The consulting industry has long been dominated by companies prioritizing cost over value.
A somewhat cyclical process has emerged in the consulting world since the Big Five first started dominating in the 1990s. Enormous consulting firms with similarly enormous marketing budgets charge high hourly rates. Their ubiquitous marketing efforts lead many to believe that their cost must be equivalent to the value they deliver. Those firms plow those high hourly rates into more marketing efforts, ensuring they remain top of mind allowing them to continue to justify those high hourly rates. This cyclical process continues into today.
But cost does not equal value. In many cases the two aren’t even correlated. These firms charge such high hourly rates because they CAN – not because those rates are equivalent to the value their client will receive. Their marketing efforts have turned them into such powerhouses that none but the biggest can possibly compete with them. Their pervasiveness lets them command those high hourly rates, not the value they deliver.
Those high hourly rates aren’t going to the consultant to compensate them for their work.
They aren’t being used to provide their team with professional development opportunities.
They aren’t even being used to bring on consultants with the right experience to perform in the role effectively.
Those high hourly rates are used to bring on a junior consultant, likely just out of or 1-2 years out of college. That junior consultant can be paid a low hourly rate, so most of that high hourly rate can be plowed into massive overhead, into profits for senior partners, and back into marketing campaigns that allow them to continue to command high hourly rates.
That high hourly rate is rarely equivalent to the value a client receives.
If you’re ready to work with an innovative consulting firm – one that has the audacity to believe that cost should be equivalent to value; one that believes in low overhead; one that believes in paying a reasonable percentage of an hourly rate to the consultant performing the work, then let’s talk.
Our firm was built by leaders who wanted to do things differently. Leaders who prioritized value over cost. That novel idea continues to be our driving force, and our biggest differentiator in a market crowded by companies too focused on charging high hourly rates.