Executive Coaching ROI Calculator

1. Start with the cost of doing nothing

Every finance conversation has an unstated alternative, and the alternative is almost never a different development program. It is spending nothing. So price that option first.

Name the specific executive. Name the decisions sitting in front of them over the next four quarters, the reports who will either stay or go depending on how those decisions land, and the succession gap that opens the day they leave. A general case for coaching is easy to defer. A case built around one named leader and the things only that leader can decide is much harder to push into next year.

2. Run it on your numbers, then run it again lower

Replace every default above with your own salary bands, your own team size, and the actual budget the role controls. Borrowed inputs are the fastest way to lose a numerate audience, because the first thing a CFO checks is whether the figures look like the ones already in their system.

Then build a second, deliberately pessimistic version. Halve the productivity assumption. Take strategic decision protection out entirely. If the case still holds at that level, present the pessimistic one and keep the fuller model in reserve. Arguing up from a floor is a stronger position than defending down from a ceiling.

3. Defend the three drivers separately

The three value drivers in this model carry very different burdens of proof, and presenting them as one blended number invites someone to reject all three at once.

• Succession and retention is the easiest to defend. Replacement cost at roughly 1.5x salary is a figure your own HR function can confirm, and most organizations have recent evidence of what an unplanned executive exit actually costs.
• Team performance is defensible with your own data. You likely already track engagement scores, attrition by manager, and goal completion across that leader's org. Those series are the proof, and they are proof your audience already trusts.
• Strategic decision protection is the hardest. It is a probability applied to capital at risk, not an observed saving, and a skeptical CFO will say so. Present it as upside rather than baseline, or leave it out.

4. Set the review date before anyone asks for one

Propose the measurement yourself. Commit to a twelve month review, and state in advance what evidence would count: movement on 360 feedback, retention inside the leader's team, completion of the development goals set at the start, and the sponsor's own assessment of decision quality.

Naming the conditions under which you would call it a failure is what separates a business case from a funding request. It also changes the question in the room from whether coaching works in general to whether this particular engagement is worth twelve months of attention.