Qualitative Client Partner

About us:

At Toluna, we keep the world’s biggest brands one step ahead of their markets, their competitors, and their customers. For 25+ years we’ve been a leader in consumer insights, and today we’re at the center of our industry’s biggest shift: the move to AI-powered research grounded in real human truth.

Brands come to us because we’ve solved a problem most of our industry is still wrestling with: how to move fast without losing trust in the answer. Speed comes from AI we’ve been developing in-house since 2019, always-on platforms, and a 79M+ validated consumer community across 100+ countries.

Introduction:

This is a Client Partner role in the qualitative team. Clients front and center and our aim is to delight them each and every time with strategic direction and a trusted advisor mentality, in order to grow accounts to their maximum potential. You must have at least 7+ years of proven client management experience (agency side) servicing an existing client base. Stakeholder management and engagement is a must in terms of experience and that includes our clients and our quantitative client partners.

This is a role based on the sales team and so we do expect our Client Partners to develop new business opportunities within existing accounts as well as, hopefully, help to find new opportunities to grow our business. We never expect our Directors to cold call, but we do want brave people who are excited to represent our organization in pitches and new business conversations.

Becoming a Client Director at Toluna gives you the opportunity to work closely with, and learn from, the senior Qual team and the rest of the Quantitative team too; to think strategically about how to grow existing and new clients, persuade clients through consultative selling; implement strategies that drive improved (senior) client relationships; actively support and participate in pitches; manage personal pipeline and forecast. Importantly, for qualitative Partners, we know that being hands on matters. The ideal balance will be 70% client management/proposals/seeking new business, 30% hands on project involvement.

Responsibilities:

• Man-marking quantitative Client Partners: Building close overlay relationships with each CP, understanding their account portfolios and client relationships, and identifying where and how to get a foothold with their clients on qual. You will be the qual presence in their world.
• Writing winning proposals: Crafting compelling, methodologically rigorous proposals in response to client briefs — from framing the research question and designing the approach through to costing and presenting a clear commercial rationale. Speed, quality and a commercially savvy eye are all essential.
• Taking client calls and chemistry meetings: Holding briefing calls, scoping conversations and capability discussions with clients, establishing credibility quickly and demonstrating genuine curiosity about their business challenges.
• Demonstrating new solutions: Showcasing Toluna’s qualitative capabilities — including AI-enabled approaches and platform-based methods — in a way that is accessible, relevant and answers the “so what” for each client. Handling follow-up questions with confidence and depth.
• Booking in new projects: Once a project is confirmed, handing it over cleanly and efficiently to the research and project management team — with a clear brief, agreed timelines and any key client context they need to deliver successfully.
• Ensuring projects run smoothly: Staying close enough to live projects to sense-check quality, flag issues early and maintain client confidence, without getting in the way of the delivery team. You are the client’s escalation point when things need fast resolution.
• Hands-on delivery for high-profile clients: Moderating immersive research sessions — in-depth interviews, focus groups, online communities and ethnographic work — for key accounts where your personal involvement signals the value we place on the relationship. You are selective and strategic about where you put your hands on the tools, but when you do, you do it brilliantly.
• Debriefing clients: Leading client debrief sessions with authority and energy, translating findings into clear strategic implications and facilitating the conversation that turns insights into action.
• Limited but targeted report and deliverable writing: The majority of analysis and deliverable production sits with the research team, but you may contribute to or review outputs for your highest-value clients, particularly where strategic framing and client knowledge add genuine value.
• Championing qual in the UK team: Actively promoting the value of qualitative research within the broader UK commercial team — educating quant colleagues on where qual adds something they can’t get elsewhere, developing new ways to position qual with clients, and helping to build a culture where qual is seen as central to Toluna’s offer, not an add-on.