Somewhere on your website, or in slide four of your corporate deck, there is probably a number that says coaching returns 500%, 600%, 700%, or 7x.

Here is where it actually comes from.

One firm, 43 people, November 2001

The original document is an executive briefing dated November 2, 2001, prepared by Merrill C. Anderson, Ph.D. of MetrixGlobal, LLC. A Fortune 500 firm and Pyramid Resource Group, a coaching services company, engaged MetrixGlobal to determine the business benefits and return on investment for an executive coaching program. Note the setup: the coaching provider was a party to the study of the coaching provider.

The headline finding: coaching produced a 529% return on investment, and including the financial benefits from employee retention boosted the overall ROI to 788%.

The sample is the part almost nobody quotes. Program costs were tabulated for all 43 leadership development participants in determining the return on investment. 77% of participants reported coaching had significant impact on business measures and 60% identified specific financial benefits from coaching. Later write-ups describe the organization as a Fortune 500 telecommunications firm.

So: 43 mostly mid-level leaders, inside one company, self-reporting the money.

The "700%" version you see quoted is usually a blend. One 2026 statistics page states that companies investing in executive coaching report a median ROI of 700%, according to research from MetrixGlobal and Manchester Inc. Two different studies, two different methods, averaged into one number that neither study published.

The other 2001 study

The 5.7x figure comes from Manchester Inc. Manchester announced in January 2001 that it had released a study quantifying the business impact of executive coaching, covering behavior change, organizational improvements and ROI, based on 100 executives, mostly from Fortune 1000 companies, who received coaching from Manchester. The average ROI was 5.7 times the initial investment, with the majority reporting returns between $100,000 and $1 million.

Broader sample. Same structural weakness: the returns were reported "according to executives who estimated the monetary value of the results achieved through coaching." The published citation is McGovern et al., "Maximizing the Impact of Executive Coaching," The Manchester Review, 2001, Volume 6, Number 1.

Both canonical numbers are 25 years old. One audit of the field puts it plainly: the most-quoted ROI figures in coaching come from two studies published in 2001, and citing them as current 2026 benchmarks — without sample size, methodology, or the two-decade interval — is a citation hygiene problem.

Why a CFO will eat you alive

One coaching firm's own review of the evidence names the flaw directly: "Most coaching ROI research asks people who chose coaching whether it worked. They usually say yes." The 788% MetrixGlobal number, the 5.7x Manchester number and the 86% ICF/PwC number all include self-selection.

Meanwhile the number keeps mutating in the wild. One 2026 roundup reports an average return on investment of 600% and sales coaching delivering 962% ROI. Nobody sourcing these is lying on purpose. They are copying each other.

What to say instead

Use the research that had control groups. De Haan and Nilsson restricted their meta-analysis to randomised controlled trials, the strongest available design for causal inference: across 37 RCT studies of workplace and executive coaching conducted between 1994 and 2021, involving 39 samples and 2,528 participants, they found a statistically significant effect across leadership and personal outcomes, with a best estimate effect size of g = .59, in the moderate range — with indications of significant publication bias.

If a buyer wants dollars, give them medians, not a maximum. The ICF Global Coaching Client Study with PwC surveyed 2,165 coaching clients in 64 countries; among companies able to calculate ROI, 86% at least made the investment back, with a median company return of 7x and a median individual return of 3.4x.

Then say the thing that actually wins the contract: here is what we will measure in your business, and here is the baseline we'll take before we start.

A buyer who Googles "788% coaching ROI" lands on a 2001 PDF about 43 people in half a click. Better that you bring it up first.