Khaled Al Shehri | Business Development Experience

I am a senior Industrial & Systems Engineering student at King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals. Due to the constraints preventing me from attending physical classes in Dhahran, I went back to Riyadh to stay with my family and conduct the classes virtually which gave me a piece of extra time to develop myself as a person and improve my technical and soft skills by working for a fast-growing startup. My interest is in Entrepreneurship and Business in general and I have engaged in many extracurricular activities to develop myself in the field.

I knew Sabbar from multiple channels due to my interest in the startup scene, but once I started my first touchpoint with Mohamed Ibrahim and Abdulrahman Al-Mudaiheem, the connection between me and Sabbar family became more serious, and I knew more about the values and culture that they stand by. I knew right there & then that this is the right place to achieve my entrepreneurial goal!

I started my journey with Sabbar in June 2020 as a Business Development Intern with my marvelous mentor Abdulrahman Al-Mudaiheem. Working with experts in the field had a significant impact on my business-development techniques and my understanding of the market and the product value propositions. The more I called and listened to customers, the more I learned the pains of my potential clients. My style during the calls in the beginning of my journey was led by my engineering mindset, it was unclear and challenging. Now after getting to hear hundreds of clients, my salesmanship, time management, and my critical thinking skills have been significantly improved to the point that I can now create a story-telling method to absorb the need of the client and then consult them which usually leads to selling the service.

Calling hundreds of clients from different backgrounds month over month helped me get more exposure to the Retail and F&B domains. Taking the mindset of a consultant while carefully listening and selling the services is one of the greatest insights I have been learning while I’m working as a BD. Nevertheless, expanding my horizons in how to engage customers presenting the value of the service increased my confidence in myself. The majority of my work was related to the SME sector where I really understood the pain Sabbar is solving in the market while utilizing CRM systems and data analysis to optimize the sales funnel continuously.

I’ve also learned the importance of documenting customer FAQs and Objection Handling to ensure a smooth sales process. I’ve also spent time in observations and analyzing the market and the clients in the funnel to develop the Ideal Customer Profile (ICP), which is a simple approach to categorize & qualify your potential clients in the funnel and target those with more probability to close. And finally, I’ve also got the chance to experience the process of B2B collection, learning the technicalities and approaches to sustain the smooth operations of a B2B company. 💡

“It was an absolute pleasure working with Khaled these past months. It’s so rare to find someone with his passion to grow, learn and achieve. He helped Sabbar reach hundreds of businesses with his fantastic attitude and skillsets. We were lucky to have found that passion in him consistently every single day from the day he applied till now!”

Abdulrahman Al Mudaiheem, Co-Founder & Business Development

The beauty of working in a fast-growing startup is the diversity of the learning you get exposed to. After spending 6 weeks as a BD intern. I got a great opportunity to work with one of the best operational minds: Ahmad Abuazzah-the Operations Director. I started my journey with the Operations team in demand fulfillment. Working in Operations taught me a lot about time management and client relationship management.

During my time in operations, I took the amazing chance to explore the world of supply generation which gave me great insights into how to properly implement techniques and processes to implement & scale supply generation for a marketplace company.

As an Industrial & Systems Engineering student, working with the Operations team helped me a lot to grasp major concepts in my field, especially those related to Human Factor Engineering, Scheduling, Reliability, and Inventory Control (Supply and Demand balancing).

After spending eight spectacular months with the Sabbar team. I still believe that there is a lot to come and learn regarding many aspects of the business such as dealing with high-touch enterprise’s sales processes and managing the retention game while also utilizing the data to optimize the sales funnel.

I can definitely describe my experience as an exceptional one! The co-founders are really capable, knowledgeable and their doors are always open. My teammates are all very clever and kind which makes me always learn from them. Working before graduation gave me a better vision of what I want to do and what I’m capable of doing. If time gets back to June again I will not hesitate to take this great journey!

Khaled A. Al-Shehri
Industrial & Systems Engineering, Senior Student
King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals