I am tired of people trying to find jobs on the “CLIENT SIDE” #1

If you have ever worked at an ad agency or even any kind of organization which is in the business of providing business services to clients, you would have found multiple people continuously talking about working on the “Client side”.

I was never that person. Because I never thought of myself as an agent for longest amount of time in my career. I felt like a sales person. I have always known that I am a great sales person. I started as a media sales person for the #2 newspaper in the most populous country in the world. With many novice accidents and random decisions, I ended up entering into the world of advertising agencies where most of the workforce is kind of oblivious to what we actually do.

Among my over-enthusiastic career obsessed peers, I many times had long chats with people working in investment banking and business consulting. Many of them referred to their clients (Customers) as the ‘buy-side’ organizations while referring themselves as the ‘sell-side’ organizations. Very rarely they treated their clients as their superiors, they rather treated them as equals and sometimes every inferior beings who need their expertise to get things done. This got me thinking, do ad agencies ever think like this while working with advertisers? Especially do the people at ad agencies and their counterparts at advertiser organizations (Brands) ever think like this?

During my short lifespan in advertising world working with 4 different ad agencies and even shorter lifespan in advertiser world working with 2 different advertiser roles, I have seldom seen people referring to themselves as sell-side & buy-side organizations. This creates a major barrier for people who want to shift sides when they want to transition into bigger or better roles. Sell side(Agencies) thinks buy side (Clients) is too pompous and buy side thinks sell side is too juvenile.

People trying to come to much more dynamic and rigorous side of sell side can not fit in the culture of hustle and people trying to come to much more organized & focused side of buy side can not fit in the culture of responsibility. Because, there is fundamental difference between selling an idea vs buying an idea. Seller is always trying to see the north-star or the top-line of the idea while the buyer is always trying to safeguard the bottom line or the contingency for the slight chance of buying a wrong idea.

Let us see the difference between a buyer & a seller & how they perceive an Idea as a product:

A buyer wants:

1. An idea which can help him/her achieve the business goals.
2. An idea which is great bank for the buck which s/he is paying for.
3. An idea which is executable with given budgets & workforce available at the moment.
4. An idea which can last long and have executable addendums which can be planned easily over the coming years.

Seller wants:

1. An idea which will bring glory so that s/he can use it to sell to the next buyer.
2. An idea which can create a sustained & continuous stream of income without adding more efforts.
3. An idea which helps the buyer achieve his/her business goals.
4. An Idea which is exciting to sell. Nobody likes to sell car insurance. Period. (Sorry ACKO).

This being said, the lives of a buyer and a seller are very very very different. I genuinely want to write about the differences of the two right now. But I live a dynamic hustle life on the seller side and have some buyers to talk to. Ciao.

TO BE CONTINUED>>>