differentiators)
- Objection handling (common objections + responses)
- Proof points (customer wins, case studies)
- Competitive plays (specific tactics for displacing them)
This looked comprehensive. Sales would have everything they need.
Time to build first battlecard: 8 hours
Wait. That's 8x longer than my Google Slides version (1 hour).
Why?
The template required information I didn't include in the simple version:
- Detailed funding and company history (45 min research)
- Feature-by-feature comparison table (2 hours building comprehensive grid)
- Pricing model analysis (90 min researching their pricing)
- Market positioning research (1 hour)
The platform assumed I'd want comprehensive battlecards. I built them because the template was there.
After 40 hours, I had comprehensive battlecards for 5 competitors.
I exported to PDF to share with sales.
The battlecards were 12 pages each.
Month 2: Sales Doesn't Use Them
I sent the new comprehensive battlecards to 8 sales reps for feedback:
Rep 1: "These are really detailed. Do you have a TL;DR version? I need something I can review in 1 minute before a call."
Rep 2: "Page 1 has the good stuff. The other 11 pages are interesting but not useful during calls."
Rep 3: "The old one-pagers were better. These are reference docs, not quick-reference battlecards."
Rep 4: "Can you make a shorter version?"
Rep 5: "I'll just message you when I need quick talking points."
Sales wanted: 1-page quick reference they could scan in 30 seconds
Platform generated: 12-page comprehensive analysis they'd read in 20 minutes
The problem: Automated platforms optimize for comprehensiveness. Sales needs speed.
I spent 6 hours creating one-page summaries manually... back to the Google Slides approach.
Sales used the one-page summaries I made in Google Slides. The 12-page platform-generated battlecards went unused.
Month 3: The Distribution Illusion
The platform's "automatic distribution" sounded amazing in the demo.
The promise: Update battlecard once, sales instantly sees latest version everywhere they work.
The reality:
Scenario: Competitor X launches new product
- I update the battlecard in Platform C (2 hours updating all 10 sections)
- Battlecard auto-updates in platform ✓
- Sales gets notification... inside the platform (which they don't check daily)
- I manually notify sales in Slack anyway: "Updated Competitor X battlecard, check platform"
- Sales: "Can you just send me the key changes? I don't have time to read 12 pages."
- I send 3 bullet points in Slack
- Sales uses my Slack bullets, not the platform battlecard
Automatic distribution failed because:
- Sales worked in Salesforce, email, Slack—not the battlecard platform
- Platform had "Salesforce integration" but it required clicking out to the platform (8-second load time vs. 2 seconds to find my old Google Drive PDFs)
- The comprehensive battlecards were too long for quick reference during calls
Distribution wasn't the problem. Usability was the problem.
Month 4-6: The Update Tax
With Google Slides, updating a battlecard took 40 minutes.
With Platform C, updating took longer:
Update workflow in Platform C:
- Open platform (30 sec)
- Find competitor battlecard (20 sec)
- Update all 10 sections affected by change (90 min for comprehensive update)
- Preview to check formatting (5 min)
- Publish (30 sec)
- Export one-page summary manually because comprehensive version is too long (45 min)
- Share one-page summary in Slack and Drive (5 min)
Total: 2 hours 45 minutes (vs. 40 minutes with Google Slides)
The platform made updates take 4x longer because I was updating comprehensive 10-section battlecards instead of simple one-pagers.
Month 7-8: The Analytics Mirage
The platform had impressive usage analytics:
Dashboard showed:
- Battlecard views: 342 last month
- Most-viewed battlecard: Competitor X (84 views)
- Average time spent: 12 seconds
- Downloads: 8
Wait. Average time spent: 12 seconds?
The battlecards were 12 pages. Reading them should take 15+ minutes.
12 seconds meant sales was opening, glancing, and closing.
The analytics confirmed what I already knew: Sales wasn't actually using the comprehensive battlecards. They were opening them, seeing they were too long, and messaging me for quick answers instead.
The platform tracked activity, not actual usage or helpfulness.
Month 9-10: The Real Costs
I calculated what we were actually getting for $30K:
Platform C costs:
- License: $30,000/year
- Time creating comprehensive battlecards: 8 hrs/card × 8 = 64 hours setup
- Time updating comprehensive battlecards: 2.5 hrs × 12 updates/quarter = 30 hrs/quarter = 120 hrs/year
- Time creating manual one-pagers anyway: 6 hrs/quarter = 24 hrs/year
Total cost: $30,000 + 208 hours of my time
What we got:
- Comprehensive battlecards nobody used
- Slower updates
- Analytics showing people weren't reading them
- Still had to create one-pagers manually
Google Slides costs:
- License: $0 (had Google Workspace already)
- Time creating simple one-pagers: 1.5 hrs/card × 8 = 12 hours setup
- Time updating simple one-pagers: 40 min × 12 updates/quarter = 8 hrs/quarter = 32 hrs/year
- Time creating... wait, the one-pagers were the deliverable
Total cost: $0 + 44 hours of my time
What we got:
- One-page battlecards sales actually used
- Fast updates
- Direct feedback from sales
- Simple version control
The platform cost $30K and 164 extra hours of work to produce something less useful than free Google Slides.
Month 11-14: The Transition Back
At renewal time, I told my boss: "I want to cancel the battlecard platform and go back to Google Slides."
She looked surprised. "Didn't we buy it to solve exactly the problems you're describing?"
"It solved problems we didn't have. It didn't solve the problems we do have."
What the platform solved:
- Storing comprehensive competitive intelligence ✓
- Automating distribution to platform ✓
- Tracking who opened battlecards ✓
What we actually needed:
- Quick-reference battlecards sales could scan in 30 seconds
- Updates that took minutes, not hours
- Distribution to where sales actually worked (Slack, their inbox, Drive)
We cancelled the platform and went back to Google Slides.
New workflow:
- Simple one-page battlecards in Google Slides
- Exported to PDF in shared Drive folder
- Updated quarterly or when major changes happen
- Distributed via Slack with summary of changes
- Took 90 minutes per battlecard to create
- Took 30 minutes to update
Sales feedback after going back:
"Thank you for bringing back the one-pagers. I actually use these."
"Way faster to find and review than the platform."
"The old system was better."
What I Should Have Done Differently
Looking back, here's what I'd change:
Mistake 1: Solving for comprehensiveness instead of usefulness
I assumed more information = better battlecards.
Reality: Sales needed less information, faster.
The fix: Ask sales what format they'd actually use before building comprehensive battlecards they won't read.
Mistake 2: Optimizing for creation instead of consumption
The platform made it easier for me to create comprehensive battlecards.
But sales couldn't consume 12-page battlecards during 30-minute calls.
The fix: Optimize for how sales consumes battlecards (quick scan before call), not how I create them.
Mistake 3: Conflating distribution with access
The platform "distributed" battlecards by making them available in the platform.
But sales didn't work in the platform. They worked in Salesforce, Slack, email.
The fix: Distribution = delivering to where sales already works, not to another tool they have to open.
The Alternative: Integrated Workflow
After cancelling the standalone battlecard platform, I realized a different approach existed.
Instead of standalone battlecard software, integrated PMM platforms treat battlecards as one component of connected workflow.
The key difference:
Standalone battlecard platforms:
- Battlecards live in separate tool
- Comprehensive templates optimized for complete competitor profiles
- Distribution = making them available in platform
- Sales has to remember to open another tool
Integrated approach:
- Battlecards auto-generate from competitive positioning
- Simple format optimized for quick reference
- Distribution = push to Slack/Salesforce where sales already works
- Sales doesn't need to remember another tool
For teams facing similar challenges, platforms like Segment8 demonstrate how consolidated PMM platforms can generate simple battlecards from competitive positioning and push them directly to Slack where sales works.
The workflow typically looks like: Sales rep types "/battlecard Competitor X" in Slack → gets 4-bullet talking points in 2 seconds.
This solves the actual problem: Sales getting quick answers when they need them, in the tools they already use.
Reported advantages:
- Setup time: ~3 hours (vs. 64 hours building comprehensive platform battlecards)
- Update time: ~15 minutes (vs. 2+ hours updating comprehensive battlecards)
- Cost: Part of broader PMM platform (vs. $30K standalone)
- Sales usage: Contextually delivered (vs. requiring separate tool login)
The Uncomfortable Truth About Battlecard Software
After spending $30K on battlecard software and going back to Google Slides, here's what I learned:
Most PMMs don't need automated comprehensive battlecard software. They need simple battlecards distributed to where sales actually works.
The problem isn't creating battlecards. It's:
- Creating the right format (quick-reference, not comprehensive analysis)
- Distributing to where sales works (Slack, Salesforce, not standalone tool)
- Updating fast (minutes, not hours)
Standalone battlecard platforms optimize for comprehensiveness and storage. What most teams need is simplicity and instant access.
That's why we went back to Google Slides. It produced exactly what sales needed in the format they'd actually use.
Twelve months later, our competitive win rate hadn't changed. Sales had the same competitive intelligence—they just got it in a format they could actually use instead of comprehensive battlecards they'd ignore.
The right tool isn't the one with the most features. It's the one that matches how your sales team actually works.