How effective is your sales to customer success handoff?
This transition period between sales and customer success is a delicate process that shapes the customer’s journey going forward.
As their main point of contact shifts to the customer success manager, ensuring a seamless handoff is crucial for a strong partnership and positive long-term relationship.
This blog explores best practices and pitfalls in this phase, emphasizing the need for smooth communication, clear expectations, and consistent customer knowledge sharing.
We’ll outline a comprehensive template to help you streamline this transition, aligning customer success strategies with customer goals. You’ll discover how this vital process can reduce churn, maintain satisfaction, and identify new opportunities.
The sales to customer success handoff is a crucial transition period for your customer. It’s when you and your customer move from the sales process into the implementation phase of your journey.
For the customer, it’s an exciting time because they finally get to implement your solution.
During this handoff, the main point of contact shifts from a sales rep to a customer success manager. It’s a delicate process since it transitions the relationship the sales rep built.
Properly managing this handoff process creates a seamless customer experience and prevents issues.
A well-thought sales to customer success handoff gives your customers a strong vote of confidence. It also starts your long-term relationship on a positive note.
Here’s a sales to customer success handoff template that you can use. It includes all the information you need to ensure that no details are lost in the transition.
A seamless sales to customer success handoff maintains momentum and value perception when you pass the baton from one person to another. A change of contact can create friction. Customers might feel apprehensive if handed over without care. Reinforcing the relationship and the product’s value ensures no details are lost during the handoff. To create a smooth sales to customer success handoff, have a solid process. One that’s not only jotted down but also connected in every interaction. A well-designed sales to customer success handoff template contains all the important details to tailor the experience to each customer, addressing their unique needs and goals. Consistency is crucial. Both teams should operate in sync, sharing the same information and strategy to give customers a sense of continuity. With an understanding of the customer’s needs, your customer success team can focus on onboarding and adoption, which often leads to better retention. A smooth handoff can lead to potential growth opportunities that customer success can identify. This can come naturally as an upsell or cross-sell opportunity during their interactions.
A smooth transition from sales to customer success is crucial for maintaining the momentum of the customer relationship. Ensure these elements are included in your sales to customer success handoff template.
Document a timeline of interactions, including dates, modes of communication, and a synopsis of each meeting or call. This provides quick insight into the relationship’s history.
Include key facts about the customer’s company, such as industry, size, and years in operation, alongside any noteworthy company operations or characteristics relevant to your product or service.
A table of contact details with names, titles, phone numbers, and email addresses of all key stakeholders involved in the purchase process is essential for seamless communication.
| Name | Title | Role | |
| John Doe | Project Manager | john.doe@example.com | Decision-Maker |
| Jane Smith | IT Lead | jane.smith@example.com | Main Admin |
Itemize the short-term and long-term goals the sales team identified during their conversations with the client. Be specific about each goal and the desired outcomes.
Articulate the customer’s expectations from your product or service, including any milestones and metrics for success they’ve shared. Expectation: Increase operation efficiency by 20% within the first year.
Detail the agreed-upon implementation plan and timeline, including any customizations or integrations that are necessary. Integrate with ABC software by Q3.
Outline the proposed schedule for regular check-ins, reports, and updates. Include the preferred channels for these communications.
Give any other important information, such as preferences on communication style or notes on company culture, that can help improve the sales to customer success handoff. For example, your customer may prefer concise email updates and appreciate the recognition of work anniversaries or milestones.
Before the handoff from sales to customer success, it’s important to understand the customer’s journey fully. Map out all prior interactions to ensure a seamless transition. This includes documented expectations and any promises or commitments made during the sales process.
Next, identify key stakeholders on both sides. You should be aware of who will oversee the continuation of the relationship and any pertinent contacts who can influence the customer’s experience.
Define the relationships and roles clearly; your customer success team must know who they will communicate with and the decision-makers. Formulate a handoff package that comprises:
Creating a structured document or table helps avoid misunderstandings and sets the tone for a successful ongoing partnership.
Once a deal is closed, ensure that your sales rep and customer success manager have coordinated a handoff email. Having your sales rep follow up with the customer, your customer success manager should also send an email.
Here’s an example you can use:
It’s a pleasure to meet you! I’ll be [CustomerAccountName]’s dedicated Customer Success Manager and your main point of contact moving forward. I’m excited to help support you on your journey!
[SalesRepName] and I had a chance to connect and review what you’re hoping to accomplish. I look forward to working with you and helping you successfully launch soon.
Let’s schedule a full hour for our kickoff call. During that call, we’d like to align on your goals for our partnership.
Here’s the agenda for the meeting:
If you have any questions, please let me know so I can get them answered for you!
In your introduction meeting, transition sales to customer success by making a warm handoff. Start the introduction immediately after the deal closes to maintain momentum and reassure your customer of the continued support.
Express gratitude and excitement for this new partnership. Your enthusiasm sets a positive tone and reflects the value placed on the client relationship. Use this opportunity to:
During this meeting, you’ll review the onboarding process. Outline clear steps and timelines to demystify the upcoming actions, ensuring you understand what to expect and when.
According to Wyzowl, 63% of customers consider the company’s onboarding program when making a purchasing decision.
Together, you will reconfirm expectations and goals to align the partnership with the customer’s desired outcomes. It helps to:
Lastly, set a communication plan. Agree on the preferred communication channels, frequency, and types of updates. Most importantly, define the main point of contact for each query. For example, customer success will send anything related to using your solution, while the sales rep will send anything related to contract details and renewal.
By implementing best practices for a sales to customer success handoff, execute a seamless transition that maintains customer trust and momentum from the sales process.
Collect key customer data during the sales cycle, covering their goals, pain points, and expectations. Document this in a handoff template to provide the customer success team with insights.
Before transitioning a client, meet with both sales and customer success teams. Use this time to clarify any nuances, guaranteeing that nothing is lost in translation.
Keep open lines of communication between sales and customer success. As a sales representative, you answer customer success queries promptly to ensure they have all the necessary information.
Set clear guidelines on how and when both teams communicate, safeguarding that customer success has the latest updates and can reiterate what sales promised.
Clearly outline who is responsible for what actions both teams take. This prevents any task from being overlooked or duplicated, assuring a smoother handoff.
Implement mandatory fields in your CRM to capture essential customer information. This will prevent critical data from being missed and promote higher data quality.
Work together to determine potential quick wins for new customers, fostering customer satisfaction and demonstrating immediate value from your service or product.
Encourage feedback and make regular adjustments to the handoff process. This iterative approach keeps the process relevant and efficient, fostering better customer experiences.
Being aware of common pitfalls can mitigate many of the challenges in the sales-to-customer success transition. Recognizing these can help ensure a smoother handoff and set the stage for ongoing customer satisfaction.
Ensure that the customer success team is accurately and thoroughly informed about the customer’s needs, expectations, and history with your product. Utilize a detailed checklist or CRM database for this exchange of information to avoid gaps in knowledge that can hinder the team’s effectiveness.
Clarify what the sales team promised to the customer to prevent any discrepancies. Document and communicate the scope of the product or service sold, including timelines and outcomes, to align both teams and manage customer expectations accurately.
Define and document specific roles and responsibilities of the sales and customer success teams. Use a Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RACI) to delineate who is responsible, accountable, Consultable, and informed for each aspect of the handoff and ongoing management.
To support customer adoption, share clear use cases and provide structured training and educational resources. Keeping track of adoption metrics and following up with customers can help identify and address any roadblocks early.
Proactively manage renewal risks by scheduling regular check-ins and tracking customer health scores. Implement early warning systems to flag accounts that may not renew and take preemptive action to rectify any issues.
Stay on top of additional customer needs that could lead to upsell or cross-sell opportunities. Through consistent engagement and by demonstrating ongoing value, you can naturally uncover areas for growth within your customer’s business.
If you’re seeing a drop in sales experience or noticed gaps in customer retention, Revenue Reveal can help. We work with B2B companies to help them build and streamline their revenue processes. This includes building a successful sales to customer success handoff, which includes mandatory fields in your CRM, training, and playbook documentation.
You can reach out to us here for an initial strategy session!
The transition from sales to customer success is a crucial phase that can set the tone for a long-term relationship. A clear and well-structured handoff should include a formal meeting involving key stakeholders from both teams. In this meeting, the sales team introduces the CS team and provides a comprehensive overview of the customer’s journey so far.
How should sales and customer success work together?Sales and customer success should collaborate by sharing goals and performance metrics. That’ll help them align their approach and ensure sales only sell to their ideal customer profiles. This then reduces the likelihood of poor customer satisfaction and churn. Regular interdepartmental meetings, a shared customer relationship management (CRM) system, and consistent communication help both teams stay updated on customer needs and expectations.
Daniel is a sales and marketing leader with a decade of experience in B2B SaaS. Daniel has previously built and led revenue-focused teams. He is a go-to-market professional with a keen focus on sales processes, strategies, and tactics.
