Sales vs CS.
Where Sales ends and Customer Success begins — the Won handoff, the onboarding motion, and why expansion is a CS play.
The Won handoff
The moment a deal is signed it stops being a Sales deal. The AE runs a handoff call introducing the dedicated CSM — warm, in person (virtually), not an email toss. The contract is signed in PandaDoc; the account-balance funding model is set with finance.
- Sales owns through: signature, the relationship with the economic buyer, and the commercial terms.
- CS owns from: implementation, HRIS connection, launch, adoption, and renewal.
- The team: Thomas / Nick Jackson on the Sales side; Sebastian Yidi leads CSM / implementation.
The onboarding motion
- ~4–6 onboarding calls over the first two months — the standard cadence.
- Connect the HRIS (Workday / Rippling / HiBob / Paycom / ADP / BambooHR / Dayforce) so automations fire.
- Stand up the white-labeled store, catalogs, automations, and manager budgets.
- Migrate any warehoused inventory; confirm in-region fulfillment.
- Many accounts run the sandbox before signing — so onboarding is configuration, not a cold start.
Expansion is a CS motion
The best accounts land a program, then grow into bulk/event spend — or raise their annual commit. That growth is owned by CS, not net-new Sales:
- Commit amendments — moving a customer up the commit ladder ($25K→$50K→$100K) to unlock free warehousing / platform as their spend grows.
- New use cases — adding events, bulk drops, or new automations on top of the original program.
- Renewal — the one-year contract comes back around; CS owns the conversation, with Sales looped in for material commercial changes.
If a CS-owned account surfaces a genuinely new buying motion (a separate division, a large one-off event), loop Sales back in — but routine commit increases and renewals stay with CS.
Source: PerkUp Attio Sales list (33 deals, verified 2026-06-08) and 1,200+ deal notes (2025–2026); PerkUp recorded calls (tl;dv, May–Jun 2026). Notion — Onboarding & CS playbook.