Sales has agreed a job. The customer is happy with the deadline. Everyone hears that a new client has arrived. Only when the work reaches the delivery team does someone ask: who promised this could be done by Friday?
This is an imagined situation, but the question belongs before the customer accepts the offer. Who will do the work, what is already on their desk, and what must move for the promise to be kept?
The customer does not see our internal divisions. The company made the promise. They do not need to know who sold the work, who plans it, or who delivers it. If those people have not agreed, the misunderstanding remains ours.
The offer therefore needs a precise enough description of what has been accepted: the scope, deadline, dependencies on the customer, and limits on later changes. The people doing the work should see that agreement before they have to repair the consequences of its gaps.
Sales does not need a meeting for every conversation. The company needs to know which promises it can make immediately and which require a capacity check. A special request should not slip through unnoticed as a standard service.
When conditions change, what is no longer possible needs to be agreed again, with the customer and within the company. Quietly expecting people to find a way is not a delivery plan.
It is worth checking what we call a successful sale. If we count only the signed agreement without considering whether we can deliver it fairly, we have recorded part of the result too early.
The promise is fulfilled when the person receives what they understood they were buying.
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