In their words
Dropbox“We've invested in a lot of leadership development over the years. Mento is one that people actually prioritize and proactively ask to continue. Within a couple of sessions, they are all in. That kind of pull is rare, and it tells you something real is happening.”
Karlee PierceLearning Design & Innovation
Amper“It's a no-brainer to invest in augmenting our team's skills through Mento. Investing in coaching means we're more likely to hit our business milestones and retain our highest performers. At the same time, the team loves working with their Mento coaches.”
Akshat ThiraniPresident
Brex“Top talent at Brex goes on to lead departments and found companies, so we invest in their growth accordingly. Mento pairs our leaders with coaches who've built and scaled teams themselves. It's development that matches the ambition of our people.”
Ian SanderHead of Talent Management
Any field left blank uses the figure below. They're set at or under the published range on purpose — a number your CFO believes beats a number that impresses.
| Assumption | Dir & below | VP & above | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Program cost | $8,000/yr | $16,000/yr | Mento list pricing. Fixed. |
| Average salary | $205,000 | $250,000 | Salary.com, August 2026: IT Director base $204,926, VP of Information Technology $251,863. Adjust the director figure down if your cohort includes a lot of senior managers; C-suite runs above the VP figure. |
| Replacement cost | 125% | 175% | SHRM puts replacement at over 150% of salary for managers and leaders; Gallup’s range runs from 0.5× up to 200% for leaders. Both figures here sit below what either source publishes — 125% for directors, 175% for VPs and above. |
| Share who manage people | 85% | 100% | Assumes nearly everyone at these levels runs a team. Adjust down if the cohort includes senior individual contributors. |
| Average direct reports | 7 | 6 | Gallup: two-thirds of managers have fewer than 10 direct reports. Deloitte puts 7–10 as typical for knowledge work; McKinsey puts senior executives at 3–7. |
| Salary of those reports | $120,000 | $175,000 | Salary.com benchmarks for the level immediately below each group. |
| Team size one level down | 4 | 7 | The team each direct report runs. Deloitte puts 7–10 as typical for knowledge work; set at or below that. |
| Salary at that level | $105,000 | $130,000 | Salary.com benchmarks two levels below each group. |
| Voluntary attrition | 10% | Mercer US Turnover Survey (2,617 organisations): 13% average voluntary turnover. Senior levels run below the all-employee average, so this sits at 10%. | |
| Attrition reduction, coached | 20% | Fortune reports 45% lower turnover at companies investing in leadership coaching; a 2024 study in the International Journal of Organizational Leadership links coaching-driven employability to 46% lower intent to leave. Set well below both. | |
| Team attrition reduction | 10% | Half the direct effect, by convention. Gallup attributes roughly 70% of the variance in team engagement to the immediate manager. | |
| Wider org attrition reduction | 3% | Roughly a quarter of the direct team effect, because influence dilutes with distance. Only one additional layer is counted; anything below it is ignored. | |
| Productivity gain | 4% | Nicolau et al. (2023) meta-analysis of randomised control trials, Frontiers in Psychology, finds coaching outperforms traditional development by about 1.3×; 93% of Mento members report stronger performance. Set far below both. | |
| Extra internal moves | 5% | The Mento ROI Workbook targets 10–15% internal mobility; this counts only the incremental moves coaching adds. | |
| External hire cost | 25% | Contingency and retained search fees typically run 20–25% of first-year salary, before recruiter time and ramp. | |
Almost all of the value here is people not quitting. Replacing someone senior costs roughly what they earn in a year, so every departure avoided is real money that never leaves the business.
1. Keeping people. Take the cohort. Some share of them would have left this year anyway. Coaching prevents a portion of those departures, and each one prevented saves a full replacement cost.
2. The teams they lead. The same idea, applied to their direct reports. People leave managers, so a better manager means fewer of their team quit. There are far more direct reports than there are people in the cohort, which is why this line is usually larger than the first. The effect is set at half the direct one, because it reaches them second-hand.
3. The wider organization. One more layer down — the teams those direct reports run. Same logic again, at roughly a quarter strength, because influence fades with distance. Nothing below this layer is counted at all, even though the real effect keeps going.
4. Getting more done. Not about quitting. People who are coached produce more, and salary stands in for what a person's output is worth. It understates revenue-generating roles and overstates some support functions.
5. Promoting from inside. Every role filled internally is an external search you didn't run — no agency fee, no recruiter time, no ramp.
Then two adjustments. The five lines are added together, and the total is multiplied by your attribution percentage, because coaching is never the only thing happening. Finally the program cost is subtracted. What's left is the net return.
Every line has its own Include checkbox. Switch one off and it drops out of the total, which is the fastest way to answer a CFO who doesn't accept a particular claim.
It's tempting to set three years of savings against one year of cost. It produces a much better number, and a CFO will spot it immediately.
Here the horizon multiplies benefits and cost together, so a three-year view assumes you keep running the program and keep getting the result. Year one is the honest default.
These get mixed up constantly. If a program costs $100,000 and returns $460,000 in credited value: ROI is 360%, the amount you're up over what you spent. Return per dollar is $4.60, of which $3.60 is profit.
Both are shown. Pick one and stay with it for the whole conversation.