A good sales-to-delivery handoff passes everything the client told sales to the people who will do the work, before the client has to repeat any of it. That means 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. The handoff 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 an extra deliverable, and delivery hears about it from the client.
- The client repeats everything in the kick-off call, and wonders why they explained it all before.
- Nobody owns the gap between "signed" and "started", so the first week drifts.
The first week of a new client relationship sets the tone for the rest. A messy handoff costs trust you worked hard to build in sales.
The handoff checklist
About the client
- Company name, main contact and anyone else involved, with roles
- How they prefer to be contacted, and when
- Their goals, in their own words from the sales conversation
- What prompted them to buy now
About the agreement
- Signed agreement and the scope it covers
- Price, payment terms and whether the first payment has been received
- Start date and any deadlines they mentioned
- Anything promised beyond the standard scope
About the risks
- Concerns or objections raised on the sales call
- Anything that went wrong with a previous supplier
- Internal people at the client who may be sceptical
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 provide, and by when
- Welcome message sent
What to automate
When a deal is marked won in your CRM, these can happen without anyone remembering:
- Create the client record in your delivery tool or portal, with the sales notes attached.
- Assign the delivery owner by your rules and notify them.
- 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 are in.
- Create the first tasks for your team, with due dates.
- Check the first payment and flag it if it has not arrived.
What should not be automated is the judgement: reading the sales notes, spotting the risk, and deciding how to open the kick-off call. Automation gets the information to the right person. The person does the rest.
Make the sales notes usable
The handoff is only as good as the notes. Two things help:
- A short, fixed form the salesperson completes before marking a deal won: goals, promises, concerns, 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. The same approach can produce 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 removes most of the "what now?" emails. We cover what to include in what should a client portal include?
Start here
Take the last three clients you signed. For each, ask the delivery owner what they did not know on day one that sales did. Whatever comes up more than once goes on your checklist, and the checklist is what you automate first.
