The Harsh Reality of Today’s Consultant Business Model

Consultants today are being squeezed from every direction. Staff expect competitive wages in a tight labor market. Office rents in DC and state capitals keep climbing. Compliance, data, and tech costs are rising faster than campaign budgets. All while clients demand modern outreach on yesterday’s retainers.

The result? Many firms feel forced to raise their rates just to keep the lights on. But when costs get passed along, campaigns and groups are the ones who suffer. Every extra overhead dollar is one less voter reached. In close races, that can be the difference between winning and losing.

That’s the uphill battle consultants face — not mismanagement, but structural pressure that will only get worse. 

We’re not adding to the squeeze. We understand the plight of consultants — our goal is to help them win more races and grow their firms, not just survive each cycle.

As a result, we’re cutting our texting rates even more in preparation of the 2026 midterms. We’ve also slashed data prices to the lowest in the industry to remove one of the steepest upfront barriers campaigns face.

Why go low when others are going high? Because by lowering texting rates and enhancing our nonpartisan self-service platform, we’re actually empowering campaigns to maximize their impact and win more races. At the same time, we’re setting a new standard for affordable, scalable voter outreach.

In part, we do it because we can. Our scale and institutional capital let us do what others can’t: deliver the lowest rates without sacrificing results. Our industry’s relentless flow of work creates its own economy of scale. And our team of campaign experts, with an average age of 32, has the experience and innovation necessary to leverage the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance your voter outreach. 

Don’t get us wrong. We’re not in this business to create a race for the bottom when it comes to margins. We’ve operated in this industry for over a decade. Now, we’re prioritizing our long-term commitment to supporting our ever-growing network of consultants with the tools and rates that ensure their and their client’s success.

We see this as part of our long-term commitment to the industry. We understand that relationships matter and so do commissions. Here’s how our industry-leading partner program works:

Consultants Come First

We work with many consultants and firms managing a dozen or more campaigns every cycle looking for a partner to streamline and execute targeted messaging, delivered on time within budget.

After helping more than 5,000 campaigns and organizations with their voter outreach, we created the most consultant-focused platform in the industry. It allows our partners to track all accounts and client spend in one dashboard. Our system makes it simple to manage your organizations, see their activity, track your commissions, and request payouts the moment you earn. We’re dedicated to operating with transparency and building trust with our clients. 

We want consultants who invest resources with us to thrive and win elections so they can stay in business and keep working with our team. As a result, we’ve paid out over $750,000 in commissions to our partners since launching our partner program. Campaigns that work with RoboCent stick with us in future races.

Dedicated Senior Strategists 

Investing in the industry doesn’t just mean providing industry-leading commission rates. We also have dedicated strategists who handle every detail of outreach – from compliance to GOTV.

Our TextOps team works tirelessly to ensure all RoboCent clients get expert outreach support from a first send to the final GOTV stretch. That can look like doing everything for a campaign – from scripting, to pulling data, targeting and compliance — or a more hands-off approach that manages the technical side while your team sends messages.

Your clients don’t just need a platform — they need a partner. With the midterms around the corner, let’s make sure you have both. Contact our team at (757) 821-2121 or reach out to schedule a free demo to ensure you celebrate a long victory night.

Travis Trawick co-founded RoboCent in high school to deliver top-tier outreach to campaigns of all sizes. Learn more at GOTV.com