Skill v1.0.0

version: "1.0.0" name: competitive-battlecard description: "Create sales-ready competitive battlecards comparing your product against a specific competitor — positioning, feature comparison, objection handling, and win/loss patterns. Use when preparing sales teams, creating competitive materials, or responding to 'why not competitor X?'"

Provenance. Vendored from phuryn/pm-skills@competitive-battlecard (MIT, Paweł Huryn / Product Compass — github.com/phuryn/pm-skills). Adapted into great-pm 2026-05-29 with attribution. Host agent: market-analyst.

Competitive Battlecard

Create a concise, sales-ready battlecard for use against a specific competitor.

Context

You are creating a competitive battlecard for $ARGUMENTS.

Use web search to research the competitor's current product, pricing, positioning, and recent changes. If the user provides files (feature lists, win/loss data, sales call notes), read them first.

Instructions

1. Research the competitor (use web search):

• Current product offerings and features
• Pricing tiers and model
• Target market and positioning
• Recent product launches or changes
• Known strengths and weaknesses
• Customer reviews and sentiment (G2, Capterra, Reddit)

1. Create the battlecard with these sections:

### Company Overview

• Founded, HQ, funding/revenue (if public)
• Target market and ICP
• Positioning in one sentence

### Quick Comparison

### Where We Win

• [Advantage 1]: [Proof point or customer quote]
• [Advantage 2]: [Specific capability they lack]
• [Advantage 3]: [Better approach with reasoning]

### Where They Win

• [Their strength 1]: [Our counter-positioning]
• [Their strength 2]: [How we mitigate this gap]

### Common Objections & Responses

### Landmines to Plant Questions to ask the prospect that highlight competitor weaknesses:

• "How important is [area where we excel] to your team?"
• "Have you evaluated [specific capability they lack]?"

### Win/Loss Patterns

• We tend to win when: [pattern]
• We tend to lose when: [pattern]
• Key differentiator in competitive deals: [what tips the scale]

1. Keep it scannable: Sales reps need to reference this during calls. Use tables, bold text, and short bullets.

1. Date-stamp the card. Put Last verified: YYYY-MM-DD at the top and a

Sources line under each competitor claim. A battlecard with no date is a liability (see pitfall 1).

Save as markdown. Format for easy printing or sharing in Notion/Confluence.

Pitfalls / failure modes

1. Battlecard rot (date-staleness). Competitors re-price, ship the feature

you said they lacked, and rebrand — fast. A card claiming "they have no mobile app" six months after they launched one doesn't just miss; it destroys rep credibility the moment a prospect corrects them. Every card carries a Last verified date; treat anything older than the refresh cadence (below) as unverified and flag it in-line rather than letting reps quote it as fact.

1. False feature-parity claim. Two traps, opposite directions: (a) claiming

"we have that too" when your version is a UX disaster a demo will expose, and (b) claiming a competitor "lacks X" when they have a rough version. Both blow up live on a call. Rule: a "Winner" verdict must rest on a verified capability gap, not a marketing-page bullet. If parity is real but your execution is worse, say so internally and counter-position on a different axis — don't send reps into a demo they'll lose.

1. Crossing the ethical line on landmines / FUD. "Landmines to Plant" is

legitimate only when the question points at a real, verifiable weakness the prospect should genuinely care about ("How are you handling X compliance?"). It becomes unethical FUD when it (a) implies a weakness you can't substantiate, (b) spreads a claim you know is false or outdated, or (c) disparages rather than informs. The test: would you stand behind the question if the competitor's PM were in the room? Every landmine must trace to a sourced, current fact — never invent a weakness, and never repeat an unverified rumor.

Cross-links

• Upstream → `competitive-analysis`. This battlecard is the *sales-ready

output; `competitive-analysis` is the fact-gathering layer* that feeds it — TAM/SAM/SOM, the source checklist (G2, Reddit, filings, hiring posts, call transcripts), and the "we have no competitors = no market" discipline. Don't hand-source facts in the battlecard; pull verified inputs from a competitive-analysis pass and cite them.

• Positioning frame → `obviously-awesome`. A battlecard's "Where We Win"

section is only as sharp as your positioning. Use obviously-awesome (April Dunford) to establish the competitive alternative, your unique attributes, and the value those attributes enable — then the battlecard's win/loss patterns fall out of a positioning you can defend, not ad-hoc bullet points.

• For market-structure depth (rivalry, switching costs, substitutes) defer to

porters-five-forces.

Refresh cadence

Battlecards are perishable. Maintain on a 90-day refresh cycle as the floor, plus event-triggered refreshes:

• Every 90 days: re-verify pricing, feature claims, positioning, and the

win/loss patterns against current evidence. Re-stamp Last verified. Archive claims you can no longer source.

• On a competitor launch / major release: refresh immediately — a new feature

can invalidate your central "Where We Win" claim overnight.

• **On a competitor funding round, acquisition, pricing change, or leadership

shift:** refresh the Company Overview and re-test positioning.

• On a lost deal to this competitor: capture the real loss reason and update

Win/Loss Patterns — field losses are the highest-signal refresh input there is.

A card past 90 days with no refresh should be marked stale, not quietly trusted.

Further Reading

• How to Design a Value Proposition Customers Can't Resist?