This Changes How Consultants Get Paid...

21 Jun 2026 · 1 min

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In this segment, Eric Siu asks Neil about the proportion of McKinsey's fees that are now outcome‑based, estimating it at 15‑25% as of November 2025. He references a recent Patrick Bet‑David discussion that highlighted a dramatic shift in consultancy pricing—from multi‑million‑dollar engagements to projects costing as little as $10,000. Siu notes that both past and current McKinsey clients are applying pricing pressure, questioning high fees given that work now takes less time. He contrasts this emerging outcome‑based pressure with the traditional consulting model of billing by time, materials, and hours, observing that while the shift isn’t yet dominant, it is clearly on the rise.

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So Neil, I don't know if you know this, but do you know what percent of McKinsey's fees now are outcome-based? I'm going to take a guess and say 15%. 25%. Oh wow. As of November 2025. Yeah. So it's interesting because I was sitting on the couch yesterday, I was watching— before I was about to watch the Spurs-Knicks game, but I was watching Patrick Bet-David talking about how consultancies have changed, right? Where they used to charge you $5 million and now like the work maybe it's like $10,000 or so. So like a lot of people are customers, past customers or current customers of McKinsey are applying pricing pressure, just saying, hey, yo, like, I know you need to charge us, but like, this work doesn't take that long anymore, right? And that's interesting to me because agencies, consultancies are so used to charging on typically time, materials, and hours, right? So I don't think you're seeing that right now. I'm not seeing that either, but I can see it on the rise.