For agencies and professional service firms, the moment a deal is won should feel like a small victory. The sales team rings the bell, but the delivery team is often left sifting through scraps of info, trying to piece together what was actually sold.
It can be awkward, to say the least. But more problematically for a business, it can be expensive.
When the handoff between the sales and delivery teams relies on spreadsheets, emails, or verbal updates in passing, things get messy fast. Projects stall before they even start, delivery teams get blindsided, clients may even start questioning your professionalism. And somewhere along the line, your margin quietly slips out the back door.
According to the Project Management Institute, poor communication is responsible for 29% of project failures worldwide. A sloppy handoff is essential a giant communication breakdown. And the cost of that breakdown is money slipping out the back door. Research suggests that companies risk losing $75,000 for every $1 million spent on projects as a result of poor communication. In other words, every poor handoff and missing detail is revenue at risk.
The fix? Project handoff process automation. It gets rid of guesswork and connects the dots between sales and delivery. Here’s what happens when you do it right:
And when it’s all baked into your workflow with a tool like Magnetic, it’s not just tidier. It’s profitable from day one.
Even well-oiled teams with smart people and strong processes still hit a wall when it comes to handing projects from sales to delivery. Why? Because the process often relies on half-baked emails, scattered spreadsheets, or a ‘quick chat’. This is where the wheels come off.
And that’s where the wheels start to come off.
Here’s what usually goes wrong:
All of that adds up to lost time and lost money. If your team spends even three to five hours on handoff admin per project, and you’re doing 100 projects a year, that’s 300 to 500 hours of work you’ll never bill for. That’s weeks of someone’s time gone.
Closing a deal should feel like momentum, not a baton dropped between runners. In many firms, when sales "throws it over the wall" the project sits idle waiting for details that arrive late or not at all. Automation changes that script by linking your CRM and project management tools so key information is not lost at the point of handoff. When a deal moves to "closed-won", a project can spring to life immediately with all essential details carried over without automatically, and the delivery team gets notified the second the ink is dry.
Here's what a well-automated handoff unlocks in practice:
The business impact is tangible:
Launching faster means revenue lands earlier
Instead of being the riskiest part of the process, the handoff becomes your first chance to impress.
Shifting from manual to automated handoffs doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Break it down into a few deliberate steps and the payoff is immediate. Here's a framework to get it done with, along with what you'll gain at each step.
Delivery teams can’t work with half a story. Sit down with sales and delivery teams to agree on a checklist like client details, scope, timelines, budget and any risks or client preferences that could impact the project. Capture these in a simple checklist or template so there’s no confusion about what “ready to hand over” really means. By making the required details explicit, you eliminate ambinguity.
The magic happens when your systems talk to one another. Choose tools that integrate your CRM (eg. HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive or Magnetic's built-in CRM) with your project management tool. When a deal moves to “Closed”, the project should spring to life automatically, with deal data mapped straight into the project workspace - project name, client info, scope and tasks - with less manual effort
Automation isn’t just about data transfer, it’s about moving people into action at the right time. Once the project is created, make sure that right team members are auto assigned to their tasks and project roles. Then set up automations with notifications and reminders to alert team members to key project. Links to important documents (proposals, contracts, briefs) can be included in the project, so no one has to dig through emails to find key information. This way, everyone knows the baton has been passed to them.
A project without resources is still just a plan. It may be created in the system, but without the necessary people, it wont go far. The best setups assign the right people based on availability and skills, while flagging conflicts before they cause delays. Modern professional services automation tools cause suggest or auto-assign the right team members based on current workload and skillset.
As you implement automated handoffs, treat it as a living process. No workflow is perfect on day one. Track metrics to guage improvement:
Continous improvement will refine the automation, and the payoff is immediate: every tweak saves 30 minutes in handover, when scaled across multile projects and ultimately boosts your bottom line,.
The hidden cost of manual handoffs is disconnection. Sales works in one system, delivery in another, and somewhere in the middle details get lost. Magnetic removes that friction by giving agencies and professional service firms a unified platform where sales and delivery speak the same language. When teams share a single source of truth, the friction disappears. Here's how Magnetic streamlines the sales to delivery transition:
The result: projects start faster, teams waste less time on admin, and profitability is protected from day one. A handoff that used to be the riskiest moment for errors becomes a non-event, or even a value adding event, because the client sees the project kick into gear immediately.
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Manual project handoffs slow projects down, create confusion, and chip away at revenue.
Automation changes that picture. By linking your CRM, project management, and resource planning, you remove duplication, cut out rework, and get projects moving faster. The result is healthier margins, smoother client onboarding, and teams that can focus on delivery instead of admin.
Magnetic brings this all together in one platform, giving agencies and professional services firms a truly end-to-end handoff process. Start a free trial or book a quick walkthrough to see how it works.
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Because details fall through the cracks. A client’s budget note gets buried in an email thread. A deadline isn’t passed on. Scope is misunderstood. The result is the same: missed deadlines, rework, frustrated clients, and lower margins. When every project depends on billable hours, small slip-ups at the handoff stage quickly turn into costly problems.
At minimum, you need your CRM and your project management system to talk to each other. That way, when sales closes a deal, the project kicks off automatically in delivery. Add resource planning to the mix and you can assign the right people to the work straight away. Some firms stitch this together with integrations, but many prefer an all-in-one solution like Magnetic that covers CRM, project management, and resource planning in one platform.
The payoff is fast. Most firms see value within their first few projects. Admin time drops immediately because details don’t need to be retyped or double-checked. Rework costs shrink because fewer errors creep in. And because projects start faster, revenue gets recognised sooner. It’s one of those changes where the savings are obvious within weeks, not months.
Absolutely. In fact, smaller teams often feel the benefit more acutely. With fewer people to juggle sales, delivery, and admin, any time spent chasing details or fixing errors is a major distraction. Automating handoffs means small teams can punch above their weight, running lean while still delivering a professional client experience.
A good handoff includes everything delivery needs to get started - client details, agreed scope, budget, timelines, deliverables, and any known risks or constraints. The goal is to eliminate assumptions. With automation, these details transfer directly from your CRM to your project plan, so nothing gets lost in translation.
Magnetic’s automation isn’t one-size-fits-all. You can define your own handoff templates, map custom fields from CRM to project plans, and trigger different workflows depending on project type. That means even highly tailored or multi-phase projects can move smoothly from sales to delivery without manual setup.
Magnetic is an all-in-one workflow management platform designed and built for professional services firms.
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