After months of effort, the sales team is finally rewarded with a signed contract. Everyone's delighted and celebrates the new logo. But while this acquisition phase matters a great deal, it's only the start of a relationship that needs to be nurtured and developed over several years.
Now it's the turn of the post-sales teams to step in. So the time has come to hand over the account (or at least the information) to them. This handover is often referred to as the "sales handover".
In this interview, Christophe Labreure, Senior Business Consultant at SuccessFocus Consulting, shares a few keys to a successful handover.
Why does a handover between Sales and CSMs matter?
Every change of contact in a customer relationship carries risk, and keeping that risk to a minimum is essential. One of the first aims of this transition is to enable a transfer of information and therefore good (re)alignment across all internal teams.
During the sales cycle, the customer has shared their challenges, their expectations (benefits, value, ROI...) and their constraints (deadlines, budget...). The sales team, for its part, has identified opportunities and risks, whether or not they were shared with the customer.
The problem is that CSM teams weren't part of those conversations, and they now need to get ready and fully understand the context so they can deliver the expected value in the best possible conditions.
Beyond the goals the customer has expressed, the handover can also be an opportunity to proactively discuss future, critical goals identified by the sales team, for example around expansion (upsell/cross-sell).
In short, this genuine team effort lets you pull together the key information, share it and prepare the customer's kick-off and/or onboarding effectively. The customer will appreciate this seamless, consistent customer experience: part of their satisfaction comes from seeing that their case has been documented and shared with the different teams.
Finally, the sales handover can serve as a foundation for future EBRs/QBRs, making it possible to measure the customer's progress in using the solution.
Can the handover rely on the CRM alone?
If your sales teams are very disciplined, great. You can then hope that as much information as possible has been documented and attached to the customer record in your CRM. In my experience, that's already an optimistic assumption!
Even assuming all the information is available, I've often found that people don't read it carefully, or don't fully grasp the context, especially if the volume of shared data has become too heavy.
That's why I recommend holding a meeting where the sales team summarises the customer case verbally and participants can ask any clarifying questions. That way, misunderstandings are cleared up and any missing information is identified and resolved.
What does the handover process look like?
The sales handover is a purely internal event that takes place just after the contract is signed and before the onboarding or kick-off phase.
Personally, I recommend setting up a template, a kind of checklist that covers all the major points while leaving enough flexibility in the exchange of information. Pragmatism should come first.
For example, the Winning by Design methodology recommends covering at least five groups of information, known by the acronym SPICED, to make transitions between teams easier:
- Situation: who is the customer? How would you describe them? What do they do? And so on.
- Pain: what challenges and difficulties have they expressed?
- Impact: what value does the customer expect? What benefits? Why did they choose our solution?
- Critical Event: how urgent is it? What's the timing?
- Decision: how are decisions made? Who are the decision-makers and other personas?
As you'll have guessed, the length of the meeting will depend on how complex your offer and the solution sold are.
How do you make sure the Sales-to-CSM handover happens every time?
Excellent question! It's actually a real challenge...
The only way is to make the release of resources (CSM, account set-up and so on) conditional on the sales handover being carried out. No properly executed sales handover, and not just a scheduled one, means no moving on to the next stage (e.g. onboarding).
In my experience, requests for exceptions come thick and fast when you introduce this process. They should be turned down, but analysed to understand what needs to change or improve.
Who should be involved in the sales handover?
The meeting and related documents should be prepared by the sales team, for example the account executive and the pre-sales consultants (Solution Consultants).
The "guests" and contributors can then be split into two groups:
- required (mandatory) participants, such as the project manager, the consultant(s) and the CSM assigned to the customer;
- optional participants, depending on how critical the customer is, such as the head of legal or a Product Management representative (in case R&D commitments were made during the sale).
What makes a sales handover successful?
Clearly, making the sales handover mandatory isn't enough to make it a success. That would be almost too easy and would undermine the value you expect from it.
First of all, full support from senior management, especially the Sales Director/CRO, is essential. That sponsorship significantly reduces the number of requests for exceptions.
On top of that, to keep the momentum going and give the sales handover legitimacy, I've identified a few success factors:
- First and foremost, a well-structured, documented sales cycle, based on best practices known to all teams, so you don't end up with unusual, overly personalised approaches.
- A tool for collecting and sharing customer information (a CRM, possibly combined with a Customer Success solution), so the handover can be prepared quickly and consistently.
- A comprehensive but relevant checklist that pulls together the main information, focusing on what's needed to deliver the impact and value the customer expects.
- A short meeting, concise and effective, tailored to the customer's stakes and context (customer segmentation can come into play here) and which leads to any necessary decisions and an action plan.
- Last but not least, salespeople need to see value in the handover (and in its effects) by understanding and reaping the short- and medium-term benefits. They need to be convinced that the time spent on the handover is an invaluable investment in the future.
Can you skip the handover altogether?
Once again, my answer is based on personal experience.
I'd say yes, you can consider not having a sales handover when the solution sold is very standard and packaged, and when all the information has been structured and sits in the company's shared systems. There's then no need for a dedicated handover meeting. The process is 100% automated and industrialised, which is a huge productivity gain and, above all, a necessity for a PLG (Product-Led Growth) or small and medium business go-to-market involving a high volume of transactions.
Either way, whether it's automated with tools or handled by people, the handover is a way to strengthen your processes and help reduce silos, which are one of the main frustrations identified in companies.
One last piece of advice?
To borrow Montesquieu's famous expression: "The best is the mortal enemy of the good." Be pragmatic, keep it simple, but be disciplined. There's no point being overly ambitious if you end up abandoning the process after a few weeks.
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