Battle Card Builder

Battle Card Builder

Purpose

Build a field-action competitive battle card from public evidence: **use or gather evidence → search

plan (if gathering) → draft card with per-claim labels → appendix → next-step options.** A battle

card is the artifact a rep opens mid-deal, not a research report — it must fit thirty seconds, every

claim must survive being said out loud to a hostile audience, and every claim therefore carries a

source URL, a date, and a Fact/Inference/Assumption label. Most battle cards in the wild are unlabeled

inference; this skill exists because of what it costs a rep when one of those turns out wrong.

Input

Works best with: your product and its primary differentiation, and the one competitor this

card targets.

Also useful: the deal context (segment, buyer, common objections or the loss reason that triggered

this card), and any competitive-research-snapshot or

competitive-intel-watch output in session — the skill uses

existing evidence and searches only for gaps and anything older than one quarter.

Input supplied inline with the invocation — text after the skill name, a pasted context dump, or an

appended ARGUMENTS: line — counts as answers already given. Use it against the question budget;

don't re-ask.

Arriving empty-handed? That works too. The skill opens with at most 3 questions (product +

competitor, segment + buyer, triggering objection) and proceeds on labeled assumptions if they go

unanswered.

Example invocation: `Build a battle card: our workflow platform vs [Competitor A], mid-market ops

buyers — triggered by three straight losses on "their integrations are deeper."`

Key Concepts

• Governing protocol: honors the autonomous-investigation

contract — question budget of 3, search-plan gate, Fact/Inference/Assumption labels, Just Enough

Mode, stable schema, 4-option Final Step.

• Discipline mix: SIGINT (pricing pages, site diffs — the freshest layer, what keeps cards from

going stale) + OSINT (review mining for objection handling) + HUMINT (win/loss ground truth when

you have it) — see intelligence-collection-disciplines.

• Field-action criterion. Every element earns its place by being usable mid-conversation. Depth

goes in the appendix; the card fits a rep's thirty seconds.

• Trap questions are evidence work. A trap question is only safe to ask when you *know the

documented answer* — offense is built from citations, not bravado. "Never ask what you cannot

evidence" is the section's law.

• The "Do Not Say" section is protection. Claims you can't evidence, or that invite a counter,

are listed explicitly — the card protects the rep from the team's own folklore.

• Two modes, one artifact. This skill builds the card from *the world's* evidence

(investigation); a facilitated workshop builds it from *your team's* evidence (win/loss knowledge,

deal experience). The mode choice depends on where the evidence lives — bring rich internal

win/loss knowledge to a facilitated session instead, and use this skill when the public record is

the stronger source.

• Do-not-invent list: features, pricing, market share, customer wins, roadmap items, quotes.

Application

• Check session for existing evidence — a competitive snapshot or watch report. If present, use

it as the evidence base; search only for gaps and freshness (older than one quarter).

• Credit inline context, then ask only the unanswered questions (max 3):
• Your product, and the one competitor this card targets?
• What segment and buyer do these deals involve?
• What objection or loss reason triggered this card?

If unanswered, proceed with labeled assumptions.

• If researching fresh, show the 3-bullet search plan — what you'll check (pricing pages,

release notes, reviews, customer stories, comparison content), source types, how facts will be

separated from inference. Continue unless revised.

• Draft the card in the schema below exactly — cards are diffable across runs, and the watch

skill's update flags name these sections.

Card schema (do not reorder)

~~~markdown

Battle Card: [Your Product] vs [Competitor]

As-of date: | Deal context: [segment, buyer]

1. Thirty-Second Read

• They win when: [1-2 bullets, labeled]
• We win when: [1-2 bullets, labeled]
• The one thing to say: [a single defensible sentence]

2. Say This

• [Talking point] — [evidence: URL, date, label]
• [Max 4; every one sourced]

3. Ask This (trap questions)

• "[Question whose documented answer favors us]" — [the documented answer: URL, label]
• [Max 3; never ask what you cannot evidence]

4. Watch Out For

• [Their strength a rep should not walk into] — [URL, label]
• [Their likely counter to our pitch] — [Inference, basis]

5. Pricing & Packaging Snapshot

• [Their tiers/pricing as published] — [URL, as-of date]
• [Where "contact sales" hides the number] — [labeled]

6. Do Not Say

• [Claims we cannot evidence, or that invite a counter]

Appendix: Evidence Table

| Claim | Label | Source | Date |

|---|---|---|---|

Assumptions to Validate

• [Assumption 1] / [Assumption 2] / [Assumption 3]

~~~

A copy/paste fill-in version of this schema, with quality checks, lives in template.md.

Final Step (offer exactly 4 options)

• Pressure-test the card: role-play the competitor's rep against it
• Build the card for a second competitor
• Set up competitive-intel-watch to keep this card current
• Compress to a one-screen mobile version for the field

Accept 1, 2, 3, 4, 1 and 3, Verbose Mode, or a custom path.

Examples

A trap question built correctly (fictional):

> Ask this: "How does your migration handle custom fields over the 200-field limit?" — documented

> answer: their own docs state custom-field migration caps at 200 with manual re-entry beyond it —

> Fact (docs page, checked Jul 2026). Safe to ask: the answer is in

> their documentation, so the rep isn't bluffing — they're citing.

A "Do Not Say" entry earning its keep:

> - Don't say "they can't do SSO on the starter tier" — they shipped it in June

> (release notes); a rep repeating our old card walks into a

> correction that costs the room's trust.

> - Don't lead with "we're cheaper" — true only below 50 seats (their pricing,

> ours); above that the math flips, and enterprise buyers check.

See examples/sample.md for a complete worked card (fictional FSM-software

market) rebuilt from the competitive-intel-watch example's update flags — the full chain landing

in a field artifact. examples/sample-industrial.md builds the

industrial version, where the channel partner is a card audience and pricing is opaque.

Common Pitfalls

• The unlabeled card. Talking points without sources are folklore with formatting. The label is

what tells a rep how hard they can lean on a claim when the buyer pushes back.

• The research-report card. Two pages of landscape context a rep will never read mid-deal. Thirty

seconds is the budget; the appendix exists for everything else.

• Trap questions on hope. Asking a question whose answer you haven't documented hands the

competitor a stage. If the evidence isn't in the appendix table, the question doesn't ship.

• Quote invention. A fabricated customer quote or paraphrased review presented as verbatim is the

fastest way to destroy the card's credibility — and it's on the do-not-invent list for exactly that

reason.

• The immortal card. Cards rot at SIGINT speed — pricing pages and release notes change monthly.

A card without an as-of date, or without a watch feeding it update flags, is a liability wearing a

logo.

• Skipping "Do Not Say." The section that protects reps from the team's own stale folklore is the

one most often omitted — usually because nobody wants to write down which beloved claims are dead.

References

• autonomous-investigation (Workflow) — the governing protocol
• intelligence-collection-disciplines (Component) — discipline sources; SIGINT keeps this card fresh
• competitive-research-snapshot (Workflow) — upstream evidence base
• competitive-intel-watch (Workflow) — flags when this card's sections go stale
• positioning-statement (Component) — the strategic layer the card's talking points should agree with
• Adapted from market-intelligence/battle-card-builder-prompt.md in the

https://github.com/deanpeters/product-manager-prompts repo.