“But I Told Sales!” Why the Sales to Services Transition Never Feels Clean

If you are reading this, I am going to put you in one of four categories:

1. You work in Services and believe Sales is focused on closing the deal and moving on.
2. You work in Sales and believe Services can translate the deal into delivery with the info they have.
3. You are a customer who has lived the “But I already told Sales” experience firsthand.
4. You are here to watch how Sales and Services explain themselves.

Here is the truth: the Sales to Services process has never been perfected. Not at any SaaS company. Not in public sector or private sector. Not in startups or global enterprises. It is messy because it involves humans, incentives, timelines, handoffs, and context that rarely travel cleanly from one team to another.

Let’s break down why.

What We Know to Be True

The sales cycle is long.
Consider RFPs, product selection, demos, legal, architecture reviews, procurement, and contracting. The sales cycle is often as long or longer than the implementation itself. It can be months or years between the moment a customer first saw a demo and the day the Services team logs in for kickoff.

Contracts change.
Sales goes through rounds of adjustments with the customer, and Services sees the finished product. What they do not get is the story. What was dropped, prioritized, or negotiated rarely comes with the handoff, even though that context often explains what matters most to the customer.

Discovery is incomplete.
Sales is not running a full HRIS discovery or mapping HR operational processes. Contracts often reflect estimates and assumptions that work well enough for procurement and legal, but do not always translate cleanly into implementation reality.

Kickoffs can happen fast.
Sometimes projects need to begin quickly due to contracting deadlines, customer timelines, or external pressures. When kickoff is accelerated, the preparation and transition time between Sales and Services can get shortened, and critical context gets lost in the rush.

What Each Party Is Focused On

The handoff involves three stakeholders, and each is focused on something different during this stage:

• Sales: Transition the project off successfully and move to the next deal. Sales operates on quota, timelines, and deal velocity.
• Services: Gather what they need to kick the project off and begin delivery. Services operates on scope, capacity, and implementation milestones.
• Customer: Avoid repeating themselves and make sure the important details are understood. Customers operate on outcomes, organizational change, and internal expectations.

None of these priorities are wrong, but they do not automatically guarantee a clean transfer of context from one stage to the next. That gap is often where friction appears.

Why Customers Feel the Friction

From a customer perspective, it feels obvious:

“But I told Sales.”
“We mentioned that in the demo.”
“It was in the RFP.”
“Isn’t that in the contract?”

Customers should not have to re-explain deal breakers, must-haves, or key workflows after signing, yet they often do. Not because people do not care, but because context does not always survive the handoff.

What Customers Can Do to Help Themselves

Customers cannot fix the ecosystem, but they can reduce risk:

• Track deal-breaking requirements and flag them during kickoff.
• Document “Can the product…” moments during demos. These are often forgotten later.
• Clarify the why behind the purchase, not just the what. Implementers need context as much as they need product requirements.

This is not about shifting responsibility. It is about making sure signals do not get lost in noise.

What Sales and Services Can Do Better

There are simple improvements that do not require heroic effort:

• Share demo recordings. They are almost always recorded and can now be summarized with AI.
• Include RFP functional requirements in handoff materials.
• Discuss why the customer selected the product and what problems they are trying to solve.
• Ensure alignment between the SaaS contract and the Services contract. These often evolve separately and can become misaligned.

The Point

Sales and Services are not fighting each other. They operate on different timelines, incentives, and metrics. Customers sit in the middle assuming the bridge between the two exists reliably.

Implementations struggle less from product gaps and more from knowledge gaps. Solving that does not require magic. It requires intentionality.

There is a lot of untapped potential in this part of the journey.

Sales sells the vision. Services delivers the reality. The handoff decides the experience.