Making The Grade

Less than 1 in 100 Startups manage to achieve funding beyond Series D or an exit. Investors typically expect 8 out of 10 of the businesses they invest in to fail. It’s time to make building a business less depressing and scale more wisely. Tune into Making The Grade to hear first-hand experiences of venture-backed software companies in their journeys from Seed to Series B funding. Every week, we’ll be joined by Founders, Investors and senior Go-To-Market Leaders to explore the factors driving the decline in graduation rates, misaligned go-to-market operations and ineffective sales and marketing strategies. All while making you leave every episode with actionable insights and expert advice to help you navigate these common Startup hurdles and thrive in a competitive market, showing that it can be done differently.

Making The Grade is a business podcast hosted by Unknown Host, with 0 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Unknown Host hosts Making The Grade, a business show with 0 episodes published.

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  Episode #3

  25 Years of Sales Leadership rewritten by AI - Jeremy Radcliffe on balancing human touch and automation in Sales

  Sep 30, 202630 minS3

  Jeremy Radcliffe has led revenue teams for over 25 years. Long enough to have watched several waves of "the next big shift" come and go. In this episode, we dive into what’s actually different about this current shift and the AI era.  Jeremy walks through three ways AI is reshaping the CRO role: workforce design questions that barely existed a few years ago, product and revenue converging as product usage data becomes a better predictor of growth than CRM activity, and the CRO increasingly operating as a change leader rather than a pure sales manager. He's candid about where AI has genuinely changed his own day-to-day thinking, and equally candid about which parts are just hype and won’t stick in the long run.  Episode Chapters 02:15 - The evolving role of CRO in the age of AI  05:30 - AI’s impact on day-to-day operations 07:30 - Navigating AI hype vs reality  11:00 - Balancing automation and human touch  12:30 - The future of SDRs in an AI-driven world  24:00 - Lessons from a fractional CRO   Continue listening…  Make sure you listen to Natalie Johnson on what it really takes to win in the US   Enjoyed today's episode of Making The Grade? If you took something valuable from the episode, we'd love for you to... ✔️ Leave us a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. ✔️ Share your ideas or guest suggestions with us at podcast@scalewise.com ✔️ Stay in the loop with the latest from Making The Grade and ScaleWise by following us on LinkedIn or YouTube . See you again next week!

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  Episode #2

  Transitioning from CMO to CRO - Hannah Garner on stepping into the CRO seat & hiring in the AI era

  Sep 23, 202636 minS3

  Hannah Garner didn't set out to become a CRO. She joined Arctic Shores as VP of Marketing with an eye on the CMO seat, but found herself stepping into revenue leadership instead.  In this episode, Hannah shares what that transition actually felt like - from the imposter syndrome that came with the transition to the advice from fellow CROs that helped her push through it. She also unpacks how to differentiate in an AI-saturated market and how AI is changing what “good hiring” actually looks like.  Episode Chapters 03:30 - Hannah’s journey to CRO 09:00 - Insights on Revenue Leadership 15:00 - Navigating Imposter Syndrome 20:50 - The importance of Brand differentiation  31:00 - Hiring in the AI era    Continue listening…  Make sure you listen to Robert Newry’s transition from CEO to Chief Explorer at Arctic Shores    Enjoyed today's episode of Making The Grade? If you took something valuable from the episode, we'd love for you to... ✔️ Leave us a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. ✔️ Share your ideas or guest suggestions with us at podcast@scalewise.com ✔️ Stay in the loop with the latest from Making The Grade and ScaleWise by following us on LinkedIn or YouTube . See you again next week!

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  Episode #1

  The Coaching Relationship That Changed Everything - Alex Olley on building Go-to-Market rigour at Reachdesk

  Sep 16, 202632 minS3

  What happens when the investor everyone expects to say ‘yes’ tears your Go-To-Market plan apart in front of 15 people? For Alex Olley , Co-Founder and CRO of Reachdesk , that moment at his Series B in 2021 became the inflexion point of his career as a Revenue Leader.  In this episode, Alex tells us the full story from that shocking investor meeting to the coaching relationship that changed his career and Reachdesk forever. We also touch on how Alex is deploying AI today - from surfacing high-intent accounts to using outbound and business cases and why he believes efficiency without accuracy is a trap.  It's a conversation about the line between the art and the science of selling, and what it actually takes to go from good to great as a CRO.  Episode Chapters 04:00 - The Series B wake-up call  13:00 - Lessons on Sales Rigour  23:30 - Art vs Science in Sales  25:00 - Applying AI without losing creativity  29:00 - The importance of unit economics for CROs    Continue listening…  Make sure you listen to Season 2 with Sam Jacobs on building for efficient growth Enjoyed today's episode of Making The Grade? If you took something valuable from the episode, we'd love for you to... ✔️ Leave us a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. ✔️ Share your ideas or guest suggestions with us at podcast@scalewise.com ✔️ Stay in the loop with the latest from Making The Grade and ScaleWise by following us on LinkedIn or YouTube . See you again next week!

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  Making The Grade

  Season 3 Trailer: What it takes to be a CRO in 2026 and beyond...

  Sep 14, 20266 minS3

  Every CRO has had this moment: the deal that should've closed and didn't, the board meeting where the numbers didn't add up the way you'd hoped, the realisation that what got you here won't get you to the next stage.  This season of Making The Grade is built around that moment, and what the best Revenue Leaders do differently once they've had it. This season, we sat down with CROs and Revenue Leaders across enterprise SaaS and early-stage scale-ups to find out what's actually changing in Go-To-Market. Alex Olley shares the wake-up call that reshaped how he runs revenue today. Tom Castley makes the case that the questions your prospects ask reveal more than the answers they give you. And Laura Moniz de Aragão argues that in enterprise sales, AI is making the best human sellers more valuable, not less.  And those are just a few of the brilliant CROs we're sitting down with to really look under the hood of some of the fastest scaling businesses and the challenges they face, ready for you to learn from and apply to your day to day as a Revenue Leader.  Don't forget to hit subscribe to be the first to listen to fresh episodes every Thursday morning, wherever you get your favourite podcasts. Enjoyed today's episode of Making The Grade? If you took something valuable from the episode, we'd love for you to... ✔️ Leave us a rating and review on your favourite podcast platform. ✔️ Share your ideas or guest suggestions with us at podcast@scalewise.com ✔️ Stay in the loop with the latest from Making The Grade and ScaleWise by following us on LinkedIn or YouTube . See you again next week!

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  Episode #10

  The GTM Playbook that works in 2026: Amelia Scott on scaling Culture Amp from $15M to $170M without sales commission

  Apr 8, 202640 minS2

  <p>What does it actually take to build a world-class sales culture? </p> <p>Amelia Scott knows better than most. She spent nearly seven years at Culture Amp, joining as a senior AE when the business was at $15M ARR and leaving as VP of Global Sales at $170M. </p> <p>During her tenure, she took the EMEA business from $1.5M to $40M, and learned some hard, invaluable lessons along the way about talent, culture, regional expansion and what revenue leadership actually requires.</p> <p>Now working as a fractional CRO, Amelia is right at the sharp end of how AI...

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