Sales process engineering is the systematic design of sales processes done in order to make sales more effective and efficient..^[1]

It can be applied in functions including sales, marketing, and customer service.^[1]

As early as 1900–1915, advocates of scientific management, such as Frederick Winslow Taylor and Harlow Stafford Person, recognized that their ideas could be applied not only to manual labour and skilled trades but also to management, professions, and sales. Person promoted an early form of sales process engineering. At the time, postwar senses of the terms sales process engineering and sales engineering did not yet exist; Person called his efforts "sales engineering".^[2]

Corporations the 1920s through 1960s sought to apply analysis and synthesis to improve business functions. After the publication of the paper "If Japan Can... Why Can't We?", the 1980s and 1990s saw the emergence of a variety of approaches, such as business process reengineering, Total Quality Management, Six Sigma, and Lean Manufacturing.

James Cortada was one of IBM's management consultants on market-driven quality. His book TQM for Sales and Marketing Management^[3] was the first attempt to explain the theory of TQM in a sales and marketing context. Todd Youngblood, another ex-IBMer, in his book The Dolphin and the Cow (2004)^[4] emphasized "three core principles": continuous improvement of the sales process, metrics to quantitatively judge the rate and degree of improvement, and a well-defined sales process.^[4] Meanwhile, another executive from IBM, Daniel Stowell, had participated in IBM's project known as the "Alternate Channels Marketing Test." The idea was to incorporate direct response marketing techniques to accomplish the job of direct salespeople, and the initiative was quite successful.^[5]

Paul Selden's "Sales Process Engineering, A Personal Workshop"^[6] was a further attempt to demonstrate the applicability of the theory and tools of quality management to the sales function.

The sales decision process is a formalized sales process companies use to manage the decision process behind a sale. SDP “is a defined series of steps you follow as you guide prospects from initial contact to purchase.” ^[7]

Reasons for having a well-thought-out sales process include seller and buyer risk management, standardized customer interaction during sales, and scalable revenue generation. Approaching the subject from a "process" point of view offers an opportunity to use design and improvement tools from other disciplines and process-oriented industries.^[8]

• Sales management
• Theory of constraints

• Dawson, Michael (2005), The Consumer Trap: Big Business Marketing in American Life, Urbana, Illinois, USA: University of Illinois Press, ISBN 0-252-07264-2.
• Selden, Paul H. (1997), Sales Process Engineering: A Personal Workshop, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA: ASQ Quality Press, p. 23, ISBN 0-87389-418-9.
• Youngblood, Todd (2004), The Dolphin And The Cow: How To Sell More Faster With Sales Process Engineering, YPS Group.
• Kreindler, Phil (2016), Customerized Selling®: Learn How Customers Want You To Sell, Infoteam Sales Process Consulting AG, ISBN 978-3-033-05471-4.