How do I hand a won deal over from sales to delivery?
A step-by-step routine for turning a won deal into a live project — covering confirmation, knowledge handover, staffing, and commercial setup so delivery starts with full context.
Written By Lauri Eurén
Last updated 1 day ago
When a deal is won, the tentative plan you built during the sale becomes a real Project — and the handover is where it turns into a delivery setup with the right team and financials in place. But a clean handover is as much about expectations and tacit knowledge as it is about data: the goal is to let your firm sell work and drop a delivery team into it without losing what the salesperson knows. This routine sequences both; the UI detail for each step lives in the linked articles.
When to run it
The handover work might start already, when proposal work starts. The sales team might pull people who are planned to deliver the work to work on the proposal. The handover continues when the deal reaches negotiation, or generally, a stage where everyone feels comfortable enough to start planning it more in detail. At this point, it might be good to have preliminary chats with some key team members.
The real handover happens at the moment a deal is confirmed (won in your CRM, signed, or sometimes—a verbal agreement with the client). Running it promptly means the team is booked before someone else's project claims their time.
Who's involved
The salesperson who owned the deal, the incoming project manager or account manager (sometimes the same person), and resourcing — with finance confirming the commercial setup. The project team should also attend the pre-kickoff.
The routine
1. Confirm the project — and know who owns it
Mark the Project as confirmed; it was tentative while in the pipeline. If the deal came from your CRM, the deal owner carries over as the project owner — so whoever picks up staffing or delivery immediately knows who to talk to about what was actually sold and promised. If the integration already created the Project, use that one and merge any duplicate rather than creating a second by hand. See Salesforce CRM; HubSpot CRM; Pipedrive CRM; Connect CRM via the REST API
2. Pass on what was really sold
Before configuring anything, get the salesperson and the incoming project manager or account manager together for a short pre-kickoff: what was sold, what the client expects, and the nuances that never make it into a proposal or statement of work. Setting expectations explicitly at this point is what lets sales hand off cleanly — it's the difference between a team that inherits context and one that starts cold.
3. Capture the staffing nuance — and let it drive who you pick
The proposal rarely captures everything that matters for staffing: the client's real working style, chemistry, who would genuinely fit. Pull that out of the salesperson now and record it where delivery will see it — a private note on the Project, or as part of the staffing discussion. Because Operating has an MCP server (AI chat (LLM) via MCP), you can also turn that tacit knowledge into staffing suggestions: ask in plain language ("who works well with this kind of client, or with these people, for this role?") to surface fits the proposal never codified. See How to staff a project from scratch andStaffing Routine with Operating.
4. Build the team and confirm the plan
Turn the rough team shape from the sale into real Positions — role, seniority, site, and skills per Position — and replace placeholders with named people. Then promote the tentative Allocations to confirmed for everyone committed, adjusting dates and intensity to the real delivery timeline. Confirmed Allocations are what drive capacity and forecast. See Understanding Positions and Allocations and How to manage allocations.
5. Set the commercial configuration
Set the Project's billing type, currency, rate card, Budget(s), and — for fixed-price — the revenue recognition method. If a CRM created the Project, its Budget may already be prefilled from the deal value — confirm the amount and dates are right rather than re-entering them. This is the financial backbone delivery is measured against. See Project budgeting & profitability, Billing types (per hour, capped T&M, fixed price) , and How revenue recognition works in Operating.
6. Hold the internal kick-off
With the team named and the setup in place, hold an official internal kick-off: this is the project, this is what we sold, these are the expectations. Making that explicit turns a closed deal into delivery that starts with shared context rather than a cold start. The salesperson should attend this meeting.
End state
A confirmed Project with a known owner, a team built from real Positions, confirmed Allocations, and a complete commercial setup — and, just as important, a delivery team that knows what was sold and what's expected. Ready to deliver and already feeding capacity and forecast correctly.