A Breakdown of Battlecards — Making byte sized views, of big product challenges
Type battlecards in Google. Go on, do it.
Did you come across information on sales battlecards every small and big organization is proactively recommending?
This is because battlecards are high-value internal assets that compile key information in bite-sized pellets. The only caveat… these have sales information, pertaining to the product or service, the target market, the target customer, and the brand competitors. While every sales professional would surely have this information at their fingertips, this document really helps, especially during pitches when they require quick reference to important statistics and metrics.
But, why are we talking about sales battlecards?
This is because, folks here at Cope, knowing how useful battlecards are, had an idea — to personalize battlecards and create a template, based on similar principles, that everyone in the organization can use. And, we have been using these successfully since our very first business quarter.
Over time, these have been polished, perfected, and refined. Imagine our excitement today as battlecards are rolled out across the ecosystem at Polygon!
So, here’s presenting our version of battlecards.
Purpose
Let’s talk purpose first.
There is a degree of creativity in every human being, in one way or the other. To be our best creative selves, we need an ecosystem to nurture our talents, a space to grow our specific skillsets, and targets that hold us accountable. And, most importantly, there has to be support when we falter and empathy for our occasional blunders.
Our objective while designing battlecards for Cope was to imbibe these various elements into information that anyone can look up and utilize for positive action.
Filling those blanks
The name!
Frankly, it can’t be blamed if someone names themselves as Alexander: The Defender of the Weak, Don Juan: Romancer of Women, or I am Legend! However, we decided that it wasn’t the right approach for our battlecards.
So, we stick to our original names, always.
The devil is in the detail! [Or, perhaps, God is in the detail!]
To have empathy in the workplace, our teams need to know us, understand our skills, and know our personalities just a little better. So, what is needed is a quick reference point.
We state our genders or our preferred pronouns and our functions in the organization — could be Growth, Product, or Strategy.
We also let our teams know the tasks they can approach us for and those that they should think twice or thrice before doing so. So, the next time, they approach us with some of the latter, they come bearing gifts! 😉
The next important detail is to allow everyone a view of our inner mechanics. Letting our passions shine offers some useful tips to the team, especially in ice-breaker events or team-building exercises.
Do we belong to the introvert, extrovert, or ambivert category? Is social media savviness part of our appeal — if so, you can bet to see our personal handles linked on our battlecards.
Are there things we love and others that we are exceptional at? Maybe one of us is an A-list poker player, and playing a game of poker is the only way to bond with them. Or, perhaps, someone considers themselves a feminist and is open to all discussions ‘feminism’.
Finally, it’s time for our mantra.
It may be something personal, it may be profound, but it is always something true.
Describing the role!
This is the professional elevator-pitch.
The idea is to let anyone who reads it form a fair idea of our work and skillset.
Finally, our OKRs!
At Cope, battlecards are built every quarter.
While the former details largely remain consistent, OKRs (or Objectives and Key Results) change every quarter.
But first, let’s set the context for how these OKRs are set.
Stage 1
Before every quarter, the executive team decides the vision for the company.
What this means is that the team sets the business objectives for the quarter, and against that quarter, they define the specific results or KRs that will help them achieve these. The KRs are usually metrics that are easy to measure and track.
Stage 2
Once these goals are set, all teams come together and rough out the team OKRs. Doing this exercise collaboratively helps us understand each other’s work and gives way to healthy competition and collaboration.
At Cope, there are dedicated OKRs for product, design, and growth. For each quarter, we decide each team’s objectives and three specific key results against each.
Stage 3
Once the team OKRs are ready, the individual OKRs are ready to roll.
The team decides internally who takes up what, and what the individual targets are. This is an excellent exercise because it helps everyone set goals that tie up to the business objectives for the quarter. No shying away from setting learning goals either! Up-skilling is essential to our company’s growth and, therefore, encouraged.
And folks, this is also where our battlecards come in.
The OKRs are set and visible for all to see, and, now, it’s time to smash it with our work in every sprint until the quarter ends.
Discussions and then getting started
Finally, the battlecards are good to go.
Meet Swetha, the growth specialist at Cope!
And, this is how her battlecard looked in one quarter.
Battlecards, such as these, give us a good reference to targets.
On a personal level, it allows us to stay agile, evolve, experiment, and deliver high-quality work. From a team lens, it makes us accountable to each other, letting us all stay on target and meet business goals every quarter.
In essence, it keeps us in shape for Web3.
Battlecards have now become a part of Cope and Polygon’s workflow in making sure the entire org is aligned about their goals, making tracking of performance easy, effective, and most importantly making goals attainable.
