Consider carefully why the 80-20 rule works in every profession and in every discipline in life and business. In the consulting business, why is it that 20 percent of the consultants earn 80 percent of the total fees?
Consider why it is that one consultant can generate fees of $95,000 per annum, while another can generate $250,000, and another $500,000, and yet another $1 million plus.
There are two steps in moving into the top echelons of consulting. First, you need to make a decision and get totally committed to achieving this objective. It must be possible in your head first. What you can conceive and believe you can achieve. Second, you need to learn how, by asking yourself ‘the already question’: “Has any other consultant already achieved the objective you have in mind?” If the answer is yes, then all you need to do is learn how that person did it, and copy their principles and best practices.
There is good data that shows that about 60% of all consultants generate revenues between $50,000 to $150,000 per year. About another 30% generate revenues between $150,000 to $300,000 per year. Generally speaking, the processes employed by these consultants in their business, in both categories, are relatively similar with some slight differences. Most consultants, earning less than $300,000 per year, have determined an hourly rate they will charge for the work they do. Similarly, they have also determined a daily rate for the work they do. Normally, these hourly rates will vary normally between $125 to $500 per hour, and the daily rates from about $1200 per day to $5000 per day.
This is what the 80-90%% do and these fees are independent of any value you may or may not provide to your client! You could be great or you could be awful, yet these predetermined fee structures are part of the problem because it they have nothing to do with the clients’ issues, problems, nor opportunities. If you have a fee structure like this, then you can do the math to see that if you calculate a daily rate, times the number of days an average consultant will actually work in a year, that logically, these individuals will fall between $50,000 to $300,000 per year, and that is in line with the data we see worldwide. Then under this process, the only way the consultant could make realistically earn more money, is to work more hours and more days. As we know, at some point, we run out of more days and that is why there is a false cap, at around $300,000 that this process seems to top out at and which most consultants seem to bump up against.
So now, in order to break out of that range, break through that ceiling to go to $500,000 to $1 Million per year, there has to be a new and better way. There must be a different process to yield higher fees! Yes, there is a paradigm shift that takes place in a consultant’s mind to achieve these kinds of results.
So, accept that the top 5-10% of consultants, earning revenues between $500,000 to $1 Million a year, have figured out a different way to approach their business and it is different than what 90% of consultants know and do today.
There are many components to the process, methodologies, and systems driving consultants to generate higher fees and higher revenues. In a quick overview fashion, these top earning consultants choose to focus on the value and benefits of the work they do for the client, at the same time, develop a trusted peer level respect relationship with the CEO, and stop doing the poor things that most consultants do, which is to get themselves in their own way.
It is not about you, it is about them (your clients), get yourself out of the way!