Like most consulting firms, Swan Mountain Consulting fees are a product of an hourly billing rate.  Billing rates reflect the experience and built in cost plus profit.  The beauty of a boutique consulting firm is there is very little overhead to build in.  When the partners were working for their respective large firms, their billing rates were three times what they are now.  Same talent, different price structure!

Partner rates are $125 to $200 per hour.  Staff rates are usually $30-$75 per hour.

What Our Fees Cover

All of our work is based on estimates of the time it will take times the rates plus out-of-pocket expenses.  We never mark-up our out-of-pockets, and there is no other overhead applied to our invoices.  We have no predetermined rack rate or service cost for a particular service as each case is uniquely different.  Swan Mountain Consulting Group never performs work prior to creating a written estimate for a project and having that estimate approved by the client.  Our estimates will always be designed in a manner that pushes work back to the client as a means to reduce fees.  Then if the client elects to outsource some of that work, that is fine.  Our goal is to have our clients pay us only for the time and effort we put in that adds value to what they can do themselves.

We constantly give our clients progress reports on where our fee accumulation is, and anytime we are asked to do something outside of the original arrangement, we acquire approval in writing before we commence the extra work.  The reason we are sticklers about all this is we have witnessed time and again surprise and disappointment when companies get charged more then they were expecting without knowing it was coming.  Stated simply, our billing philosophy is: “No Surprises”