Consultancy Fees & Rates

Another thing you might want to do is create different pricing plans and packages for your potential customers. This is because different people will have different needs and budgets. You can have small plans for people who are just starting out. These could be a one-hour consultation session or a half-hour session every month or a few weeks.

This will give you a good understanding of what the market wants, how to create an offer, and how to present your services. Don’t forget to charge for your value, experience and knowledge. Jeff Lundwall, Managing Partner at Lundwall Group, a NY based executive recruitment firm, suggests his clients use a 40% premium. “Start with 40% premium as a benchmark, https://globalcloudteam.com/ and raise or decrease that % based on the scope of the work and value to your business”. With it’s flexibility and entrepreneurial lure, it’s easy to see why 640,000 people work as consultants in the U.S. Consulting is a great alternative to a traditional 9-5 job if you have specific skills, knowledge or experience that companies would pay for.

I.e., if you are billing hourly, you can easily go above the estimated number of hours- but if you charge a flat fee, clients know exactly how much they will be paying. For example, entry level developers earn $29/hour on average, while graphic designers just starting out earn about $15/hour on average. Apart from the world region, the country you’re living in determines the hourly rates as well. Again, English speaking countries usually reign in terms of the highest hourly rates.

Services

Obviously, you need to approach this sensitively, but no reasonable customer will expect you to work for them for a low rate when you could service an alternative customer for significantly more. That’s the power of ceiling billing rates – it goes far beyond day labor rates because you know what your work is worth, and once you explain that to your clients, you stand a far better chance of earning more. Because you demonstrate understanding of their business and the value you are providing, and you have a performance target built in. If your client reaches 5% website conversion, you get paid a large fee because you created the value they were seeking. This is the rate you must charge in order for you to justify your time and the project you’re working on and is typically expressed in an hourly rate.

The quickest path to becoming a successful consultant is to find a business coach who has already done it. A coach will help you reach your target quickly as you will avoid the mistakes that most newbies make.

One of the biggest mistakes some people make while launching a consulting business is that they do some superficial research and then do the opposite of what everyone else is doing. Their hope is that if they do something different they will stand out from the competition and more people will want to work with them. Your ceiling rate is based on how much your work is worth to your client. If you want to take time off – and you should – that must be budgeted as well.

Remote positions don’t involve commuting and other activities that require additional expenses for the employer, so people usually think these positions pay less. Another option would be to offer full-fledged agency services instead of just relying on consulting. While for people who are further ahead you can meet once a week or several times a week and you can offer extra things like unlimited email/slack support, templates, etc., and charge more. At the beginning, you can just share video case studies like the below YouTube videowhere you interview clients who got positive results from your efforts.

How Much Should I Charge As A Consultant?

So make a list of all the expenses you will have monthly/yearly and include them in your calculations. If you visit my January 21st blog post and scroll down towards the end, you will be able to download my FREE RESOURCE “EXPECTING EXPENSES” which outlines common expenses for consultants. It is important to keep in mind that the above analysis from Consultancy.africa presents a simplified and indicative view of rates. Differences in firms, market segments and service offerings across regions and countries, for instance, will inevitably lead to exceptions in the typology.

The least profitable industry is Customer & Administrative support, with all 4 of its listed jobs being the bottom paying freelance jobs. The freelance job that pays the least is Data Entry Clerk ($13/hour). The most profitable industry is the Legal field, with all 5 of its listed jobs being in the top 5 best paying freelance jobs. The freelance job that pays the most is Tax Lawyer ($30/hour). A good starting point would be something cheap like an ebook that costs less than $10.

Must Understand Things About It Consulting Hourly Rates

As a consultant, your day/week should be divided into three main tasks. You should spend a third of the time creating content, another third of the time looking for new clients and a final third should be reserved for servicing the clients. And don’t just visit one or two consultants, visit dozens of them.

This table shows that all the surveyed developers who have knowledge in a particular language, have more than 7 years of experience. With the Covid-19 crisis in the first quarter of 2020, there has been a resurgence in the number of remote employees. In a study conducted by Upwork, there has been a staggering 87% increase in telecommuters from the pre-pandemic period. As they assess, remote work will only continue throughout 2021. If you aren’t comfortable with video, you can create a simple case study like this one from OutreachMama. This will ensure that you have a steady stream of clients without worrying about feast and famine cycles.

Floor billing rates are typically expressed in hours – $50/hour, $500/hour. Ceiling billing rates are typically expressed as percentages of fees or flat budgets. This project will cost $25,000, this work will cost $5,000, etc. They assume 100% utilization, meaning every hour they’re clocked into work, they’re doing billable work. The reality is that consultants are lucky to get 50% utilization.

• You won’t have to stress about anything when you partner with us.
• Before anything else, the total income I’d need in this example is $62,800.
• You could also sign up for their email list to understand their funnel and the tactics they use to pitch services.
• With the Covid-19 crisis in the first quarter of 2020, there has been a resurgence in the number of remote employees.

It takes years of experience in the domain to be a jack of IT trades. If you’d like to learn more about the movement away from hourly billing, definitely check out the Ditching Hourly podcast. Although the idea of closing the gender pay gap is a popular one, the results of the Payoneer survey indicate that the gap persists despite many who speak against it – men still outearn women in all surveyed industries. According to the Payoneer survey, which covered 150 countries and over 7,000 freelancers around the world, freelancers on average make $21/hour. And if you prefer learning via videos, you should definitely check out our YouTube channel where we share daily tips and tricks for marketers and small business owners who want to grow their online presence.

Your Floor Minimum Billing Rate

During the survey, 24.8 percent of respondents stated that the average value of the fees received for each consulting project was between 500 and 2,000 U.S. dollars. This is a hot topic in the consulting world, and I know consultants that have found success using both of these pricing strategies. However, I will say that I am seeing a trend of more consultants moving away from hourly billing.

They are, therefore, entitled to charge whatever they feel they are worth and what the market bears. Three types of firms find themselves in the consultant revenue range between $150,000 and $220,000 per year. TheSmall and Mid-size Technology Playerstend to have comparable rates, yet vary in size, ranging from small local players to large it consulting price mid-sized firms with thousands of employees. The categoryMid-size Global Accountantsrefers to the top 20 global professional services providers, excluding the Big 4, such as BDO, Baker Tilly, Grant Thornton, RSM and PKF. Consulting firms – especially those active in the higher segments of the market – do not unveil their fee structure.

Consultancies regard their rates as one of their key competitive assets and, therefore, manage their fee structure as a ‘trade secret’, similar to salaries, which are also shrouded in secrecy. In addition, fees commonly vary per region/client/service offering, so firms keep tight control over their fee structure to minimise the threat of reputation risk, public debate or having to renegotiate their fees with clients. The regions where English is a native language are usually in advantage when it comes to hourly rates. Think about the contrast between floor and ceiling in this example. If you charged your floor rate of $94.20/hour, even if you billed for an entire day for the conference, you’d only make $753 at your floor billing rate.

You can expect that hourly rates will be higher in Western Europe than Eastern Europe, but other factors are involved. This blog will discuss how to narrow down the average consulting hourly wage range based on its elements. Clockify lets you track how much time you spend working on projects and automatically calculates your earnings based on your hourly rates. The difference between the highest paid surveyed industry and the lowest paid one (Customer & Administrative support) is $13 on average. The difference between the highest paying job and the lowest paying jobs is $15 – but, even the lower paying jobs mostly offer better earnings that minimum hourly wages in the higher paying countries for traditional jobs.

If you are finding it hard to set a price based on your experience you can use a consulting fee calculator. The consultant who was charging $2000 an hour was able to set that rate because he had a proven track record of helping businesses scale their results with Facebook ads. The coach you choose should depend on how you want to grow your business.

What Have You Been Billing?

TheBig Four– Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG – compete in the same range, but also offer lower fees in some services areas. It’s not only the country but consulting rates by industry and technology differ as well. For example, the United States leads the IT consulting market in terms of services because of soared investment in CRM, ERP, IoT, Machine Learning, and data analytics.

While if you are in an industry where it will be hard to get people to picture a monetary benefit it can be harder to set higher prices. Most of the consultants I come across tend to charge between $50 to $500 an hour. I occasionally come across people who charge less than $50 an hour and those who charge more than $500 an hour.

If you calculate that your impact for a client is in the millions of dollars and you’re charging them hundreds of dollars, then that’s a pretty good sign that it’s time to raise your rates. A third example might be a graphic designer whose work increases website conversion from 2% to 5%. After that first year, 100% of the increased value will be profit to you“. I recommend getting into the habit of tracking your time so that you can get a really good sense of how long certain types of tasks and projects take…it will help you with time and fee estimates going forward.

Need A Good Time Tracker That Calculates Your Billable Hours Automatically?

For example, a consultant may have a fixed price for their signature training programs, but offer an hourly billing option for projects that have a less defined deliverable at the start of work with clients. One of the first questions to pop up in your mind while starting a consulting business is ‘how much should I charge as a consultant? There are several factors such as experience, industry, target audience, location, etc. that can determine a marketing consultant’s hourly rate. If your skills and expertise are in demand, it often means you can charge higher consulting fees. If you have new clients who are prepared to pay higher rates, it’s not unreasonable to expect existing customers to pay a little more too.

Jenn offers a one on one coaching program which is priced very high and needs a long-term commitment. And to warrant the increase in price you should display your experience with some good case studies. If you are in an industry where you can show people how to earn more or save more, they will definitely be more inclined to make a higher investment.

But what they don’t realize is that every other top business consultant in the market is offering more or less the same services because they have done their research. There are two methods for assessing your fair consultant billing rate, and both are important, the floor and the ceiling. But before we get into that, we have to answer a critical existing question. To create a remarkable digital product, you need the fusion of the perfect tech stack.

I.e., your clients are paying you to solve a specific problem or create a specific deliverable (e.g., grant proposal or revamped website) without a focus on the number of hours worked. The highest rates in consulting are charged by theGlobal Strategy Consulting Firms, such as McKinsey & Company , Boston Consulting Group, Bain & Company, Strategy&, Roland Berger and A.T. Kearney.Strategy Boutiques, high-end firms that have a national/regional focus, follow in terms of rates. The figure uses the revenues pe consultant per annum as a proxy for average rates and the number of consultants as a proxy for firm size.