Why Outcomes Must Come Before Providers
Most organisations start the search for executive coaching by asking, “Who’s good?” The better question is, “What must change?”
If you don’t define outcomes up front, you end up comparing personalities, day rates and brand names instead of impact. That’s how coaching becomes a perk rather than a performance lever.
Before you look at proposals or chemistry sessions, get clear on why you are considering coaching at all:
- What business problems are you trying to solve?
- Which leaders need to think, decide or behave differently?
- How will you know if anything has actually changed?
When you anchor your approach in outcomes, it becomes much easier to brief providers, secure internal sponsorship and demonstrate ROI.
From Vague Goals to Measurable Outcomes
Most initial coaching requests sound something like:
- “We need our senior leaders to be more strategic.”
- “We want better collaboration between Sales, Marketing and Product.”
- “Our sales leadership team needs to step up.”
These are understandable ambitions, but they are not outcomes. To make them useful, you need to translate them into observable, measurable shifts.
You can do this by asking three simple questions:
- What would we see more of? (behaviours, decisions, conversations)
- What would we see less of? (bottlenecks, rework, wasted effort)
- What business metrics would move if this worked?
For example, instead of:
- “Be more strategic” → “Spend less time firefighting deals and more time shaping product and GTM decisions that affect the next 12–24 months.”
- “Better collaboration” → “Reduce delays and conflict on pricing, legal and solution design so deals move through the pipeline faster.”
The clearer you are on this translation, the more precise your coaching brief will be.
Connect Coaching Outcomes to Revenue and Risk
Executive coaching for revenue leaders should never sit in a separate “leadership development” bucket. It should connect clearly to how your organisation wins, grows and protects revenue.
A useful way to do this is to link coaching outcomes to three categories:
- Revenue 3Vs
- Value – margin, deal quality, customer lifetime value.
- Volume – real pipeline coverage, opportunity quality, reduction in “ghost deals”.
- Velocity – sales cycle length, time-to-first-value, time-to-ramp for new leaders.
- Risk
- Regulatory or compliance exposure in how deals are pursued and structured.
- Overreliance on a few relationships or “held together by heroics” execution.
- Forecast risk and surprise misses.
- People
- Retention of key talent.
- Manager coaching capability.
- Engagement and wellbeing in high-pressure teams.
When you define outcomes, look for the specific leadership behaviours that bridge these three areas. For example:
- “Regional VPs run pipeline reviews that expose risk early, challenge optimism and lead to clear actions.”
- “CRO and Finance work together to balance growth, margin and risk on strategic deals.”
- “First-line managers spend more time coaching and less time reporting up and firefighting.”
This gives your coaching partner a clear line of sight from leadership behaviour to commercial impact.
Design a Simple Executive Coaching Outcomes Brief
Once you’ve gathered your thoughts, capture them in a short outcomes brief that you can share with internal stakeholders and potential coaching providers.
A practical structure looks like this:
- Context
- What’s happening in the business (growth, change, challenge)?
- Which functions, regions or teams are in scope?
- Target Audience
- Which roles? (e.g. CRO, Regional VPs, Head of Sales, Head of Enablement, L&D leaders)
- Rough number of leaders and their locations.
- Business Outcomes
- The key metrics you want to influence (e.g. forecast accuracy, win rate, margin, cycle time, retention).
- Any specific risks you want to reduce (e.g. regulatory, concentration, key-person dependency).
- Behavioural Outcomes
- 5–7 specific statements starting with “Leaders will…”
- Focus on how leaders show up in moments that matter: pipeline reviews, QBRs, board meetings, 1:1s, cross-functional forums.
- Constraints and Parameters
- Timeframe (e.g. 6–12 months).
- Budget band.
- Geographies and time zones.
- Any non-negotiables (e.g. data handling, technology constraints).
- Success Signals
- What would convince you and the board that this was a good investment?
- What would you want leaders, line managers and coachees to say at the end?
You can use this same brief to align your internal stakeholders, and to brief multiple coaching partners consistently.
Common Mistakes When Setting Coaching Outcomes
There are a few traps it’s worth avoiding at this stage:
- Being too vague – aspirations like “step up” or “more strategic” don’t help anyone design an effective coaching journey.
- Being too narrow – defining success purely as “leaders like their coach” or “sessions were useful”. Feedback is helpful, but not enough.
- Focusing only on lagging indicators – revenue and margin are crucial, but they move slowly and are influenced by many factors. Include leading indicators too (behaviour, decision quality, pipeline health).
- Ignoring the operating environment – if your incentives, processes and reporting structures reward the wrong behaviours, coaching alone won’t fix it. Outcomes need to be realistic in your context.
- Leaving leaders out of the conversation – outcomes designed only by HR or L&D can feel imposed. Involve the leaders who will be coached in defining what success looks like.
Spending a little more time here saves you a lot of confusion and rework later.
Example: From Fuzzy Ask to Sharp Outcomes
Imagine your initial brief sounds like this:
“We want executive coaching for our regional sales leaders so they can drive more accountability and close bigger deals.”
Here’s how you might sharpen that:
- Context
- Rapid growth, new product lines, inconsistent performance by region.
- Business Outcomes
- Increase win rate on strategic deals by 5–10%.
- Improve forecast accuracy so we are within ±5% of our quarterly number.
- Reduce slipped and no-decision deals by 20% over 12 months.
- Behavioural Outcomes
- Leaders run evidence-based pipeline reviews that challenge assumptions and end with clear actions.
- Leaders coach their managers on deal strategy rather than jumping in to rescue late-stage deals.
- Leaders collaborate effectively with Product, Finance and Legal to unblock complex opportunities.
- Success Signals
- Managers report that their leader spends more time coaching and less time firefighting.
- Deals progress more predictably through the pipeline, with fewer surprises at quarter-end.
- Regional leaders are able to articulate clear, data-backed plans in QBRs and board updates.
This sharper picture gives a potential coaching partner something they can genuinely design around.
Link Outcomes Back to Your Selection Process
Defining outcomes isn’t an academic exercise. It directly informs how you choose and evaluate executive coaching services.
- It shapes the questions you ask providers about methodology, sector expertise and integration with your operating rhythm.
- It clarifies what you expect from a pilot and how you’ll measure success.
- It makes it easier to say no to attractive but misaligned options.
Most importantly, it helps you avoid buying coaching that feels great in the room but doesn’t move the numbers that matter.
For a broader view of the full decision process, from outcomes through to pilots and governance, see our pillar guide on how to choose executive coaching services.
Use that guide alongside this article to brief internal stakeholders and potential partners with clarity and confidence.