Guide
This guide is for the owner, sales director or operations director of a services company that sells projects, implementations or ongoing services to other businesses. Client onboarding – the first weeks of working together after the contract is signed – is when a client most easily loses trust. We show what the salesperson must hand over to the delivery team, how to plan the first week and month, and how to support this with tools.
Take a hypothetical 60-person services company that implements systems for manufacturing plants. The salesperson signs a contract on Friday and emails the project manager with the proposal attached. The project manager has two other projects that week, so plans the first call to the client for the following week.
After signing, the client waits to hear something. After a week of silence, they call the salesperson to ask when the work will start. When the meeting finally happens, the project manager asks questions the client has already answered several times during the sales process.
None of these situations is a serious mistake. Together, though, they give the impression that the company is not in control of the project, and that impression lasts. The most common causes are similar in most companies:
A good handover rests on a single document that the salesperson completes before closing the sale in the CRM. It does not have to be long, but it must answer the questions the project manager would ask anyway. Ideally, it should be a form in the CRM rather than a separate file.
The most important part of the form is the promises. Clients remember everything they heard during the sales process, including things that are not in the contract. If the delivery team does not know about them, a promise turns into disappointment. The table below shows a sample scope for the form.
| Item | What it contains | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| The client and their situation | Industry, size, what prompted the purchase | The project manager does not start with questions the client has already answered |
| Scope and schedule | Exactly what was sold, in which stages and by when | The first month’s plan follows from the contract, not from guesswork |
| Promises outside the contract | Everything the salesperson promised verbally or by email | This is the most common source of later disputes |
| People on the client side | Who decides, who pays, who will be the day-to-day contact | Reports and questions go to the right people |
| Risks and concerns | What the client is worried about, where there were doubts during the sale | The team knows what to watch for from day one |
| Documents | Contract, proposal, meeting notes, invoicing details | Everything in one place, with no searching through mailboxes |
A good standard is a handover completed within 5 working days of signing the contract. That is enough time to prepare everything calmly, and short enough that the client does not start to worry. What matters is that the client hears something from the company on day one.
The plan below assumes one internal meeting, without the client, and one kick-off meeting with the client the following week. These are two different meetings with different purposes, and it is not worth combining them.
| Day | What happens | Who is responsible |
|---|---|---|
| 1 – contract signed | Opportunity closed as won in the CRM; the system creates the project and notifies the team; the client receives a short thank-you note saying who will contact them | Salesperson |
| 2 | Internal meeting of the salesperson and project manager, 45–60 minutes, to go through the handover form | Salesperson and project manager |
| 3 | The project manager prepares the plan for the first 30 days and a list of questions for the client | Project manager |
| 4 | Email to the client from the project manager: introduction, proposed date for the kick-off meeting, agenda and list of materials needed | Project manager, salesperson in copy |
| 5 | Kick-off meeting date confirmed, materials requested from the client | Project manager |
The kick-off meeting is the first chance to show the client that the company has a plan. On the client side, the decision-maker and the day-to-day contact should attend; on your side, the project manager and the salesperson. Having the salesperson there at the start shows that the relationship continues rather than being handed on like a parcel.
An hour is enough if the meeting has a clear agenda. The breakdown below adds up to 60 minutes and can be shortened for smaller projects. The outcome of the meeting is a note sent to the client the same day.
Clients do not judge a company by what the salesperson promised, but by what happens in the first week after signing.
In the first month, the client judges the company by small things: whether replies come quickly, whether meetings are prepared, whether deadlines are met. That is why it is worth planning a few fixed checkpoints that happen regardless of who runs the project.
The weekly status report should fit on one page. Five parts are enough: what we did, what we are planning, what the risks are, what decisions we need from the client and what meetings are in the calendar.
The first visible result does not have to be big. It might be an approved project plan, a first report or part of the service up and running. What matters is that the client can show it internally as proof that the work has started.
The full standard makes sense for large, complex projects. For small jobs, the same steps would take longer than the work itself, so the team would soon start skipping them. It is better to define two or three variants deliberately.
The thresholds in the table are examples. In your company, the criterion might be the contract value, the number of people involved on the client side or the length of the project.
| Type of client | Handover | Kick-off meeting | Reporting |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small, repeat job | Handover form in the CRM, no internal meeting | 30-minute phone call | Update after each stage is completed |
| Typical project | Form and internal meeting | 60 minutes following the agenda | Weekly report |
| Large or strategic client | Form, internal meeting and involvement of the salesperson’s manager | 60–90 minutes with the decision-maker | Weekly report and a monthly review with the client’s management board |
Once the process is written down, it is worth making sure the data moves automatically from the sales system to the system where you run projects. In most CRM systems, closing an opportunity as won can trigger the automatic creation of a project with the client’s data. Before rollout, test with a dummy client that all fields come across, including contacts and documents, because this is the most common source of problems.
For communication with the client, a shared workspace works better than email threads. In Microsoft Teams, this can be a shared channel where people from the client’s company work without switching between organisations. However, this needs to be configured in advance by the administrators on both sides, so plan it before the first project.
The table below compares typical tool combinations. Companies that planned projects in Project for the web now use Planner, because Microsoft retired that app in August 2025.
| Combination | When it makes sense | What to watch out for |
|---|---|---|
| CRM and projects in monday.com | Sales and delivery work on one platform | Check whether the automation carries linked data, such as contacts and the company, into the new project |
| Dynamics 365 Sales, Planner and SharePoint | The company works in Microsoft 365 and uses Microsoft’s CRM | The connection is usually built in Power Automate; the full features of premium plans require a Planner and Project Plan 3 or 5 licence |
| Another CRM with Jira or monday.com | The company already has both systems and does not want to change them | You need a ready-made integration or one built in an automation tool; someone has to maintain it |
Without measurement, after a few months nobody will know whether the new process changed anything. A few simple indicators are enough, and they can be read from the CRM and the project system without extra work.
The most valuable thing is a question put to the client after the first month. A single question, such as “On a scale of 1–10, how would you rate our first month of working together?”, with a request for a short comment, tells you more than a long survey.
Related topics in the knowledge base
FAQ
Questions owners and directors usually ask when they tidy up how clients are handed over from sales to delivery.
About this page
About the author
Kacper Włodarczyk
CEO of ALGORCOMP
Kacper specializes in implementing Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps, SharePoint) and AI agents for mid-sized B2B companies in Poland. He leads dozens of projects covering AI strategy, Power Platform governance, document workflow automation and sales processes. In his writing he focuses on the practical side of AI adoption in organizations — from the first proof of concept to company-wide rollout — with particular attention to data security, compliance (GDPR, NIS2, the AI Act) and return on investment.
Meet the teamWe will help you draw up a handover form, connect your CRM to your project system and set up a shared channel for clients in Teams or monday.com.
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