Battlecards have evolved.

What used to be static documents collecting dust are now dynamic, always-on tools, continually being refreshed with real-time intel and delivered directly into a sales reps' workflow. Forward-thinking teams and leaders are embracing this shift.

One of those forward-thinking leaders is Holly Nelson, Senior Sales Enablement Manager at The Standard, a workplace benefits provider that's redefining how competitive content is delivered to sellers. Holly and her team are automating battlecard creation with Crayon, making it easier than ever to get the right message to the right seller at the right time. 

Taking a step back before Crayon, competitive intel at The Standard was minimal — primarily a repository of outdated flyers with limited value. The team didn’t have battlecards in place because there were no resources to maintain them. 

During Crayon onboarding, the team started to build out dynamic battlecards using a mix of intel from sales reps, account managers, online searches, competitor websites, and Crayon’s aggregated intelligence. 

Given the complexity of the group employee benefits industry and the involvement of brokers which The Standard relies on for business, offerings vary by employer type, industry, group size, financial allotment and region. As a result, the team had to invest time validating information before surfacing it to the field. 

In their time before automated battlecards the compete team at The Standard had to be incredibly thoughtful about the content they created because some of their competitors have rich product portfolios — which means there’s lots of competitive data to track. Manually updating these battlecards can be time consuming with someone responsible for keeping the content current. That is until The Standard started using Sparks, Crayon's AI-powered research, analysis, and enablement tool.  

"Sparks has been a transformative tool for our competitive intelligence program," said Nelson. "It helps us both track and analyze industry-relevant topics tailored to our market. After we create a Spark for a certain competitor, we can then instantly include those findings on our battlecards."

Here's how automated battlecards works for The Standard: the team creates automated Sparks across various topics (Sparks pulls from the insights Crayon gathers along with their Salesforce data). These automated Sparks ensure content gets updated weekly — keeping their competitive intel current.  

"While there are certain sections of our battlecards we want to manually update, key sections of these battlecards are now entirely automated thanks to Sparks.," Nelson continued. "With these automated Sparks, the intel on our battlecards is always fresh which means reps stay engaged because they’re not viewing stale competitive data. Sparks has significantly streamlined our ability to deliver timely, relevant insights."

Teams across sales, management, marketing, social media, product, research, and technology benefit from weekly and monthly Sparks updates keeping them informed and aligned with their roles. 

"The ability to create Sparks, set it, forget it, and let it work its magic behind the scenes is exactly what’s been missing from how compete teams track and share intel," said Nelson.

The team at The Standard has generated 90 Sparks across their competitive landscape with more than 20 automated battlecards (pulling from these Sparks).  

With automated content, battlecards are a foundational tool for reps, helping them to confidently navigate conversations and address common objections. Reps at The Standard can quickly gather intel through battlecard content and then form a competitive stance, especially in late stage deals by using the right talk track — which has resulted in critical business wins.

"We’ve built stronger relationships with our sales reps because of Crayon," said Nelson. 

Designing battlecard sections with the reps' needs in mind and requesting their input initially helped everyone gain trust in the platform. Reps have begun reaching out for guidance and insight, and we’ve been using intel from Crayon to create quick presentations for our reps for a specific opportunity.

According to Nelson, "It’s taken time, but our reps now view battlecard content confidently as the source of truth and know they have a resource that helps them feel more prepared and knowledgeable. The automation of the battlecard content through Sparks keeps them coming back because they know the competitive intel will always be up-to-date and relevant."

For the sales team at The Standard, the adoption of Crayon has reinforced the importance of understanding who they're winning and losing against and the “Why” behind it.  

Nelson is planning to expand the battlecard library and develop more detailed Sparks to automate targeted updates through Microsoft Teams — delivering relevant insights to specific reps based on the markets they serve. Additionally, they're exploring ways to integrate Crayon Sparks into the company's internal SharePoint pages to drive engagement across teams, especially around tech enablement, competitor activity, and industry trends.