How to increase your hourly rate on your consulting assignment

How to increase your hourly rate on your consulting assignment

As we at Tech Relations have over 11 years of experience of selling IT-consultants, we have gained a lot of experience over the past years. In this post, we´d like to tell you more about how you can increase your hourly rate on your consulting assignment. It’s easier than you think.

Give your “all” and find out the customers´expectations

A consultant buyer has often high expectations of the consultant they buy. Maybe not so strange considering that consultants cost more than employments. Many consultant buyers expect the consultant to be the best in their field as well as giving you “all” in the assignment as well as teach out your knownledge to the rest of the team. Therefore, we advice you to take a meeting in the beginning of your assignment with your  customer and ask her/him about his/her expectations of you, and also what expectations you have of them. Write them down and keep them.

Take the initiative to hold inspirational lectures in areas the customer wants to get better at, such as e.g agile development, test-driven development, become more data-driven or work towards Devops

As you are a senior and experienced consultant, the customer expects you to know the latest in your field and stay up to date on new technology. Therefore, it is advantageous if you offer the customer free inspirational lectures in one or more areas that you are good at, if the customer wants to get better at this. However, it is important that you first discuss this with the customer and create a balance between performing your regular tasks and inspiring them. You do not want to end up in a situation where the customer thinks you are taking too much initiative and not doing what you are paid for to do.

Consider if your tasks and responsibilities have changed since we signed the agreement

Before each discussion about extension or increasing the hourly rate, it is important that you write down all your tasks and reflect on whether they have changed. You usually get more responsibility over time and this should of course lead to a price increase. Have you, for example, stepped in as a fullstack developer and 6 months later also become Tech Lead for one of the teams, then it is reasonable to increase the hourly price by, for example, SEK 50 / h or more. You can also do this a few months into the assignment and inform your sales / consulting broker about this.

Share your knowledge and lift the team

The majority of consulting clients expect you as a consultant to come in and share your knowledge, so that it is passed on in the team before you leave the assignment. There is nothing worse than a consultants who refuse to share and does “only” what they are expected to do in a role such as eg developers. This will not lead to good recommendations or good hourly rates. You need to lift and teach your skills in the team, that is what distinguishes an average consultant with a great consultant.

We have also made a short video summarizing our tips (Swedish- only)

Please contact Tech Relations if you are a consultant or are looking for consultants in Stockholm. We have +2000 affiliated freelancers and hired IT-consultants and work with 12 customers.