Our sales team closes deals but our operations team struggles to onboard them due to poor handoffs. We want to track handoff quality on our scorecard, but we do not know which seat on our Accountability Chart should own the metric to resolve the finger-pointing.

Question

Tyler Smith · Accepted Answer

In the EOS framework, every scorecard number must have a single owner. When sales hands off a client to operations, the finger-pointing usually begins. Operations claims sales set bad expectations, while sales claims operations cannot deliver.

To resolve this, you must assign ownership of the handoff metric to the seat that controls the quality of the transfer. This is almost always the sales seat. The sales seat is responsible for delivering a qualified, fully documented client that fits your ideal client profile.

Define a clear checklist for what constitutes a perfect handoff. This should include signed contracts, completed intake forms, and defined project scopes. Your scorecard metric should be the percentage of weekly client handoffs that met one hundred percent of these checklist requirements.

Because the sales seat owns this metric, they are accountable for ensuring their team does not rush the transition just to hit a sales quota. If operations receives a sloppy handoff, they reject it, the metric drops to red, and the head of sales must address it in the weekly Level 10 Meeting.

This structure forces collaboration. It incentivizes the sales leader to work with the operations leader to refine the onboarding process so the metric stays green.