Business Development | Solutions Through Relationships and Thought-Leadership (STRT)

About START

Building trusted client relationships is one of an organization’s most strategic resources and one of the most sustainable business practices any profit or nonprofit entity can invest in. Yet these relationships are often overlooked, undervalued, treated as outside our control, or pushed aside because we feel too busy to prioritize them. Responding to open Requests for Proposals and letters of inquiry is necessary in both competitive and non‑competitive environments. Proposals become significantly stronger—and far more successful—when they are informed by deep, accumulated knowledge that comes only from building trusted relationships with clients.

Building trusted, longer-term and profitable client relationships requires improved capacity in managing customer knowledge, i.e. knowledge about as well as from and for customers, reinforced by value creation and thought‑leadership. It is created on a foundation of trust, listening, and service to our clients – one building block at a time. Over time, and through multiple client contacts, the relationship strengthens. This journey occurs in four phases of STRT and toward becoming the client’s preferred provider: Scout, Engage, Position, and Capture.

Why STRT

STRT is a relationship-driven business development process that helps you build long-term and profitable client relationships – grounded in trust, credibility, value and the recognition of the services you provide. START helps you to

• Move your business development approach from a transactional approach to a proactive relational approach.
• Build long-term, trusted, and profitable client relationships.
• Position your firm – organization as the client’s preferred partner
• Develop new clients and expand existing accounts
• Capture more high value opportunities by focusing effort where the firm has the strongest chance of winning.
• Makes business development efforts more meaningful and challenging

 

Course Learning Outcomes

• Apply a consistent, repeatable process to manage pursuits and make informed decisions at every stage.
• Strengthen multi‑stage go/no‑go judgment using clear criteria, evidence, and strategic alignment.
• Build deeper client relationships and translate customer needs into a focused, actionable account plan.
• Develop proposal‑ready capture plans that improve submittal quality and competitiveness.
• Demonstrating thought‑leadership and creating value to deepen trust and position the organization as a partner, not a vendor.
• Drive business growth by identifying and pursuing high‑potential opportunities.

 

Training Course Agenda

	Module	Content
1	Module 1: Scout Selection of strategic clients	Introduction to STRT Roles and responsibilities of business and partnership development team. Trusted relationship equation. Clients prospecting selection criteria. Scouting progressive questions Go-or-no-Go decision (1)
2	Module 2: Engage Foundation to building relationships	Buyers’ issues, interests, and motivations. Framework for winning a client conversation – SHAPE Client Account Manager Client Account Plan Go Position Decision (2)
3	Module 3: Position Position to win the work	Issues, people, selection panel Maps Capture Manager responsibilities Pursuit Capture Plan Presenting Ideas Make Go Capture Analysis (3)
4	Module 4: Capture Win the Work	Characteristics of winning proposals Winning the presentation Game Negotiating skills Be Smart When Bidding

 

Who Should Attend Business Developers Partnership Managers Fundraising Managers Executive Officer Client Account Managers Pursuit Capture Managers Proposal Managers Project Managers Marketers and Sales Specialists

Profit and non-profit organizations Development consulting firms Management and economic consulting firms Engineering and ICT consulting firms Non-governmental organizations and nonprofit organizations Social entrepreneurs Any other Technical and Professional services providers

 

Certification On completion of the training course and subject to attendance and active participation, Beit Al Karma Academy will award a certificate of completion.

Course Schedule Our online training is an interactive trainer-led live session. We will meet as a group for online live sessions (8 sessions), 1.5 hours each.

 

We expect that participants will spend 6-8 hours per week on this course, between the live cohort, readings, and homework.

 

Additional Information We’ll be assigning homework and quizzes each week to put the practical skills you learn during the live session to work! We record every live session on Zoom and post them to the course platform, so participants don’t miss a beat!

Course fee Course fee is $250 Early bird fee is $210. 10% discount is applied for groups of two people and above. A small number of 50% of Scholarships are available for less than 3 years of experience. For more information, please contact the training team (info@bk-eg.com)

 

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Meet Our Trainer

Alaa Shaheen brings over 20 years of experience as Middle East Business Development Director at AECOM, a Top US consulting engineering and international development firm, Alaa has led the development and management of client accounts, capture planning efforts, and proposal teams that secured more than US$850 million in international development projects funded by USAID, the EU, the World Bank, and major private‑sector clients such as General Electric, Pfizer, and Thomson Reuters.

Alaa lectures at the American University in Cairo and the DAAD MENA office, German Exchange Institute. Alaa is an ILO‑certified trainer and has delivered 100+ trainings to more than 4,500 professionals. Alaa holds an M.Sc. in Project Management from Brighton University (1996) and a B.Sc. in Construction Engineering from AUC (1994).