Sales-to-Delivery Handoff
The structured transition from a signed engagement to an actively staffed project — the single moment that determines whether delivery starts clean or starts with hidden scope gaps.
Full definition
The sales-to-delivery handoff is the operational moment between 'signed contract' and 'project kickoff.' A clean handoff transfers scope, success criteria, client context, assumptions, commercial terms, and delivery constraints from the person who sold the work to the team that will ship it. In most founder-led agencies, the handoff is informal — a Slack message, a contract PDF, a 5-minute call. In practice, missing handoff rigor is one of the most common upstream causes of delivery failure: rework, scope disputes, client surprise at the first review, and founder-as-rescuer dynamics all trace back here.
When this matters
Handoff quality matters proportionally to engagement complexity. For one-deliverable engagements it's a nice-to-have. For multi-month, multi-stakeholder engagements it is the single highest-leverage operational surface.
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