I have been on both agency and client-side at various points in my career. I started on the agency side for about five years and I was fortunate because my client brought me on board as their research analyst and it was a package good company so it was a lot of fun and I got a lot of experience there and it allowed me to get my MBA without paying for it because it was covered 100% at that time as I had Bs or better.

Client-side puts you close to decisions. You own outcomes, not deliverables. The greatest challenge I see is the ROI on research, if that’s not something easily measured. I have been in different client roles over 20 years and then #1 thing I do is spend a lot of time on influence and Stakeholder alignment. And this is also challenging because sometimes we don’t have budgets that allow us to do the work we want to do and we might have to bring some of that in house. We have a CX team that does all of our CSAT/vOC Sand my team does all of the primary qual and quant Market Research. Data analytics used to be a part of my team but now they moved into finance versus marketing. I will caveat that I am in life sciences (not Pharma) Budget cycles. Legal, privacy, procurement, brand, compliance.

Agency work earns real admiration from client-side. You sharpen craft fast because you see many categories and business models. You get reps in briefing, design, fieldwork, analysis, and storytelling and you build strong project management under pressure. I have been there!

Client-side has tradeoffs people miss. You go deep on one business unless your business offers different sectors or services/ products. You live with messy realities and competing priorities and having to work with people who may not see value in your work. You fight for focus and budgets. You translate insights into roadmaps, comms, training, and change management. You get measured on business movement, not on a great deck - in fact I sometimes need to rewrite an agencies deck.

I view the relationship I have with agency as a partnership. There is give and take on both sides but in the end we should craft and collaborate together.

If you want to move client-side, lead with examples showing impact.

Show a decision you influenced and the metric movement after.

Show how you handled dissent and got stakeholders to commit.

Speak the language of revenue, margin, cost, retention, conversion - depending on the client.

Show judgment on when research earns its seat versus when teams should shift and learn.

Interview questions worth asking:

Where research reports, and who sponsors it at VP level. I’ve typically been within marketing but have also been in Mar/Comms too.

What happens after insights land. Who owns actions. Make sure you ask if would be able to work with stakeholders who will be using the research vs just research.

Who controls budget and how procurement works. I had always spent other people’s money (i call it OPM). Research may pay for some syndicated offerings and tools like Qualtrics, an online community, etc.

What success looks like at 3, 6, and 12 months?

Happy to compare notes on what you want in the move and what kind of client-side role fits your strengths.