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Competitive Battlecard Template for Sales

Five documents and three sheets where every claim carries its source, the exact words behind it, and the date it stops being true.

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Claim Verification Log

Sixty-one inherited claims, audited against their sources

Larkhill Compliance  ·  three inherited cards  ·  every source opened and read, not just loaded

Claim typeClaimsWhat it can supportShelf life
Their own published words22A direct quote, attributed to them90 days pricing, 180 days docs
A public record9A dated fact the prospect can checkAt the printed expiry, or never
Aggregate review pattern7A claim about reviews, never about the product180 days, and re-count
Our own measurement5A number, with its method and date180 days or our next release
A single review quote1One customer's opinion, dated, never generalised12 months on relevance
Hearsay from a call11Nothing. This is not a claimn/a
Source no longer supports it6Nothing. Retired the same dayExpired 6 to 13 months ago
61 claims6144 verified, 17 undefendable (27.9%)

Nine of the seventeen sat on one card

The Northgate card. The competitor carrying 52.4 percent of Larkhill's lost contract value on 26.5 percent of the mentions. The card that gets opened most gets edited most casually.

The sentence that cost deals for eleven months

“They have a 25-seat minimum at $45 per user.” True when it was written. Their pricing page now shows three tiers from $29 with no minimum. A twelve-seat prospect told they were priced out went and looked, and found an entry tier below ours.

Five verified claims were left off every card. True, sourced, and answering nothing a prospect asks. Verified is not the same as worth saying.

A battlecard fails one way. Somewhere on it is a sentence from a call eighteen months ago, typed in the same font as the claim that came from the competitor's pricing page, and the rep reads both with identical confidence. Larkhill Compliance audited three inherited cards against their sources: 61 claims, 44 defendable, 17 not. Nine of the 17 sat on the card for the competitor costing them the most money.

The fix is not a last-verified field. It is six claim types, each licensing a different sentence and carrying its own shelf life. The competitor's own documentation can be quoted directly. A public record is a dated fact the prospect can check. An aggregate review pattern is a claim about reviews and never about the product, so seventeen of forty-one reviews raising onboarding is defensible and "their customers hate onboarding" is not. Hearsay licenses nothing, and it becomes a discovery question rather than a deletion.

Naming them was never the risk. The FTC's policy on comparative advertising encourages naming competitors and says a higher substantiation bar for comparative claims is inappropriate. The risk is the assertion: the Lanham Act makes misrepresenting another party's goods in commercial promotion actionable by anyone likely to be damaged by it. So provenance sits on the claim and not on the card, because a card refreshed last month can still carry a sentence whose source moved. This installs into the marketing workspace beside the launch pack and the template library.

Which competitor earns a card, the card itself, and the questions that replaced the claims nobody could source

The Competitor Register, a finished battlecard, and the Trap Questions converted from hearsay.

Competitor Register

412 closed-lost opportunities over 18 months. A competitor is named on 268 of them.

CompetitorLossesAvg lost valueLost valueShareWin rateDecision
Northgate71$38,600$2,740,60052.4%20.2%Maintained card, 19 claims
Verityx96$14,200$1,363,20026.0%38.9%Maintained card, 14 claims
Palisade44$11,400$501,6009.6%56.4%Shared objection page
Long tail, 12 names28$12,300$344,4006.6%54.1%Shared objection page
Cormorant29$9,800$284,2005.4%58.6%Shared objection page
Named268$5,234,000100.0%2 maintained cards

The two rankings disagree, and the disagreement decides the work. By mentions it is Verityx, Northgate, Palisade. By lost contract value it is Northgate first, twice Verityx's figure, on 26 percent fewer mentions. Verityx wins in a high-volume low-value segment and generates channel noise every week. Northgate wins in the enterprise segment and generates the losses.

Northgate gets the first card because both measures agree. Highest lost value and the lowest win rate of the five at 20.2 percent, which together mean the deals are large, they are being lost, and nothing currently in the field is working.

144 of the 412 closed-lost records, 35.0 percent, name no competitor at all. Report that before any ranking: it is the confidence interval on the whole table, and it has two very different causes.

Battlecard: Northgate

19 claims, all verified. Next re-fetch in 60 days. Grouped by source type, because the source decides the phrasing.

Read this first, in ten seconds

They win large accounts on procurement comfort, not on product. Do not attack the product. Ask about the timeline and the seat economics, both published on their own site, both worse the smaller the account.

GroupClaimHow to say it
Their wordsEntry tier $29 per user, no seat minimumQuote the pricing page directly
Their wordsStandard engagement is 16 weeks“Their own services page says 16 weeks”
Their wordsFindings export as CSV onlyQuote the documentation
Their wordsTrust page lists no report periodA claim about what the page says, not about the certification
Public recordRegistry entry expires in 9 monthsA dated fact; let the prospect check it
Reviews17 of 41 reviews in 12 months raise onboarding“Of the reviews published this year, this many raise onboarding”
Reviews9 of 41 praise the reporting templatesSay it. A card that only attacks gets read once
Our measurementOur median to first audit cycle is 6.2 weeks, n=34With the method and the date, next to their 16

Nine claims came off the previous version. Seven were call notes: a nine-month implementation, bad support, a three-year lock-in, a doubt about the certification, an inability to handle multi-site, a customer supposedly leaving, and a plan to move upmarket. Five became questions, two were dropped. The other two were their old pricing and the seat minimum.

The one thing not to say: that they have a 25-seat minimum. It was true, it is not, and a small prospect told they are priced out will go and look.

Trap Questions

Eleven unverifiable claims. Seven became these questions. Four were dropped, because no phrasing was worth asking.

The claim nobody could sourceThe question that replaced it
Their implementation really takes nine monthsWhat did they quote you for time to first completed audit cycle, and is that number in the contract?
Their support is badWho owns your account after implementation closes, and is that a named person or a queue?
They lock you into a three-year termWhat is the renewal term, and what happens to your data if you do not renew?
They are not really certifiedHave you asked for their current report period, or just the badge?
They cannot handle multi-siteWhich of your sites would go live first, and how many are on the older process?
They are about to raise pricesWhat term are you being offered, and is the rate held at renewal?
Their free tier is a trapWhat happens to your reports if you go past the monthly cap?

A question does three things an assertion cannot. It carries no exposure, because nothing is being stated about the competitor. The answer is specific to this deal rather than to a rumour about the market. And a prospect who says the thing out loud has convinced themselves, which no card has ever managed.

The four that were dropped. A large customer leaving, which arrived twice fourteen months apart from two reps and is therefore one rumour rather than corroboration. Their engineering headcount. A plan to move upmarket. Half their team leaving. Nothing about a named individual is ever load-bearing in a deal.

Ask two, not seven. Seven questions on a card becomes an interrogation in the hands of somebody reading it as a script.

Edit with AI

What's in the pack

01

Claim Verification Log

Sixty-one audited rows: claim, type, source, the verbatim words, retrieval date, expiry and disposition. The aggregate-review row type is the same evidence a G2 review generation programme is built to grow deliberately, not something a card can manufacture on its own.

02

Competitor Register

Mentions against lost contract value, so the ranking that decides what gets built is not mention volume.

03

Win Rate by Competitor

Wins and losses where each competitor appears, read as how much a card can plausibly move.

04

Battlecard

One competitor, one page, claims grouped by source type because the source decides the phrasing.

05

Trap Questions

Seven questions converted from unverifiable claims, each labelled with the claim it replaced.

06

Landmine Guidance

Five things that never go on a card, and three that lose deals with no legal exposure at all.

07

Claim Provenance Standard

The six types, what each licenses, and a shelf life per type rather than one review cadence.

08

Which Competitors Get a Card

The lost-value join, the blank-field diagnostic, and why the answer is fewer cards than you have. A closed-lost tag records who won, not why; the win-loss interview programme confirms the actual reason before a card gets built around it.

How to use it

  1. 1

    Open in River, or take it blank

    Open the pack in River and send your closed-lost export and your existing cards, or download the Word documents and CSV sheets and audit them yourself.

  2. 2

    Rank before you write

    Join closed-lost records to contract value. Report the blank-competitor rate first, because it is the confidence interval on everything after it.

  3. 3

    Audit what you already have

    Open every source and confirm the current page still supports the exact sentence attributed to it. Store the words, not just the link.

  4. 4

    Convert, do not delete

    Every claim you cannot source started as a real observation. Turn it into a question the prospect answers, and pair it with a sourced figure.

Frequently asked questions

Is this template free?

Yes, with no account, no card and no email gate on the download. Edit with AI is the optional half: River runs the lost-value ranking, opens every source behind your existing claims, and tells you how many you could not defend today. Every pack sits in the template library.

What format are the downloaded files?

Five Word documents and three CSV sheets, in a zip. The documents open in Word, Pages and Google Docs. The sheets open in Excel, Numbers and Sheets. Nothing needs converting, and the claim log arrives as a real spreadsheet you can filter by verdict.

Is it safe to name a competitor on a card?

Yes, and the regulator says so explicitly. The FTC's comparative advertising policy encourages naming competitors and treats truthful comparison as useful to buyers. What creates liability is asserting something about their product you cannot support, which is what the provenance discipline is for.

Is this the same as a last-verified date?

A last-verified field records that somebody looked. This records what the source said, in their exact words, and when the claim expires based on what kind of claim it is. Pricing rots in ninety days. A certification expires on a printed date. A court filing never does.

Why not just delete the claims we cannot source?

Because most of them started as a real observation on a real call. Deleting them throws away the only signal in them. Converted into a discovery question, the prospect investigates it themselves, the answer is specific to that deal, and nothing was asserted.

How many battlecards should we maintain?

Fewer than you have. Maintaining one properly means re-fetching every source, retiring what expired and re-quoting what moved, every quarter. Eleven cards is nine stale ones, and a rep cannot tell which kind they opened. Two current cards plus a shared objection page beats it.

What does Edit with AI actually do?

It signs you up, installs this pack as a private workspace, and starts with the ranking. Send the closed-lost export and whatever cards exist, and the audit comes back as two counts: how many claims are undefendable, and how many of those sit on your most expensive competitor.

Written by

Chandler Supple

Co-founder & CEO, River

Chandler has spent six years working in AI, building tools for millions of users and Fortune 100 companies along the way. He now leads River as co-founder and CEO.

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Reviewed by

Brian Joseff, Co-founder, River

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Find out how many claims you could not defend

Take the Word documents and CSV sheets blank, or open this exact pack in River and send it your closed-lost export and your existing cards.

Edit with AI