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Delivery · 3 min read
From deal to project: how to keep information from getting lost in the handover
The moment a signed contract becomes a project is one of the most delicate for any services business. Here is how to structure the handover from sales to delivery so nothing falls through the cracks.
Where things get lost
In professional services firms, sales and delivery are often two separate worlds. The account manager knows the client, has negotiated the terms and knows what was promised in meetings. The project manager receives the signed contract and has to turn it into actual work, often with little information and little time.
What gets lost in this handover is rarely written in the contract: the client’s expectations, the sensitivities of the main contact, a scheduling constraint mentioned in passing, an informal agreement to add an extra task. These are exactly the details that make the difference between a project that starts well and one that begins with a misunderstanding.
A process, not an email
The first step toward improvement is to stop treating the handover as a single event, an email or a meeting, and start seeing it as a process with defined steps. A model that works well in many settings has six stages: gather information on the client and contacts, record the contract and its terms, identify resources, set the budget, create the project and schedule the kickoff.
Each stage has an owner and an expected outcome. The first two typically belong to the account manager, the last ones to the project manager, and in between the two work together. The advantage of this structure is that nobody can skip a step without noticing.
- 01 Customer details
- 02 Contract
- 03 Resources
- 04 Budget
- 05 Project setup
- 06 Kickoff
What the project manager needs
Beyond the basic client records, there is some information the project manager must have before the kickoff. First, the commercial terms: whether the contract is fixed-price, time-and-materials or a mix, whether hours are capped, and how and when invoicing happens. Then the agreed milestones and their acceptance criteria, because they will shape the relationship with the client.
The project manager also needs a picture of the people involved on the client side, with their real roles rather than just their job titles, and a summary of the expectations that came up during negotiations. A few lines from the account manager on what really matters to that client are often worth more than pages of documentation.
Finally, the budget: estimated hours by role, expected expenses and target margin. Without these figures, the project manager has no way of knowing, as the work progresses, whether things are going well or badly.
Before the kickoff
- Commercial terms
- Milestones and acceptance criteria
- Contacts and their real roles
- Expectations raised in negotiation
- Budget by role and target margin
Common mistakes
The first mistake is assigning resources without checking their real availability. Promising the client someone who is already fully booked on other projects guarantees delays. The second is creating the project without milestones and leaving them until after the kickoff, which breaks the link with the contract and with invoicing.
The third mistake is cutting the account manager out entirely once the deal is signed. Having them at the kickoff, even just for the opening part, gives the client continuity and makes it possible to clear up any doubts about what was agreed straight away.
Making the handover automatic
When opportunities, proposals and projects live in different tools, every handover means copying data across, with the risk of errors and omissions. In Sales, client onboarding follows exactly the six stages described above: data from the opportunity and the approved proposal is carried over automatically, the project manager sees team availability while assigning resources, and the contract milestones are part of the project from the moment it is created.
Whatever tool you use, the advice is the same: define clearly what must be ready before the kickoff and who is responsible for it. It takes a few hours, and it pays for itself with the first project that starts without surprises.
Before
- Data retyped by hand
- Resources assigned blind
- Milestones put off until kickoff
After
- Data carried over from the proposal
- Team availability in view
- Milestones in the project from day one
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