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[00:00] Michael Sciano: So I've been telling people, like, yeah. Connect with other CMA'ers, but that's not who's gonna help you find a job. You have to connect with other marketers outside of customer marketing and or customer success or client services leaders who are fueling these jobs. They're the ones saying, yeah, we need to hire a customer marketer. And that's where I spend my time.

[0:28] Sunny Manivannan: Welcome to the Peerbound podcast. I'm your host, Sunny Manivannan. Joining me today is Michael Sciano, a seasoned leader in customer marketing advocacy with more than 15 years of experience. Michael has held key roles at some of the most recognizable names in the technology industry, including Adobe, Salesforce, and ServiceTitan, where he helped shape the strategies behind their growth. Michael, it's such an honor to have you on the Peerbound podcast. I'm so thrilled to be having this conversation. Welcome.

[0:55] Michael Sciano: Thank you so much, Sunny. It's great to be here. You connect with so many wonderful people, so it's a privilege to be a part of that community.

[1:03] Sunny Manivannan: Great. Well, let's start at the beginning or at least, you know, somewhere closer to the beginning. I see you're wearing your Marquette hoodie. So let's start with, you know, your time at Marquette. So that's where you went for college, if I'm not mistaken. Tell me what were you thinking about your career at that time? What did you wanna do?

[1:18] Michael Sciano: I grew up mostly in Cleveland and went to a Jesuit high school. We were programmed to look at the Jesuit universities out there. In ninth grade, I had the most amazing world history teacher, Mr. Howard. By the end of my ninth grade, I knew I wanted to be a history teacher. I also wanted to move away from Cleveland, expand my horizons, go away to school. So Milwaukee was amazing. I love Milwaukee to this day. It's a great city. Marquette's a great school and just had a well-rounded education there focused on history and education. And I spent, oh gosh, 5 years as a high school history teacher after that in Milwaukee and in Denver, and then we moved to Indiana.

[2:03] Sunny Manivannan: Well, it seems like that teacher really had a huge impact on you and decided to forge your path in his influence. That's great.

[2:10] Michael Sciano: Yeah. Yeah.  It is.

[2:10] Sunny Manivannan: That's wonderful. 

[2:12] Michael Sciano: He made history come alive, and this was, you know, early nineties. So it was hard. There was no YouTube back then. He inspired me as a young teacher to try to do the same thing. Right? Bring it alive for the kids.

[2:23] Sunny Manivannan: Amazing. Well, so you, you know, spent a few years as a teacher. What brings you to tech? Walk me into that part of the career journey.

[2:32] Michael Sciano: Yeah. So I was teaching. I enjoyed it. I made a commitment, though, when I said I told myself I would not continue teaching if I wasn't 110% into it. As we moved to a small town in Indiana, started having a family, I wanted something different. So I shifted to corporate training, and I worked in corporate training for a little bit in a bank and at Cummins, the big Fortune 500 diesel engine company. Both of those industries were way too slow and boring for me.

It also helped that in 2008, the economy crashed, and everyone lost their job. I lost my job at Cummins, and the only area that was growing was software. Lucky me. I found an opportunity to get involved in client training at a little company called ExactTarget in Indianapolis. Became, like, the hot ticket, the Google of Indianapolis, we would call it, in email marketing, and spent about six years there. And really spent that time in client training, but the majority of it was in the CSM world before we even called it CSMs. I was part of the account management and customer relationship team. It was like my graduate school. I just learned all about software, how to take care of customers. We had a sales quota at that point with renewals as well as with expansion, help them achieve their goals. We had to keep track of our retention rate, but also our upsells, but also happiness and NPS and surveys. And it was just a little bit of everything. I started on the SMB team, so I had about 250 accounts. It was just learn by fire.    

[4:10] Sunny Manivannan: That's cool. 

[4:10] Michael Sciano: But it was great. It was wonderful. I wouldn't be here today without that core learning from all the mentors I had there as well. And then that just kinda snowballed from there and grew my career.

[4:22] Sunny Manivannan: That's incredible. Well, listen, you know, ExactTarget, not just the Google of Indianapolis, is in many ways one of the pioneers of the biggest software spaces, email marketing and, you know, customer engagement. That is what the cool kids call it. What was that experience like? You know, how many people were there when you started? How many when you left? How long were you there for? Tell me more about that.    

[4:40] Michael Sciano: Yeah. I don't I don't even think some of us realized what we were involved in at the time. I certainly didn't. I was kind of new to the tech world. I got in. I think I was employee 263. We took our employee number really to heart. So it was still small to the point where the founders knew me, and they knew what we were working on. And then we grew. By the time Salesforce acquired us, I don't know. I think we were 2,000 employees, something like that. But it was just great. I mean, Downtown Indy, Scott and Chris and Peter, the founders, they just built a culture that was so unique, especially to me. I mean, I was a teacher, I was in a bank, and I was in a factory. And that's like, you go to Downtown Indy. They made a point to have all of our offices in older buildings, not the high rises. It was just a great culture. I made great friendships and just learned a whole bunch of what this world was like. And, yeah, it's pretty fond memories.

[5:36] Sunny Manivannan: Amazing. You know, one of the interesting things about your background in the technology industry is that you've done so many roles at the highest level. So you've been a CSM. I think later, you were and you've done customer training. Then I believe you did product marketing at Adobe. The teaching background certainly helps in all these roles because in many ways, you are constantly coaching, whether it's coaching internal folks or your customers or your sales team. Is that your sort of preferred way of being at a company’s just absorbing new roles? Like, do you like that challenge?

[6:07] Michael Sciano: Yeah. Yeah. It's been my secret sauce. I haven't been trained in marketing as it, you know, traditionally. Took a couple of classes in school, 101 marketing. But my secret expertise is how adults learn, and I have leveraged it in every single role. Even the sales side when we were the CSM, my approach to sales was through education. If I could help you learn what the potential was of some new feature or new product, I felt like I could get you to close. I was never skilled at psychology and propaganda and persuasion, so I couldn't go the demand gen, you know, cold outreach way of it. Ironically, for, gosh, I don't even know, 15, 16 years, we moved to Indiana. We live on our homestead farm. So I'm a true farmer by, you know, by where we live. We raise livestock, but that nurturing is just a part of who I am. And yeah. So even in customer marketing and when I was doing more product marketing and product adoption, it's always been through a lens of education.

[7:15] Sunny Manivannan: Yeah. Amazing. Well, let's talk about customer marketing. You've been in customer marketing. This is now something that you've done at a few companies, and you clearly have a ton of expertise in this function. What have you seen change in the last 5 years in this function? Like and where do you see it today?

[7:32] Michael Sciano: Yeah. How long do we have? So I pivoted from the CSM world to customer marketing. It was housed under product marketing at Adobe. I had a leader there who saw what I was doing with the team I led for a specific product at Adobe, Adobe Campaign. And she was like, hey. All of that programming and workshopping and activities you are doing with your set of customers. I need you to do that for the whole globe for our product. We had about a thousand customers across all the continents, but only, like, our patch of 100 were getting what we were doing.

And so that's kinda how I fell, quote, unquote, fell into customer marketing was through this adoption and engagement strategy at Adobe. And so for me, I think when I got started in the first few years, there was a lot of excitement. We were headed into we didn't know it, but we were headed into COVID and the pandemic where there was that pivot to, oh my gosh. We have to retain our customers. We have to do more for them. And, of course, for anyone who spent any time in the CSM world or the customer marketing world, it's like, no. Duh. 80% of your revenue comes from customers. Why? We've always sat here wondering why we can't get more. Right? Like, we are we are

[8:49] Sunny Manivannan: So true.

[8:50] Michael Sciano: Building the moat around the base that pays us. So I don't know why we have to struggle. But, yeah, COVID kind of lifted that all, and leadership started to see that potential and learn a little bit more. There was that just for a very brief time, remember the articles and the thought leadership was it's always been growth no matter what, but right after the like, during the pandemic, right after it was like, no. We wanna see profit. We wanna see healthy margins. Right.

[9:19] Sunny Manivannan: And I remember that day. That it was a day. Maybe a week. Literally 1 day.

[9:21] Michael Sciano: Yeah. 

[9:26] Sunny Manivannan: And then they're like, wait. What are we talking about? 

[9:28] Michael Sciano: Yeah. What are we talking about? And so now we're back to growth no matter what.

[9:34] Sunny Manivannan: Michael, that's such a deep-cut reference to that one day, right after COVID, where everybody's like, oh, wait, we should just become profitable.

[9:41] Michael Sciano: Yeah. I keep it up on my shelf. Like, it's like it's on my refrigerator.

[9:46] Sunny Manivannan: That one day in 2021 where Silicon Valley wanted profitability. Yeah.

[9:51] Michael Sciano: Yeah. That was a great day. It was wonderful. So today, I see it like, I see both. I see some firms, some organizations, they get it. They're really leaning into it. And then others, even large ones, you know, a year ago, last summer, a really large, original software company out there who I used to work for laid off the entire customer marketing team. I don't know what they did to substitute it, but a lot of my friends and peers who I know here in Indianapolis lost their job. And it's like, if that company is doing it, the one who will remain anonymous, but we all know who we're talking about, what does that mean for all the smaller ones? Because when I left Adobe, I started going to smaller growth companies. Right? So most companies got to about $25-$30 million and maybe 500 customers, 1,000 customers. They were ready to do something. But that meant you were a team of one, and still today, you're a team of one, and you have a lot of responsibilities. But leadership is like, well, we have to do something, so let's just hire someone, and maybe they'll come along with a good strategy. But some of them don't really dive into understanding how it's all connected to revenue.

[11:05] Sunny Manivannan: Yeah. So totally. Yeah. Totally. And one of the interesting observations because as members of this customer marketing community, one of the topics that's come up this year especially is, okay, how do we find our next job? And there's so much to unpack here. So I'll start by asking you, what do you think of some of these job descriptions?

[11:27] Michael Sciano: Oh, man.

[11:28] Sunny Manivannan: Where they want you to do customer marketing, customer success, maybe start a community on the side. Uh-huh. And keep it going, and you gotta keep that growing all the time. And then let's get a references program going because we'd need that. And we need all these other things too. Maybe a little bit of product marketing sprinkled over all of this as well. And by the way, all of this is a specialist or a junior manager level role.

[11:53] Michael Sciano: You're right. Oh, that's the key. That's the kicker. You just need 3 years of experience, but we're gonna give you four major areas of responsibility. We're gonna underpay you even though inflation is, like, I don't know, it's right. 47 percent. Crazy. Yeah. You know, it's HR listening. Let's do some hot takes here. Lauren Turner, who's wonderful in the CMA community, she said the other day she described these job descriptions as the kitchen sink job description. Like, it literally is everything. And to your point, it's hard. Those are the jobs that are open and being filled, so you have to go after them. And I think everyone's in a different position based on your experience, your confidence level. I've talked to a lot of recruiters and a lot of CMOs this year as I've kind of looked for new opportunities, and I've pushed back and I've pushed back hard. Like, we're not gonna do it all. I can. I'm not going to. Because I learned a long time ago, if you don't let anything break, executives don't care. You know? Executives don't care about wins. Well, they do, but they're gonna put their time into what's broken.

[13:06] Sunny Manivannan: Right.

[13:07] Michael Sciano: And so it's kinda like the president. Right? They only address the problems that can't get solved. So Right. They will pause and celebrate wins, but their focus is primarily on what's broken. And so if I go into a role that has all of these major areas, life cycle, comms, product adoption, advocacy, expansion, community, something has to break so that I can grow the team. Now the trick is how do you tell that narrative without it being pointed at you, like, oh, you can't do this? No. I need to grow the team because we're impacting revenue. We're impacting the business. We're increasing NPS, or maybe not we, but, yeah, it's me. But we, if I had one or two or three other people, we can do even more. So I really push hard to prioritize. What is the absolute priority? If it's retention, right, if you're telling me that you have a 70 or 75 percent retention rate, then I I don't even care about advocacy. Like, we we have some real issues to address.

[14:11] Sunny Manivannan: Let's not add more fish to a leaky bucket. You know?

[14:13] Michael Sciano: Yeah. Absolutely. We do not have enough happy customers. If the retention is high, you know, as ServiceTitan, our retention is really high. And so we could focus on advocacy and programming and community. So I think you pivot to those areas based on the status of your accounts and the health of the business, and it's really important to communicate that to your CMO and on up.

[14:36] Sunny Manivannan: 100%. Yeah. I also feel like, at least from a CEO's perspective, I'm sure you're watching the news just like I am. And every day, it seems like there's a new CEO saying, well, we're getting rid of all these jobs and AI is filling the rest, and AI is writing one third of our code or 50% of our code. And so we don't need engineers as much as we used to, which sounds crazy to me, but sure. And, you know, we don't need customer support anymore because and and so on and so forth, right, function by function. And one of the big observations this time around is that historically, CEOs would have avoided talking about that altogether. But now it's almost like a game to them amongst their peers to show their shareholders and major investors, look at how efficiently we're running.

[15:19] Michael Sciano: Yeah.

[15:21] Sunny Manivannan: And then you see the, you know, I don't know if you saw this news article that said there was a Fortune or Forbes study that said 95% of AI implementations have failed at big companies. And so there's the sort of hope of the CEO and then the reality of what's actually happening on the Peerbound, and they are completely at odds with each other. But in the middle of all of this is this customer marketing function, which I think too many CEOs don't really know what the function does beyond case studies and references. Right? Right. That's what we do. And the strategic sort of imperative of this function has completely, you know, not made all the way to the top.

[15:56] Michael Sciano: Yeah. I have a couple of thoughts in no particular order. I like to describe to a CMO or even a CEO, right, when you have the chance to talk with them, and definitely a CCO like a chief customer officer or VP of client services. Here's how I describe customer marketing. What your CSMs are trying to do on a 1-to-1 basis with each account, I'm doing that for you at scale. I'm looking at the different segments and the different cohorts within our model, right, whatever our product is. And I'm trying to create those same experiences and engagement opportunities to those segments just as your CSM is trying to do it 1-on-1. You can't do that at scale. I can. I know how to. And I know how to look at those segments and connect them with what either programming or documentation or experiences that they need.

So first, to your question, like, that's how I describe what customer marketing is and even advocacy is to a CMO or to the c-suite. I think software and tech, it's in a weird space right now. It's always been fast. It's always been growth. It's always been challenging. That hasn't changed. It won't ever change, but it used to be fun. I don't know if we're having as much fun anymore. I think people are freaked out by AI in a lot of different ways, but also learning it. But I think we've done it to ourselves.

So I actually had breakfast the other day with a friend of mine who is retired, but he was very he was in charge for a very long time of research and development at Cummins. For years, he saw the future coming through manufacturing and all this, everything that they're working on. And anytime I talk with him, you know, he's an engineer. They're very precise, analytical, data. I mean, like, I mean, everything is a spreadsheet. And the other day, I stood I said, it's so interesting because it all comes down to the industry. In tech, we live by the phrase good, not perfect. Get it done. Get that version 1 out, and then just make it better.

And I was joking with him, and I said, for me, it's frustrating because I'm the kind of guy who I like to actually scratch something off my to-do list and never go back to it, but you can't do that in tech. And he said, you know, as I got older and as tech got more popular, I heard this phrase that would crash our entire company. Good, not perfect in engineering just doesn't work. He's like, our entire product would cause accidents or failures or, you know, incident disaster.

And so I think we've over-rotated a little bit to good, not perfect because that is where AI leads us. AI is just regurgitating everything it's consumed from human history and maybe making some very smart and organized predictions about it. I heed the warnings of, like, it won't replace me, but I definitely have to leverage it to be faster and better and more efficient. But it'll be interesting to watch. I'm not much of a futurist. I don't know what the future will hold, but I think some of these companies, some of these you never know which companies they are. They're like little startups. You know? Oh, I have a whole AI marketing tech stack. I'm like, nah.

[19:21] Sunny Manivannan: Yeah right. 

[19:22] Michael Sciano: You're you're not gonna last you're not gonna last long. But I think we'll see that flushed out here, and and we're just going through those I don't know. It's the weird sixth, seventh-grade middle school mentality of it. Everyone everyone's awkward.

[19:35] Sunny Manivannan: Right. Yeah. That's right. We are definitely in the awkward phase right now of AI because yeah, one of the things you said that really just, you know, turned the light on inside my head is you said, it's just not fun anymore. 

[19:51] Sunny Manivannan: Yeah. I think that's so astute.

[19:51] Michael Sciano: And not to be not to be

[19:52] Sunny Manivannan: I think that's so astute. There's something there in what you said that, yeah, really resonated with me sort of instantly. And I see, you know, I see it all over the software industry. And then you immediately said, look, I think people are kinda scared of AI and what it's gonna do and what it's not gonna do. And there's a lot of rhetoric right now that is quite strong about what is expected of an employee and what AI is going to do and, you know, like, you should be lucky to have a job. Like, you know, like, people are saying stuff, and it's crazy. And you're right. It is not it it is not fun in in many ways. And even 5 years ago, it used to be fun. You know?

[20:28] Michael Sciano: Yeah. I just you know, the stakes are higher. But at the same time, one of my leaders at ServiceTitan and Aspire, he said to me we were talking this was several months, maybe, I don't know, last year. He said he challenged me. He said, Michael, name one original idea in SaaS from the last 10 years. And I thought, oh, man. Do I

[20:53] Sunny Manivannan: Not make questions like that? Yeah.

[20:55] Michael Sciano: I thought I was being pretty creative here.

[20:58] Sunny Manivannan: Yeah.

[20:58] Michael Sciano: But he said, no. The tools change and, you know, there's little tweaks in strategy, of course, but what really has changed? All these software companies have a similar approach, whether you're self-service or you have onboarding and implementation. And then you go into your CSM and you got support there, whether it's chat or live or it's like we're just repeating this over and over and over and everywhere. And with the tenure, right, whether it's marketing or other places, people last two years, I'm just gonna take my playbook and shove it over here at the next company I join. And so it's just we just keep revolving through that door because nobody can stick around long enough to do something.

I feel fortunate. I was at ServiceTitan and Aspire Software long enough to build a program, watch it grow, add to it over three years. And I was really proud of it, and I still see it in action even though I'm not there.

Same with Adobe. I did the stuff at Adobe long enough to establish something 100% new for them, this idea around regional learning events. It's now called Skill Builder Workshops. I started it in 2018. They were called Learning Days. The next year, it just kinda blew up. And to this day, Adobe still has Skill Builder Workshops. And I see that as, like, okay. This stuff works. But the key to this programming was the human connection, so how it ties to AI. You know, we were talking too about, like, annual events. I have gotten heavily involved in the annual conferences, user conferences. I love I love it. I know it's kinda shifting a little bit, but just the just the motion and the exercise of creating an agenda and curriculum that's really gonna pull people in, finding customer speakers, coaching them, prepping them, the lead-up, and then you're there. And it's just it's just kind of something that has been a staple in my career.

But I see a huge shift in more regional, local experiences and events. Right? Almost kinda do away with the annual event. It's really expensive anyway. People don't wanna go somewhere with thousands of people, but shift that budget to multiple regional events. And whether it's just in our country or across the world, people wanna connect with each other. They're not gonna come to your event if it's run by an AI robot. They want those interactions.

And going back to one of your earlier questions, I know a lot about adult learning. And one of the most key components to adult learning is social learning. As adults, we wanna learn with and from each other, and it's why communities took off. And while everyone has a different learning style, we all want to learn from each other. Right? It's why you get the buddy system. When you start a new job, you get a buddy. We're learning from each other, and so that will never go away. That will always be necessary as part of anyone's learning journey.

[23:59] Sunny Manivannan: I wanna ask you about job searching in this market. Mhmm. Mhmm. And I'd like to request that you put your teacher hat on. Okay. And there are an incredible number of qualified outstanding candidates in the CSM space looking for their next opportunity.

[24:15] Michael Sciano: There are in this moment. Yes.

[24:18] Sunny Manivannan: And there are not as many jobs. You have completed successful job searches recently. What do you think led to your success? And if you are coaching some of these people who've been on the market for, let's say, you know, 3 plus 6 plus months in some cases, what would you tell them to maximize their chances of landing that next great role?

[24:39] Michael Sciano: Yeah. I can appreciate this so much. I have all throughout I I don't know if it's the teacher in me. I've helped coach people in job networking, job searches for forever, like, 20 years. I talked to people just yesterday, 3 different people yesterday, coaching them through it. I know it's it's cliche. Everyone says it. It comes down to network. Right? I have been able to find jobs in 15 days, 17 days, 30 days, multiple times over the last year, 6 months, month, right, or even over the last 10 years. It has everything to do with my network. I was lucky. I got Right. Job at ExactTarget. But even that was through I mean, you ask me, like, I live in a really small town in Southern Indiana.

[25:32] Sunny Manivannan: Right.

[25:33] Michael Sciano: No one here works in tech. However, I got introduced to somebody in January 2009 who worked at ExactTarget up in Indianapolis, and that's how I got the interview. And that's all you're trying to do. Just get your name. You have to just build your network, and it's gotta be genuine and authentic. And if you don't have one, you gotta get out there. Now the CMA community itself, I was just talking about this with somebody yesterday, we are great, kind, thoughtful group of people. We all help each other. And you can see it in the different communities out there. We're all helping each other and try this, try that, do that. But we're also all applying to the same jobs.

[26:15] Sunny Manivannan: I know. Really difficult.

[26:16] Michael Sciano: I've been telling people, like, yeah, connect with other CMAs, but that's not who's gonna help you find a job. You have to connect with other marketers outside of customer marketing and or customer success or client services leaders who are filling these jobs. They're the ones saying, yeah. We need to hire a customer marketer. And that's where I spend my time. I love my fellow CMAs, but, yeah, I just, you know, we're in the throes of it right now.

I've just completed the job search and accepted one. I didn't fill out a single application, well, until they asked me to. I was interviewing with four companies very actively, and all four of those were, well, two came to me once they knew I was looking, and two others I was referred to. So I've told people, find something you love to do, get really good at it, and make sure people know about it. And over time, you will build your network, and you will put yourself in a better place to find a job. And along the way, take care of those relationships.

I got on a call yesterday and sent an email to a company who offered me a job, but I didn't take it because I took the other one. And I took the time to write out a longer thank you note, email, whatever, thanking them for the process, for the opportunity that part of me was like, I'm stupid for passing this up. But in the meantime, I gave them two people's names. And I said, you had your hopes and dreams on me, maybe. And I kind of threw a wrench in it. And here are two people who you should go check out because I know the community really well. And all three of them responded back with, like, wow. Thank you. Like, this is this is amazing, and you're helping us. And I was like, yeah. I am.

[28:12] Sunny Manivannan: Of course. Yeah.

[28:13] Michael Sciano: I also wanna stay in your good graces, and I wanna show you it's genuine. In a year from now, who knows? Maybe I'll need you. You know? Maybe you'll have one of these coveted VP or director roles that we can't seem to find.

[28:25] Sunny Manivannan: Yep.

[28:25] Michael Sciano: I'm a big believer in building those relationships. You don't have to talk to somebody once a week every week for a year. Just

[28:33] Sunny Manivannan: Right.

[28:33] Michael Sciano: Check-in every few months with people and make sure they know. And the other tip would be, do not keep it to yourself. When I find myself, I've been there. I've been fired. I've been laid off. I've left a job on my own. The first thing I do, usually the next morning, give myself a little time. I go through, I get my phone, wherever it is, and I just start in the A's. And I just tell all the right people, hey, man. I'm a free agent. I'm a free agent. How have you been? And they can't help you if they don't know. And there's no shame in it. You know, all those sayings, you are not your job, they're all true. You're in it just as much as the next person.

[29:15] Sunny Manivannan: Very true.

[29:16] Michael Sciano: So

[29:17] Sunny Manivannan: Very true. Man, you said so much good stuff.

[29:19] Michael Sciano: Sorry. You got me going.

[29:21] Sunny Manivannan: When we write about this on social media and we promote this episode, I'm gonna tell people to listen to that entire excerpt on job searching if they're job searching because it is so antithetical to how I think people approach a job search, which is they go in and I think they think it's a numbers game and say, alright. Let me go put in 100 applications. But these applications, which you, by the way, already know because you said, I don't even fill out applications until they ask me to. These applications, unless somebody in there is referring you, are way too competitive. Yeah. You're not getting anything.

[29:57] Michael Sciano: Yeah. No. It's so hard. And if you see a job out there, like, it's not that I didn't see jobs and go oh, I'm not applying. I will apply, but I am first talking to somebody. I am finding a way. Now if I know someone or somebody can introduce me, that's even better. But do I do some cold outreach on LinkedIn to these hiring managers I don't know? Yes. I did, like, 2 or 3 of those. Didn't hear a word back, which is why... they're getting inundated. But, yeah, you gotta... I hate it. Right? Like, nobody wants to say, like, oh, it's all about who you know, but... but it is. It's not the slimiest, like, nineties way of who you know. It's more about this is a community. Tech is a small community even though it employs, I don't know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people. But we all know each other. And if we don't know each other directly, we're pretty close. And, you know, my other little saying is the best time to look for a job is when you have one. Right?

[30:57] Sunny Manivannan: Yeah. Spot on.

[31:00] Michael Sciano: And the stress level increases when you don't have a job and you know you're competing. Everyone's situation is different. You know? I had some time this summer to really step back and take some time, but I'm a little older. Bald spot gives it away. We have a little bit of savings. I don't wanna drain the savings, but it lets you breathe just a little bit. But, man, I've got I've got kids. I got a farm. Like       

[31:29] Sunny Manivannan: Mhmm.

[31:29] Michael Sciano: I give myself 1 month. 30 days, I will treat it like a full-time job, have conversations, look for jobs, apply, interview, all of that. And I told myself that if by September 1, I didn't have an offer, I'm gonna get something else. I'm gonna get a contract, get a freelance, or I'm gonna go and get a part-time job or drive an Uber or whatever.

[31:50] Sunny Manivannan: Yep.

[31:51] Michael Sciano: I'm not gonna not work. Right? 

[31:53] Sunny Manivannan: Yep.

[31:54] Michael Sciano: I wish I was like my millennial friends and I had a side hustle that was established and had some of that passive income from real estate deals that I made when I was in my twenties. I don't have that. I need to think about it. I need to actually act on it and be smart like all these other folks. Not having it is also a good thing. It puts pressure on you. Right? Like, I have to stay engaged. So it's a little bit of an accountability piece there.

[32:20] Sunny Manivannan: Yeah. So no, I love that. Yeah. I love that. I mean, it’s incredible advice.

[32:24] Michael Sciano: Well, advice. I should say we do have a side gig. It is a farm. We have a working farm. It takes an incredible amount of time. It just doesn't make a lot of money.

[32:34] Sunny Manivannan: I was gonna say it's probably not the most lucrative side gig. And by the way, it seems like a lot of hard work.

[32:38] Michael Sciano: It's a lot of hard work. And my wife works full time too. So I suppose if one of us

[32:42] Sunny Manivannan: Right.

[32:34] Michael Sciano: Actually went all in, we might make a few dollars. But it's more hobby than business. Let's just be clear.

[32:49] Sunny Manivannan: Yes. Totally.

[32:50] Michael Sciano: Anyway

[32:51] Sunny Manivannan: Let me ask you a little bit about what your thoughts are on AI. We've talked about it a little bit. Have you played around with it, whether it's for customer marketing or your sort of personal purposes? Mhmm. Where do you find it helpful? Where do you find it disappointing? Which is the part nobody talks about, but we'd love to know your thoughts.

[33:12] Michael Sciano: Anytime. So, yeah, I've played around. I would put myself somewhere between beginner and intermediate.

[33:18] Sunny Manivannan: Okay.

[33:19] Michael Sciano: Not advanced. I do not stay up late at night playing around with it. Maybe I should. I've moved beyond, hey, write this email for me. The best thing I've done so far is I created a GPT to help sales find the right advocacy asset. Right?

[33:37] Sunny Manivannan: Okay.

[33:38] Michael Sciano: So we didn't have budget, of course, because you're not only a customer marketer who has a thousand things, but you're also hired and said, you don't get any budget. So I can't buy

[33:48] Sunny Manivannan: Yes.

[33:48] Michael Sciano: Peerbound or any other tool. And so you have this library sitting in a Google Sheet or an Excel sheet of stories and videos and blogs and slides and quotes. So in the absence of it, I figured out how to feed a GPT all of that information, consume it. We did a little exercise of tagging and filtering, and then coached it on a prompt. And so now the sales team can go in and write a prompt. I need a story or a video that finds x, y, z, and they get, like, 3 options. So that's probably the best thing I've done, but it was out of a need for like, I'm getting inundated with requests, and I can't get my work done. So yeah. And I know other tools, like, the way that the community is building those tools now, it's available. So I just had to figure out how to do it without a tool.

[34:45] Sunny Manivannan: Yep.

[34:46] Michael Sciano: So I, you know, I don't know. I use it for research. Definitely leverage it probably more in my job search than in any other time, you know, prepping for interviews, learning about the companies, feeding it the job description, and having it come up with questions from different perspectives. Right? CMO, CSM, product marketing, whatever, and helping me like, well, you're getting a sense of how wordy I can be, so tightening up answers on an interview, things of that nature. My running joke is, wow. You prompt AI on something, and no matter how simple the question is, you get, like, this 500-word novel to read.

[35:22] Sunny Manivannan: I know. What the heck? So what is going on with that? 

[35:28] Michael Sciano: I'm not sure how to square that circle because nobody reads my long emails, and I'm not—I gotta read all this and scroll, and maybe I'm just not smart enough to understand what a better way would be. But that's the one part that I, I laugh every time. But oh, I gotta spend 10 minutes reading through this.

[35:47] Sunny Manivannan: I'm right there with you. Yeah. It's so true. You know? And I can summarize, and then it can make everything longer if you want to send something longer. Anyway, what you're doing with AI, I think this is where most of us are, is beginner to intermediate. And I think, yeah. There's all these people claiming on social media that they're expert and expert and beyond. And I'm like, you know, at any level of scale or the minute you hit a snag in the data quality, then all that just falls right apart.

[36:11] Michael Sciano: Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I just again, I haven't gotten to the level, but in order to survive in tech, you need a little bit of confidence. There's a balance between confidence and ego. I know one thing really well, and I know how adults learn. And I can create any type of online or in-person experience to move the needle you need to move. If it's about getting a group of prospects together, meeting with a customer over dinner, I can make that happen, and I can create an experience that's gonna be beneficial for both the customer and the prospects. If you need to put together a user conference, I know based on adult learning how to format it for the most impactful, effective route. Even our infamous tech on-site strategy meetings. You know? You got one every quarter. You gotta go to the mothership. You gotta spend two or three days in a windowless conference room. It's all we love it. We love it. That model sucks. Right? I tell my leaders all the time, like, we gotta get outside. We gotta move rooms. You need breaks. The average adult attention span is 18 minutes. And if you're not changing or shifting the conversation every 15 to 20 minutes, you're losing me. And when I've sat in this room for seven hours—

[37:32] Sunny Manivannan: That's so true.

[37:32] Michael Sciano: Fried. And then you're gonna drag me to a three-hour dinner with 20 people. 

[37:38] Sunny Manivannan: Of course and just carbs, carbs, carbs and drinks. Yeah.

[37:41] Michael Sciano: Yeah. And so, like, it's just that model sucks too. So to your point or to your question, what does that have to, like, I don't think AI can do that. Maybe. Right. But somebody still has to pull it together. You know? And somebody has to be there, again, whether it's a virtual learning or a virtual event or an introduction. I love playing matchmaker. Yep. Given that warm introduction. Somebody has to do it. So I'm I'm not too worried.

[38:08] Sunny Manivannan: Yep. Agreed. Last question I wanna ask you. Yes, sir. And I could, by the way, keep this going for at least another hour because I have so many more I do wanna ask you. In the interest of time, I'll ask you 1 last question, which is, how do we bring VP back to this function? How do we bring that VP-level role back? We're not bringing sexy back. That's too much for all of us. But we can try to bring VP back. What's your take on this? Where did all these VP - and if you know, forget VP, even, like, director, senior director roles. Mhmm. Where did all these roles go? Did they belong? Did we need them at that level in the first place? Like, what's your take, you know, when we're looking at customer marketing and seniority or lack thereof in these roles? 

[38:46] Michael Sciano: We absolutely need it. I don't know if they were ever there. I mean, again, maybe in some, like, in a small percentage. A lot of the director roles are these kitchen sink roles. They'll slap director on it, but you're still a doer. I have been a coach-player for the entire time. Wait. Let me think. I've been a team of 1, maybe a team of 2. I've always been a coach-player even down to, like, hitting the send button on the emails. Like

[39:13] Sunny Manivannan: Yep.

[39:14] Michael Sciano: So we absolutely need to tier this up. And I want I don't know if it's, like, the chicken or the egg, speaking of the farm, but I don't know what comes first. Like, I cannot wait until customer marketing looks like demand gen. Demand gen not only gets all the budget even though they're, like, they're celebrating a 0.04 conversion rate on their social media ad. Like, great 0.04, somebody clicked your email signature graphic. Like, oh, that's amazing. Look what I did over here. Yeah. You're gonna get the you're gonna skip the straight talk from me, Sunny.

[39:50] Sunny Manivannan: You know what's really funny? Is it's it's you just said what every single person in marketing has thought for probably several years, which is just because there's numbers and they're moving slightly in the right direction doesn't mean that we are killing it.

[40:03] Michael Sciano: I would look I have looked at these budgets. I get so excited to get these new jobs in customer marketing. And then I see I have to fight for $100,000. And then there's like Yep. Oh, our demand gen budget for social media is $3,000,000. Do you know what I could do with just $50? So I can't wait until our org chart gets a little bit more tiered.

And I you know, there's the great debate between generalists and specialists. I don't think you need to be a specialist, but can we have a true org chart around advocacy, around customer marketing, product adoption, and lifecycle, around expansion? Again, some orgs are doing this. Right? There's some where the expansion and upsell person sits in demand gen, and you gotta work really closely with them. That's fine. So there's there's pieces of it, but I can't wait till we hire CMOs or CEOs who come from the customer side. Like, I know. I know. It's sales and revenue, but your chief customer officer knows the business inside and out. Why can't they be CEO? And if they're CEO, they're going to shift the expectations. I am not so naive that I think marketing budget has to be, like, you know, 70% for customers. I'm not naive. But it can't be, like, less than 5%, which it is everywhere.

[41:34] Sunny Manivannan: It is everywhere.

[41:35] Michael Sciano: It's insane to me. Again, a typical high growth or even mid-market SaaS company, somewhere between 65-80% of your revenue is coming from customers, but you're only giving 5% of your budget to your customer marketing team or less. Right? Like, the math doesn't math, as the kids say. And so, I don’t know. I think that there is an incredible opportunity for the community to continue to educate and challenge. I was thinking about it, and, again, I'm unencumbered because I'm in between jobs.

So let me put this out as one more hot take. The c-suite, you know, we see these things happening. I'm not super smart. I don't have a PhD, but you see people talking about the Cracker Barrel logo and the American Eagle ad. And I watch TV a little bit at night, and I see these ads. I'm like, how does this stuff get approved? I don’t... I just would love to sit in these rooms with the c-suite. What are they talking about? Because it doesn’t—it must not sound like any of the conversations I’m having. And I wonder—here’s where my cynical part comes out—I wonder if it’s because there’s just a bunch of yes men and yes women. People like me don’t get invited into those meetings because I’m opinionated. It’s so true. And I sat with the customer, and I will always speak for the customer internally. I usually have to put the disclaimer out there before any meeting. Like, 'Remember, guys, I am the voice of the customer. I’m not making this up. I’m reading this out as NPS surveys or other feedback or quotes that I have from customers, but this is what they think or this is what they’re going to say.' And if you don’t have that as part of your leadership or if you’re fearful of it, we’re not gonna see any leadership investment in customer marketing or advocacy because they’re just afraid of the truth. And the truth is people are happy. You have happy customers, but no one’s 100% happy. They wanna help you get better. They wanna help you attain their 100% satisfaction. Yep. That’s my hot take.

[43:45] Sunny Manivannan: Very true. That’s incredibly well said, and, you know, I think we should leave on that incredibly high note. I cannot thank you enough for joining me today, Michael.

[43:58] Michael Sciano: Well thank you, Sunny. It’s so fun.

[44:00] Sunny Manivannan: It was super fun. Really, really, honestly, educational. Like, you are a teacher. You taught me. And, hopefully, you'll teach a bunch of people that are listening to, you know, going to listen to this podcast in a week or two. And, you know, they'll be facing some of the challenges that we discussed and, hopefully, so helpful.

[44:14] Michael Sciano: I love some of the themes, some of the themes of recent episodes. It's like share and share publicly and broadly what you're doing in customer marketing. Right? Let's make sure everyone is aware. I love Kevin Lau. It's like impact, impact, impact. Show the numbers. Share the numbers. We drive revenue and have confidence. Like, we know what we're doing and we're really good at it, and we shouldn't be shy about it. We shouldn't be shy at all.

[44:38] Sunny Manivannan: Yep. Totally. 

[44:40] Michael Sciano: So I love that you have that. 

[44:41] Sunny Manivannan: Thank you so much.

[44:42] Michael Sciano: Yeah. Sunny, thanks for having me. I love what you guys are doing over there. Thanks for driving conversations.

[44:47] Sunny Manivannan: Appreciate it. Thanks, Michael.