Battlecard — win the deals they show up in

Deals against a competitor are lost on framing, not features. The prospect hears a story that makes you the risky choice, and your side improvises a rebuttal. A battlecard hands your side the framing first: where you genuinely win, where you honestly lose, and the questions that expose the gap — every claim graded by how well you actually know it.

Inputs

• The competitor, and everything known about head-to-head deals: $ARGUMENTS
• From marketing-brief.md if present: this competitor's entry under The competitors (offer, claimed position, weaknesses), positioning & message, the offer, and objections & beliefs. If the competitor entry is thin, run /marketing:competitor-teardown first — a battlecard built on guesswork loses politely.

Do this

1. Assemble the intelligence from the brief and $ARGUMENTS: their offer, pricing, positioning claims, typical buyer, and how past deals against them actually went. Grade every item — verified, reported, or assumed — and carry the grades onto the card.
2. Write "when we win": the 3–5 deal conditions where you are genuinely the better choice, each tied to a concrete capability or model difference, not an adjective.
3. Write "when we lose": the honest conditions where they win. This section is what makes sellers trust the rest of the card — and it stops them chasing bad-fit deals with overpromises.
4. Plant the landmines: 3–5 questions the seller seeds early that this competitor answers badly. Each rests on a verified weakness — a landmine built on a false premise detonates on your own seller mid-demo.
5. Write the objection handling for what this competitor's presence puts in the room ("they're cheaper", "they already do X"):
   • The direct answer, one sentence, no wind-up.
   • The reframe to the criterion that actually decides the deal.
   • The proof point from the brief that makes the reframe stick.
6. Set the talk track rule: two lines on how to speak about them — specific, respectful, never trash-talk. Trash-talk reads as fear.
7. Update the brief. Fold any new intelligence into this competitor's entry under The competitors, dated, so the next deal starts from the current picture.

Output

A one-page battlecard: their pitch in one line, our counter in one line, when we win, when we lose, landmines, objection handling, and the talk track rule — every claim carrying its evidence grade.

Rules

• Evidence over invention: never fabricate a competitor weakness. One false landmine costs the seller's trust in the whole card.
• "When we lose" is mandatory. A card that says you always win is a card sellers ignore.
• Grades travel with claims. A seller must know verified from assumed before repeating anything to a prospect.
• Refresh the card when reality changes — a pricing move, a launch, a new tier — not on a schedule.
• One page, always. A battlecard that cannot be scanned mid-call is a research document.