I make complex things simple enough to buy, use and learn.

Hi, I'm Salma Sabbour. Over fifteen years at SAP, Oracle and Gameball, I've worn five different hats, with one thread running through them all: I take something tangled and make it clear enough that people actually get it.

Email me Connect on LinkedIn ↗

Hand-drawn illustration: a tangled line runs through a delighted man in glasses and a bow tie, who points ahead as the line straightens into a coral arrow

المكنة طلعت قماش

from tangled to useful

Five hats, one connecting thread.

notice the pattern?

SAP · Presales

Enterprise software, made easy to buy

Discoveries and demos for C-level buyers. I swapped slide decks for mind maps and whiteboards, and the mind maps became the standard in SAP's Digital Hub.

130+ enterprise engagements

Oracle · Presales manager

Presales skills, made easy to learn

Built and led a team of 11 across Egypt and Romania. I coached the junior presales and helped shape parts of their onboarding, so they got into real deals quickly.

100% of the team in live deals within year one

SAP · Global go-to-market

Sales enablement, made snackable

A library of reusable demos, explainer videos and decks, plus an 18-episode podcast, so sales teams could pick up a pitch in minutes instead of days.

60% less prep · new hires demo-ready in a month

Gameball · Managed services

A new business line, made repeatable

Owned the P&L of a new service line and built it from scratch: fixed deliverables, how-to guides, and small tools for ROI and tier design. Simple to run, and it held up on real client work.

4× managed-services revenue

Gameball · Product marketing

Features, made clear and relevant

Rebuilt the release process from scratch on Claude, covering scripts, blog posts, newsletters and visuals, so every feature shipped with a clear "why it matters to you."

~70% of release comms automated

hat number six?

If your team has something tangled (a journey, a process, a product story), I'd like to hear about it.

Let's talk on LinkedIn ↗

Proof points

Real work. Real numbers.

New business line · P&L ownership · Service design

A new business line, built from scratch

I owned the P&L of Managed Services, a new revenue line next to the core product: loyalty management as a service. I turned one-off consulting into a repeatable offer: five stages from Discover to Operate, a standard deliverable at each step (a discovery mind map, a financial model, data-driven tier design, campaign plans, performance reviews), and Lovable tools that sped up the ROI, tier and uplift work. It became a growth lever, not just an add-on.

Revenue grew 4×, and the service was part of ~48% of closed deals.

Frequent redeemersNon-redeemers

Came back to buy again

20%

within 5 months

Bought more than before

+32%

purchase frequency

+14%

basket size

vs. their own first 5 months

4×

lifetime value vs. non-redeemers

~12×incremental revenue per riyal of points they redeemed

Program design · Loyalty economics · Cohort analysis

A loyalty program for a Saudi retail brand: designed it, then measured it

I designed the program, from points economics to campaigns, then ran the analysis of what it actually did. Over five months, 20% of frequent redeemers came back and bought again, against 6% of non-redeemers. They bought more often, spent more per order, and were worth four times as much over their lifetime. Redemption rate grew six-fold, from 2% to 12%.

Same customers, first five months on the program vs. the next five. SAR 3.2M incremental revenue on SAR 260K of redeemed points.

Service design · Requirements · Prototyping

A new mall, four POS systems, one journey everyone could agree on

I took over the loyalty program for a new MENA shopping mall: owned stores on four different POS systems, tenant stores, a service desk, and a custom app and portal. I mapped it into six customer journeys, prototyped the app and service-desk portal in Lovable before development started, ran the app-partner selection, and led the weekly syncs with the dev team.

Instead of asking the client how they wanted it to work, I showed them a proposed design to react to.

my favourite project ✦

Go-to-market system · AI process design

From release to reach: a release process rebuilt on Claude

Features shipped every two weeks, and each one could need release notes, a newsletter, LinkedIn carousels, a blog and a demo video. I rebuilt that as a system: features are captured from Slack and ClickUp, sorted A/B/C by impact so effort goes where it matters, and eight Claude skills I wrote draft the scripts, copy, visuals and blog, then publish to the website. AI does the first draft; I make the calls, and nothing ships without my review.

~70% of release communication automated.

Hear me explain something

Point Multiplier Campaigns: a product walkthrough. Watch on YouTube ↗

the podcast

CX Central Perk

18 short episodes with field experts and tech partners, built so sales and CS teams could open an industry CX conversation in under 15 minutes.

A 54-second clip from The One Where You Start a CX Conversation with an FMCG.

The other side of me

When I'm not making things simple, I'm making things: with wood, with clay, with curiosity and with AI. It turns out to be the same muscle. You find out what works by touching it.

After: the finished dark-stained plant stand with a trailing pothos, at home by a window — CarpentryMade with woodWanting to do more with my hands, I built a plant stand from raw wood: I chose the timber, learned half-lap, dowel and mortise-and-tenon joinery, then sanded, glued, clamped, painted and varnished it. Harder than it looks, and the most humbling thing I've learned.

Before: the plant stand clamped up during glue-up on the workbench — CarpentryMade with woodWanting to do more with my hands, I built a plant stand from raw wood: I chose the timber, learned half-lap, dowel and mortise-and-tenon joinery, then sanded, glued, clamped, painted and varnished it. Harder than it looks, and the most humbling thing I've learned.

A hand holding a polymer clay worry stone, thumb resting in its dip: a round, peach-coloured face with sleepy eyes, rosy cheeks and a green leaf headband — Polymer clayMade with clayIn a world of screens, making something you can actually hold feels like the most human thing I do. Shaped, detailed and baked by hand, each stone has a dip that fits your thumb, made to be held. *P.S. This one is the very first worry stone I made.*

Reclaiming WonderMade with curiosityA series about slowing down enough to wonder. One real question, real research, and an answer a child could follow. Watch episode 1