In his latest column, Alex Lamaro-McCrindle, digital lead at Miroma Founders Network, looks at why alignment, agility, and courage are the foundations of the agency-client relationship…

Having recently undertaken the MiniMBA in Marketing, the first module was market orientation. The idea that great businesses orient everything around a deep understanding of their customers rather than their own products, services or assumptions. As I worked through it I kept thinking about what it looks like from where I sit, inside an agency.

“The agency sells what it has, the client buys what they recognise.”

So, are agencies orientated around what they offer, or around what their clients actually need? Too many are built on the former. A set of services, trading deals, preferred media owners, and proprietary tech. The agency sells what it has, the client buys what they recognise, and the relationship stays comfortably transactional. "Partnership" gets written into the contract but the dynamic doesn’t change.

So what does it take to get there?

It starts with orientation

The difference between a supplier and a true partner comes down to one question: who are you orientated towards? Most agencies are orientated towards their own expertise. We know what we're good at, we have a product to sell. That's not a criticism, it's just the way most agency relationships are structured.

A customer-orientated agency starts not with what it can offer, but with a deep understanding of the client's market, their customers, their competitors, and their business pressures. And it doesn't stop there. It brings that thinking into the client's business too. You're no longer talking about channels and deliverables. You're talking about customers, market dynamics, and business outcomes. That's the foundation on which real partnership gets built.

The trust ladder

Agency relationships don't jump straight to partnership. They earn it, rung by rung.

At the bottom you're a preferred supplier, compared on price and speed and easily replaced. Do good work consistently and you move up.

But the top rung is different altogether. A critical partner is in the room when strategy is being set, not briefed afterwards. The client isn't just satisfied with the work, they genuinely can't imagine doing it without you.

What moves you up those rungs isn't just capability. It's trust. It's flagging a risk when it's uncomfortable. It's speaking the language of the boardroom, not just the marketing team. It's being, as I described in my column last month, a decision-making partner rather than just a delivery one.

What it actually takes

Building this kind of relationship requires a specific set of conditions, and not every agency is set up to create them.

The first is alignment. Recommendations should be made because they're right, not because they serve another agenda. Conflicted advice quietly erodes trust in ways that are hard to identify but impossible to ignore.

The second is agility. Ambitious, high-growth businesses move fast and need an agency that can move with them. Layers of sign off and bureaucracy are the enemy of genuine partnership.

The third is courage. Customer-orientated agencies challenge briefs, flag risks, and push back when the thinking isn't right. Agencies that tell clients what they want to hear don't build trust. 

And the fourth is curiosity. Not just at the top of the agency, but all the way through it. When everyone is curious about a client's challenges, everyone is thinking about how to solve them.

The raised stakes of real partnership

Here's the honest part that doesn't always get said.

When you move from supplier to partner, the accountability shifts fundamentally. You are no longer responsible for delivering a campaign, you are a meaningful driver of business growth. There's no brief to hide behind when things don't go to plan, and no ambiguity about who owns the outcome.

For the right kind of agency, that's not a burden, it's exactly the point. The businesses we work with are ambitious and high-growth. They want an agency that will challenge their thinking, add to it, and share in the responsibility of where it leads. That's what makes you genuinely "in it" with your client.

Not every agency wants to operate this way. But the ones that do find something really valuable on the other side of that accountability.

It's always about service

We are in the service business. Service doesn't mean delivering what's on the menu. It means building your offering around what the client actually needs, not setting out your stall and hoping they fit what you have.

The agencies that get this right lead with understanding. They listen before they propose, learn before they recommend, and build their approach around the client's business rather than their own capabilities. The work gets better, the problems get more interesting, and the conversations move from reporting to deciding.

That's what makes them hard to replace, because they've made themselves genuinely useful in a way that's specific to that client, that market, and that moment.

Real partnership isn't a nice thing to have. For agencies with the courage to pursue it, it's the strategy. 

So, back to my studies… If it's not top marks from the professor, I'll take top of the class from my clients.

Now all I need to do is add a quote from a marketing guru. As Seth Godin once said, "Don't find customers for your products, find products for your customers." I'll leave that one with you.