On the podcast where I talked this through with Mastering Modern Selling, I said the goal is a Development Plan that "helps all the boats rise" — not just the ones already in trouble.

That's the part most companies get backwards. A Performance Improvement Plan, as it's normally run, is legal paperwork dressed up as coaching — a paper trail written after the decision's already been made, not before. Everyone in the room usually knows it.

My fix is duller than it sounds: every 90 days, every employee, not just the ones on notice. Sit down, talk about what's working, what isn't, and what specifically changes next quarter. Do it on a real cadence — a weekly one-on-one, plus a more structured conversation quarterly — and something practical happens: writing the annual review gets easy, because you're just stapling four quarters of honest conversation together.

The competencies matter as much as the outcome. Consultative selling, disruptive thinking, competitive drive, lead generation — these are the qualitative skills that actually produce the quota number, and they deserve their own review, not just an inference from whether someone hit their target.

I laid out the full 90-Day Development Plan template — the same one from The CRO's Guide to Winning in Private Equity — in my original piece for Revenue Magazine, and it's free to download if you want to start using it before anyone hands you the official version.