A good sales-to-delivery handoff gets everything the client told sales over to the people doing the work, before the client has to repeat any of it. So that's the agreed scope, the client's goals in their own words, the people involved, key dates, what was promised on the sales call, and anything that worried them. It should happen automatically the moment the deal is marked won, with a named owner in delivery.
Why handoffs go wrong
- The details live in the salesperson's head, or in call notes nobody else reads.
- Promises get lost. Sales agreed a start date or something extra, and delivery hears about it from the client.
- The client repeats everything on the kick-off call, and wonders why they explained it all the first time.
- Nobody owns the gap between "signed" and "started", so the first week drifts.
The first week with a new client sets the tone for everything after it. When the handoff is messy, you lose some of the trust you worked hard to build in sales.
The handoff checklist
About the client
- Company name, main contact and anyone else involved, with their roles
- How they like to be contacted, and when
- Their goals, in their own words from the sales call
- What made them buy now
About the agreement
- Signed agreement and the scope it covers
- Price, payment terms and whether the first payment has come in
- Start date and any deadlines they mentioned
- Anything promised on top of the standard scope
About the risks
- Worries or objections raised on the sales call
- Anything that went wrong with a supplier they used before
- People inside the client's business who might not be sold on it
About the next steps
- Who owns the client in delivery
- Kick-off call booked, or a link sent to book it
- What the client needs to send over, and by when
- Welcome message sent
What to automate
When a deal is marked won in your CRM, all of this can happen without anyone having to remember.
- Create the client record in your delivery tool or portal, with the sales notes attached.
- Assign the delivery owner based on your rules and let them know.
- Send the welcome message with what happens next and a link to book the kick-off.
- Start onboarding, asking the client for the documents and access you need, with reminders until they're in.
- Create the first tasks for your team, with due dates.
- Check the first payment and flag it if it hasn't arrived.
What you shouldn't automate is the judgement. Reading the sales notes, spotting the risk, and deciding how to open the kick-off call. The automation gets the information to the right person, and then that person takes it from there.
Make the sales notes usable
The handoff is only as good as the notes. Two things help.
- A short, fixed form the salesperson fills in before marking a deal won, covering goals, promises, worries and key people. It takes five minutes and saves an hour of confusion.
- Turning call recordings into summaries. Our own platform uses AI to turn a call summary into tasks and a draft follow-up email for a person to check. You can use the same approach to get a handoff summary from the sales call.
Let the client see it too
Clients feel the handoff most in the first week. A client portal where they can see what happens next, what you need from them and who their contact is gets rid of most of the "what now?" emails. We cover what to put in one in what should a client portal include?
Start here
Take the last three clients you signed. For each one, ask the delivery owner what they didn't know on day one that sales did. Anything that comes up more than once goes on your checklist, and that checklist is the first thing you automate.
