Skill–Will matrix for presales teams: a practical coaching guide

A Skill–Will matrix is a four-quadrant coaching aid. It brings together someone's capability for a piece of work and their willingness to engage with it. The purpose is to choose useful support and discuss what to do next.

For a presales leader, that conversation might concern technical discovery, solution design or a proof-of-value engagement. Start by naming the work and the period you want to discuss. An engineer may lead familiar discovery confidently while still needing help with a new product or a complex validation.

This guide offers a practical way to use the framework. The examples are fictional, and the review method is a suggested working approach rather than a validated assessment.

Give each axis a clear meaning

Skill concerns the person's ability to do the work. Look for relevant examples: the questions they asked, the solution they designed, the assumptions they checked and the way they handled a technical challenge.

Will is commonly used to mean willingness or motivation. A manager sees behaviour and hears what the person chooses to share. Their internal motivation needs a conversation. A missed follow-up, for example, could prompt questions about unclear ownership, competing demands or support.

Talentonics uses observable engagement behaviours for its Will ratings: ownership and follow-through, applying feedback, and collaboration. That is an operational definition for this product. It should never be presented as a psychological measurement of desire or ambition.

Our chart shows Skill increasing upwards and Will increasing to the right. Other published versions reverse the axes. Jennifer Bers' sales-leadership article explicitly uses vertical Skill and horizontal Will; AIHR's guide describes the reverse. Read the labels before interpreting a diagram.

Use the four quadrants to choose a conversation

These are starting prompts. They do not establish the cause of an issue or prescribe an employment decision. A quiet engineer may be highly engaged. An enthusiastic presentation may still contain technical gaps. Ask about the work behind the impression.

“Build capability” belongs with lower Skill and higher Will: someone is ready to engage and needs an opportunity to learn. Every quadrant can involve development, including the one where a person already works independently.

Start with your impression and make room to revise it

A leader often arrives with a view of the team before a formal review begins. Put that view into words, then identify its basis and its uncertainty. It becomes easier to examine an impression when you can describe what would change it.

For a fictional example, Alex has recently joined an enterprise solutions team. Their manager sees strong product knowledge but limited experience leading a proof-of-value engagement. Alex is keen to learn. A first impression might suggest guidance and practice.

The useful next step is to inspect the work. Which parts can Alex already lead? Where did a colleague step in? Was the customer environment unfamiliar? What does Alex want to practise? The answer may be more specific than the original position suggested.

In Talentonics, leaders can begin with a private first-pass map. Profiles can be added without an email address or an invitation. Dragging changes an exploratory position; it does not create an assessment rating or rewrite feedback. Each leader has a private map for the review cycle. Put narrower task context into your review brief; separate maps per task are not currently available.

Ask each perspective about relevant observations

A manager, an individual contributor and a sales partner may have experienced different work. Ask each to describe the engagements they can speak about. Preserve an answer of “not observed”.

The individual contributor can explain their choices and the support they needed. The manager can discuss role expectations and observed practice. An account executive may offer a useful account of discovery, commercial alignment, agreed follow-ups and collaboration.

An AE's short feedback contribution should not become a substitute for technical review. In Talentonics, sales partners answer four relevant dimensions. Their responses do not produce a comparable overall Skill–Will placement. Compare shared behaviours directly and keep the sources visible.

For example, the manager may have reviewed Alex's rehearsal while the AE attended a later customer session. Their views can differ because the evidence differs. Ask for the engagement and date before deciding whether either view needs revising.

Calibrate the evidence in a separate step

Calibration means discussing the criteria and evidence behind a judgement, then recording a considered human decision. Keep the original observations available so that the reasoning remains understandable.

Use a short working note: the expectation, the examples available, what each source observed, the gap that remains and the reason for the decision. Agreement on a dot can wait while an important observation is missing.

Talentonics' formal summaries use a fixed 1–5 rubric. Skill combines four equally weighted dimensions; Will combines three. Required observations and work examples must be present for the source's matrix placement. Missing evidence stays missing. These are summaries of ordinal judgements, not precise psychological measurements. The methodology page explains the arithmetic and visibility stages.

Agree a practice opportunity and manager support

For Alex, a useful plan could be to lead the success-criteria discussion on the next suitable proof-of-value engagement. The manager reviews the preparation, joins the session if agreed and makes time for a debrief. Progress is assessed through the resulting criteria and a discussion of what Alex handled independently.

Choose a checkpoint that gives the person a real opportunity to try the work. A date alone does little when the required customer situation is unlikely to occur. If the opportunity changes, adjust the plan and explain why.

The CIPD feedback practice summary distinguishes learning needs from simple outcome targets. Complex or unfamiliar work may call for a learning goal. A development plan should make practice possible, rather than merely demand a higher result.

Revisit the work at the checkpoint

Bring the new example into the next conversation. Discuss what improved, where support still helped and what the person would now do differently. Update a judgement when the evidence warrants it. A position that stays the same can still accompany useful learning.

You can run this exercise with a worksheet and a conversation. When you want to explore how separate perspectives connect to coaching, try the fictional Talentonics demo. To experience the visual starting point first, open the placement demo. Use illustrative information in public demos.

Related guides: revisiting a first impression, sales-partner feedback and a 45-minute review agenda.