The Growth Agenda - Sales & Marketing Podcast · Kvadrant Consulting

# 35 - Brian & Mikkel - What We Do At Kvadrant Consulting

·38 min·3 clips

Brian reveals how consulting firms use content as a free trial since they can't offer product demos.

This episode features hosts Brian and Mikkel, partners at Kvadrant Consulting, explaining their marketing philosophy for a boutique professional services firm. They discuss why marketing is uniquely challenging and critical in their industry, where the service providers themselves are the product. The conversation centers on how they blend content creation with relationship-building to accelerate growth in an entrenched market. Professional services marketing lacks a tangible product to demo, so content acts as a "free trial" of their expertise. Established firms like Deloitte can rely on brand strength, but challenger brands must use marketing as a force multiplier. The buying process is indirect, with no clear call-to-action like "book a meeting"; marketing aims to position them top-of-mind for when a need arises. Their strategy involves a "base and treble" approach: a constant baseline of social media activity plus higher-effort channels like podcasts, newsletters, and major annual publications. They invest an outsized percentage of revenue into paid media compared to peers and have built a permission-based database of nearly 2,000 contacts. A surprising claim is that they operate without formal marketing plans, attribution software, or a rigid content calendar, arguing flexibility is essential. They believe consistency in output trumps short bursts of intensity, as results often have a multi-year lag. The most underutilized lever in the industry is actively using individual consultants to build personal brands at scale, despite fears about IP loss or employee departures. A memorable insight is that writing content is 50% for audience education and 50% for the consultant's own learning and credibility building. They find physical events particularly valuable for dialogue, despite being a significant time ask for attendees. The tone is conversational and reflective, with hosts drawing from their direct experience as practitioner-consultants who also handle sales and delivery. The style is educational, offering a transparent look at their operational principles rather than prescribing a universal formula. Listeners interested in B2B marketing, professional services growth, or building a consultancy brand would find concrete tactics and philosophical debate here. Those seeking highly structured, data-driven marketing frameworks or quick-win tactics might find the discussion too abstract or niche.

As heard by us

A clear look at how a professional services firm uses marketing when the firm itself is the product.

Brian and Mikkel treat a familiar professional services question with enough clarity to make it feel specific: what does marketing look like when the firm is the product?

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Why you'd press play

See how a professional-services firm turns expertise into a layered marketing system.

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