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 | Benchmark | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Cost per person | $8,000 | Mento Leadership tier list rate, $8,000 per person per year. Your quote may differ. |
| Average salary | $205,000 | Salary.com, August 2026: IT Director base $204,926. Glassdoor puts Director of Technology at $193,564. |
| 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%. |
| Replacement cost | 100% | Gallup: 0.5–2× salary, up to 200% for leaders. SHRM: over 150% for managers and leaders. Set at the bottom of both ranges. |
| Share who manage people | 90% | Assumes nearly everyone at this level runs a team. Adjust down if the cohort includes senior individual contributors. |
| Direct reports each | 7 | Gallup: two-thirds of managers have fewer than 10 direct reports. Deloitte research puts 7–10 as typical for knowledge work; McKinsey puts senior executives at 3–7. |
| Salary of those reports | $130,000 | Salary.com benchmarks for the level immediately below the cohort. |
| 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 manager. |
| 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. |
Keeping people. The regrettable exits you'd have had, times the share coaching prevents, times what each replacement costs.
The teams they lead. The same arithmetic one level down, across the direct reports of everyone coached.
Getting more done. Salary stands in for the value of someone's output. It understates revenue roles and overstates some support functions.
Promoting from inside. Every internal move is an external search you didn't run.
The four are added, multiplied by attribution, and the program cost is subtracted.
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.