AI-Powered Seller

Your Competitive Battle Cards Are Wrong. How AI Creates Dynamic Positioning That Wins 3X More Deals

Jake Dunlap

Traditional battle cards are costing you deals. While your enablement team spends months creating static competitive guides, your competitors release three new features, leaving your sales team armed with outdated information that buyers can fact-check in seconds.

In this episode of AI-Powered Seller, Jake Dunlap exposes why competitive battle cards are dead and demonstrates his revolutionary AI-powered approach to real-time competitive intelligence that's helping sales teams win 3x more deals against superior products.

Most B2B sales reps rely on generic battle cards when they should be leveraging AI for dynamic competitive positioning. Jake reveals his exact ChatGPT prompt that analyzes competitors in real-time, identifies deal-specific landmines, and provides tactical positioning strategies that traditional sales enablement can't match.

Using a live demonstration with his custom Competitive Intelligence GPT, watch Jake analyze a real competitive scenario between SalesLoft and Gong at Okta, uncovering job postings, integration details, and strategic insights that would never appear in static battle cards.

This competitive intelligence episode covers:

  • Why 91% of sales enablement battle cards fail in today's fast-moving market 
  • The critical difference between knowing features and understanding competitive positioning psychology 
  • How to identify real-time competitive threats using AI sales tools 
  • Jake's complete framework for dynamic competitive analysis and deal strategy
  • Specific positioning tactics for different competitive scenarios and buyer stages • Warning signs your competition is outmaneuvering you with better information

Every enterprise sales rep, sales manager, and sales enablement professional needs to be running this AI competitive analysis on every deal. The gap between traditional sellers and AI-powered sellers is widening fast - which side will you be on?

📍 Chapters 

00:00 Why Battle Cards Are Killing Your Deals 

02:27 The Fatal Flaws of Static Competitive Intelligence 

05:26 AI-Powered Dynamic Positioning Revolution

08:39 Live Competitive Analysis Demo with ChatGPT 

14:24 Real-Time Insights That Beat Traditional Battle Cards 

17:34 The Future of Competitive Sales Intelligence

New episodes drop every other Wednesday @ 8 AM CT / 9 AM ET

►Listen and subscribe on all streaming platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/2YSdOae5YyHNfy6UQd7iIM ►Get Jake's AI Competitive Intelligence GPT: https://community.innovativesellerbook.com/c/welcome-start-here? ►Join the AI-Powered Seller Newsletter: https://bit.ly/ai-powered-seller-newsletter ►Connect with Jake: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap/

#AISales #CompetitiveIntelligence #SalesEnablement #B2BSales #ChatGPTforSales #SalesAI #BattleCards #CompetitiveSales #SalesStrategy #B2BSellingTips #SalesProcess #DynamicPositioning #RealTimeIntelligence

Speaker 1:

battle cards are dead. Enablement teams should literally stop making them right now, because the day that they publish, after two or three months of actually building them, your competition has already released three new features. Enablement, then, doesn't have a plan to refresh for a year. So, my friends, from day one, your team doesn't actually know how to compete. Your sales team is losing deals consistently to an inferior product sometimes, and the reason why is because your competition is positioning based on what they know, that's, new information about you versus you positioning based on old information. And that's not all. It's not just about in 2025, understanding the battle card and the features and how we differentiate. It's about how do I position that for this specific situation. And so that, my friends, is the goal for this episode of AI powered seller, the future is real time insights specific to the deal, with the latest, the greatest, everything that's up to date, so you can out position and out maneuver. This is, I'm telling you, 10 X better than what exists today. It's more actionable and it's higher quality than what I see 99% of reps putting out there. So let's jump into it.

Speaker 1:

Today's episode AI Powered Seller we are going to talk about competitive battle cards are dead and how the future is creating dynamic positioning to win three times more deals. I am your host, jake Dunlap, as usual, ceo of Scaled, co-founder of RevOptics, and we get a chance. We get a chance to work with hundreds and hundreds of companies every year. And this concept of the battle card right, everybody has these things, these competitive battle cards that sit there and these competitive like and the sales team. Let's be honest. Can we be honest with ourselves? Are we really using these things? Well, why aren't we using these things? Well, it's pretty simple. They're not helpful. They're not actually telling me hey, in this situation, how should I outmaneuver somebody? And so in today's episode, that's what I'm going to get into. And so in today's episode, that's what I'm going to get into. I'm going to get into how to have competitive battle card mindset that is, deal specific. And so in this episode, we're going to cover that.

Speaker 1:

If you are following on the podcast thank you so much Make sure to subscribe so you get updates on all the latest episodes. If you're watching on YouTube, please make sure subscribe. Like the video. This one, I think, is gonna be something anybody watching will be able to immediately go implement, and I'm actually in this one which is really fun we've been doing this more, if you've been following the podcast is I've got a mega prompt for you and a custom GPT that is gonna let you do what I'm about to show in literal seconds. You are going to be able to outmaneuver every competitive deal in a matter of seconds with insights and information that is probably 10 times better than what you're using today, and I'm going to show the prompts. So, if you're on the podcast, maybe hop over to YouTube. I'll talk through it as well too, but it is pretty powerful stuff. I'm going to show the prompts. So, if you're on, if you're on the podcast, you know, maybe hop over to YouTube. I'll talk through it as well too, but, uh, it is pretty powerful stuff. I'm very excited about it.

Speaker 1:

So, all right, what's what's going wrong with battle cards today? Right, I mentioned this in the intro, but the reality is static. Battle cards are outdated the moment they're created. Um, most enablement, people or people that are creating the battle cards also focus on you know, might not or may not know, maybe your product market at team two. They don't quite know all the feature sets. They know the core features, but look, you and I both know, you know the tools that we invested in a year or a year and a half ago. They're like, oh yeah, now we can do these five things.

Speaker 1:

And so the issue with your battle cards being is your sales team never really knows what they're competing against. And so what happens is it comes to proposal time and your reps are presenting a proposal and they know that you might be using a competitor, a prospect might be, and they're putting together a proposal to try to competitively differentiate and they don't realize like, oh no, no, your competition says the exact same thing. And for me that is a big area of opportunity, because if you don't know who you're competing against, obviously you're competing against no decision to. I've done a ton of podcasts about that. If you don't follow the innovative seller show, you know, make sure to follow that. We talk about more modern sales tips there.

Speaker 1:

But this is, this is the opportunity, is that right now the, the generic positioning two, that's the other kind of, that's number two kind of rub is not only are they outdated and so you lose deals because you don't know who you're competing against, or you're competing against features that you didn't even know they had. The number two is it's not specific to the account, right? Like, look, if I'm competing against another consulting firm, the way that I'm going to compete against them versus a small company, a medium company in this type of tech versus that type of tech is night and day. And so the other issue with battle cards is they're not adaptable. They're not adaptable to you know what we're seeing in the market.

Speaker 1:

It actually takes to win deals, and they're too generic. It's like you're just listing off these three or four generic details that are not nuanced enough to where that buyer goes like, oh man, this person is really an expert in the space and I want you guys to think about that. Knowing the competitive landscape is is table stakes, because your job as a seller is to be a consultant to that company to help them to make the right decision. And so again, if you are not, if you don't understand the ecosystem, you don't understand what is possible and who's good at this, who's this, who's my complimentary players you can never truly be a consultative seller. And I'm telling you right now if you fast forward two or three years from now, if you don't understand the nuances, why would buyers want to talk to you?

Speaker 1:

I can get all the features and the side-by-side comparisons from ChatGBT. Right, we're already seeing it. We've got lots of clients like dude. We're getting so many leads from LLMs and people actually doing this comparison, jake, like you're talking about. So you have to be able to do this. You have to be able to understand, like for these specific use cases, how you might differentiate, you know, based on what's important to that. You know that persona in particular.

Speaker 1:

So, as a part of this, what it's leading to is we're missing the actual reasons that we're losing to competitors. In our mind, we're like okay, we know that they do these things, you're wrong there. Okay, we know that we're better than them at this, but what you don't know is like that other tool also integrates into three other systems and makes everybody's life easier, and so you know, you think that they're picking them for, like core feature differentiation, but because you don't know the other features, you're also losing deals to them as well, too. Right, and I think the ability you know kind of. Last but not least maybe a sub bullet to number two is the inability to adapt positioning in real time in the sales conversation. My friends, you can use chat gbt on the call and say, hey, that's a really great point. And then you're just sitting there, you're talking and you're like, okay, how could I competitively differentiate, you know, from these people? So that's where we're at today.

Speaker 1:

So for all my AI powered sellers out there, I'm going to spend the next you know, 10 plus minutes here talking about the future, and I'm going to show you a prompt that you are going to lose your mind. You are literally going to go. I will never look at a competitive battle card that my enablement team generates, ever again. It's literally that good. Okay, so how AI handles this is it can create real time monitoring of competitor pricing, features messaging. It can look for companies mentioning your competitor as a part of this right.

Speaker 1:

The prompt I'm going to show you and again, this was not planned, this was literally the first time that we had kind of tested it for the podcast Some of the insights it shows about what the prospects company is doing outside of your deal and it can pull from the news and blogs and other things, is absolutely amazing. And so, in order to compete, you need to be able to do two things One for a lot of you. We're going to share this prompt. We'll put it straight in a link in the show notes, you'll be able to access it. If you're on YouTube, you're going to see it in real time too as a part of it. So for a lot of you, great, that's gonna be the prompt, but that's not what true, like best of best people are doing. Okay, best of best people, what they are doing right now is they use a competitive analyzer, gpt, and so we're gonna put a link to it. We have one that we've built at Scaled that literally this three-minute competitive check is going to transform the quality of your conversation. It literally is bonkers. So you can prompt that's step one, or forget that. Then it'll just say, hey, give me a link, tell me who the competitor is. It'll just say, hey, give me a link, tell me who the competitor is. So, without further ado, let me show you why real-time competitive insights is just so dang important.

Speaker 1:

All right, so I'm firing up my screen here for everybody, and what I did is I went ahead and I selected. It's so funny. Somebody asked me this Like Jake, why do you always pick Okta? And I'm like I don't know, I just do as a part of this. So what I've done here is this is the following prompt. So if you're following along, I'm just going to kind of talk you through it for everybody out there. It says I want you to analyze all available data to provide a dynamic competitive positioning of statement for Okta. That's the prospect I'm trying to sell them sales loft, but competing against Gong Act as an expert in competitive intelligence and deep understanding of B2B sales psychology. That's key. Why do buyers move, et cetera.

Speaker 1:

Then I say provide the following insights, and I won't go through all the bullets, but the first one is competitor presence assessment. Identify competitors explicitly mentioned by the prospect. Detect implicit references. Flag any competitive terminology. And so what I didn't put in here is the version that you all are going to see in the notes says hey, upload your call transcript and give me additional details. I didn't do that here, but if you want to make it even better, you can do that. The prompt that we'll share will ask you to. You know you can put in there like share a call transcript, share some things that you're nervous about. For simplicity's sake, I was like let's just see, if I run it like this, how good it does.

Speaker 1:

Next is competitive positioning map. Create a positioning matrix of how you likely compare on a key factors. Identify your competitive strengths. Highlight vulnerable areas right, and again, it's doing all this work for you. Then, competitive validation points Identify proof points that will neutralize competitive advantage. Highlight unique differentiators. Suggest customer references right. And then there's a couple more in here Competitive landmines Ooh, this one is so good.

Speaker 1:

Wait till you guys see the result of this one. Competitive landmines, flag questions that may expose competitive weaknesses. Identify objections competitors might be raising about my solution, right. Number five competitive strategy recommendations. Recommend specific positioning against each competitor. Identify timing for when this is so big, when you bring up the competition or how you competitively differentiate. Sometimes you don't even need to bring up the competition can make a big deal, okay. Suggest questions that highlight competitive strengths right. Then, last but not least, number six a prospect's likely evaluation criteria. I love this one, right. Based on the company, the industry, maybe, how they've historically talked about the types of products they're buying, how are they probably evaluating us? And so imagine, plus, if when you add call transcripts, you get first-party data and you get third-party data, which I think is huge, then I want you to provide the analysis in the following format Give me an executive summary, give me the landscape, give me recommendations. Give me the landscape. Give me recommendations. Give me competitive response strategy.

Speaker 1:

Guys, this might be one of the best prompts that we have written, if I'm being honest about. We've put out a lot of really good ones. If you want to talk about how you're going to win deals, especially if you're in a competitive space, this is game changing, your proof point, strategy and, last but not least, tactical next steps. All right, let's run this bad boy. Okay, so we ran it. So it ran for one minute and 31 section. I'm using the ChatGPT-03 model. I did not use deep research for this. I think you could probably use deep research, like I said, if you wanna make this better. The prompt that you're gonna see also calls out upload transcripts. Tell me additional details For going to see. Also calls out upload transcripts. Tell me additional details. For simplicity's sake, I was like let's just run it this way as a part of it. So let's check this out, guys.

Speaker 1:

Gong is deeply embedded in Okta today. Guys, check this. This is insane, check this out. A brand new posting for a dedicated Gong platform manager shows not just usage, strategic ownership, guys. This pulled in real time a job posting from may 5th of this year. Guys, imagine if you knew that.

Speaker 1:

No competitive battle card saying hey, literally yesterday they put up a job title for your competitor, yet octa has already blessed sales loft. Sales loft is a pre-approved blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know SCIM SAML app in Okta's integration network? Huh, maybe I didn't know that. Conductor AI Rhythm beat Gong and Gauge on depth. Oh yeah, hey, we've got a case study on that. Okta's buying basis skews towards security. Salesloft can win Winning place. Salesloft is a revenue workflow layer that turns Gong's insights into platform creation reactions rather than rip and replace. And what they're saying is look guys, it seems like they're pretty deep with Gong, so suggesting a rip and replace probably isn't the right piece. Instead, based on what they're doing, here's what you should do Explicit competitor gone Sentiment very positive.

Speaker 1:

Okta's literally talking about them on their website, right. Alternatives okay. What about outreach? Hey, they're also on Okta's in-app. And Clary, right, with Groove, they're also literally listed in Okta. That seems neutral. Conversational intelligence right. So those are table stakes. So they're saying, hey, that's not going to be a big you know factor.

Speaker 1:

Again, likely stage that this company is at. I want you to think about this. It pulls up likely stage the company is at. It says tool consolidation review Ops is exploring how to unify engagement, coaching and forecasting. Next, it says positioning recommendation Differentiation point is rhythm Signal to action right. Why it matters is it converts their insights into prioritized tasks and sees 39% to 57% productivity gains over what you know. Engage might be able to provide Multi-channel cadence depth right. It says that the job description for Gong only talked about flows as a part of the job description. Guys, it's pulling in the job description Valuable Gong areas to neutralize. What are they going to talk about? Surface level flows versus mature right. So this is where I want to attack the competition Limited analytics, our command center deal, telemetry right.

Speaker 1:

Sales off turns coaching insights your Gong team already loves into governed, ai-prioritized outbound workflows, boosting support by 40% plus. Again, this is the type of stuff you just don't get in battle cards, guys. Competitive response strategy Gong already does cadences. Well, yeah, they do, but they're only 18 months old. We've had this for over five plus years. Salesloft is already active, certified. We prefer one vendor. Salesloft is already active, certified, right, we prefer one vendor SalesLoft extends Gong. Customers like LinkedIn run both insights and execution, which beats all-in-one compromises.

Speaker 1:

Don't claim hey, landmine. Don't claim better call transcription. Seed that ground, avoid deep forecasting debates. If Clary is in play, this is so good, right? And then it goes into proof point strategies Again, like it's highlighting your own case studies for you.

Speaker 1:

It's literally pulling this in real time. What are some questions that you might want to ask them to uncover? You know areas of opportunity where we can competitively differentiate. When to introduce differentiation? After confirming pain around outbound scale, but before technical deep dive, usually after call two, shall our proof assessments immediately.

Speaker 1:

As a part of this, again, you might want to map the gone job description to what we can do as a part of this, right? So, guys, I want you to think about this. Think about this battle card and again, I didn't even put in the job title of the person. That would have made this stronger If I would have added call transcripts. That would have made this stronger. My friends, this is the future, not battle cards. The future is using, you know, our we've got again, we've got the competitive intelligence GPT that literally all you gotta do is give it a link, tell it the competitor and tell it the job title, and then you don't even have to memorize this whole prompt thing.

Speaker 1:

Guys, this is the opportunity you are losing deals. We are getting more and more competitive. We're getting more. It's more and more difficult to cut through the noise, and so, in today's day and age, you have to be able to try to get the details, the nitty gritty. I mean the fact that it's showing landmines, things to avoid. Hey, just so you know, god might be better than you at this, so, and they're hiring for this person. So therefore, guy, you're probably not going to win this part of the deal, right? Like? It's not going to happen.

Speaker 1:

Like, guys, this is the insight that you need as an AI powered seller. Just think about how this is going to transform the quality of your conversations. Right? The future of selling is you need to always, in every deal, assume hey, there's gonna be competition, there's gonna be people that are involved, and so that is the future. The future are these real-time AI-powered competitive intelligence. There's nothing like this that your enablement team is going to produce on a consistent basis, right? They're not going to be out there looking for job titles. They're not going to be looking out there looking for trends in the industry points you should seed right there. Instead, they're going to keep telling you, as a seller, you're the best at everything. You're not. You're really good at a lot of things, and if those things are the things that matters, then you'll win more deals, but if, but, if not, then you're gonna lose deals. So that's what I got everyone.

Speaker 1:

That, my friends, is the latest episode of AI powered seller. Again, if you're watching on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to the channel. I hope you got a ton of value. Please drop your comments in there like man. This was helpful. Jake, this wasn't that helpful. I don't think I would use it. You know, always do that. Make sure. If you're listening on the pod, make sure to subscribe. And every other week, sometimes, we do a little bonus episode. We are dropping just straight knowledge on how to become an AI powered seller. This is the future. The future isn't AI will replace you. It's sellers who know how to use AI that will replace you. So that's all I got everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in and we will see you on the next one.

People on this episode