The Drum — Case Study
How The Drum’s sales team increased its conversion rates by over 30% and average deal values by 25%, in less than 12 months.

The Client
The Drum is a leading global publisher for the marketing and media industries. Their mission is to help 1.2 million-plus readers prepare for what’s next. They specialise in providing actionable insights, guidance, inspiration and creative marketing solutions.
Diane Young, Co-Founder and CEO of The Drum recognised that despite continued business growth, there was an opportunity to improve sales negotiation skills, reduce discounting and focus on higher value, bigger deals within the sales organisation.
Piscari conducted a sales negotiation skills diagnostic and scoped out a consulting project to review various aspects of sales. This involved working with the Head of Finance to analyse previous sales deals, review existing sales dashboard reports and look at the sales process. This resulted in a series of recommendations that would underpin the growth plans for the next 12 months.


The Challenges
There were a number of key challenges that needed to be addressed across the sales organisation:
The Approach
Working with Diane Young (CEO), James Le Masurier (Head of Partnerships EMEA & APAC) and Tehmeena Latif (Head of Sales EMEA), Piscari developed a blended learning, development and consultancy programme that consisted of:
Outcomes and Benefits
Measured over a 12 month period, the following benefits have been delivered:
“The one to one coaching sessions with the team helped identify unique sales negotiation training gaps. Mike’s tailored approach to each individual has helped fine tune the sales team’s skills in their very own roles.” Tehmeena Latif, Head of Sales EMEA.

Head of Partnerships EMEA & APAC The Drum
What’s Next for the Sales Team at The Drum?
The Drum is set for considerable growth in the coming years. One of the key enabler of this growth will be the ongoing optimisation of the sales function around larger/complex deals. The work done over the last 8 months is one of the cornerstones for this next stage of growth.
“What started as a training/coaching programme to improve the negotiation
skills of the sales teams, quickly turned into fixing a business problem around improving conversion rates and deal values for bigger deals.”
“This programme has really helped to shine a light on how the leadership team can support higher value sales by being more involved in the process at the point of sale. Understanding what the client requirements are vs our capabilities and closing the gaps. If we continue to align ourselves around our customer needs and commit to continuous improvement there is no limit for what we can achieve.”
James Le Masurier

CEO Piscari
How is Piscari different from other sales/negotiation trainers and coaches?
We asked the CEO, Diane Young and James/Tehmeena
this question.
These are some of the things they said about us:
Download Case Study
To download, please enter your name and email address and we will send you the link.