The 6-Step SPEARS Framework
Pete’s methodology boils down into six repeatable steps:
- Strategize → Define your ICP, analyze competitors, and differentiate.
- Plan → Narrow your cross-functional initiatives and set realistic goals.
- Execute → Put the plan into motion.
- Adjust → Measure, review, and refine with data.
- Repeat → Double down on what works.
- Scale → Unlock leverage through five proven methods.
Pete warns that most companies skip “Strategize” and “Plan” and jump straight into tactics (ads, SDRs, product builds), which creates siloed work and wasted effort.
Why Predictability Matters
For Pete, predictability is about peace of mind in uncertain environments.
“There are so many things in the world that we don’t control. So what it forces me to do is focus on what I can control. That means building systems that are repeatable so that I can measure them and then start to predict the future.”
And data is at the core of that predictability: building repeatable systems and then measuring them to begin to understand the most likely future outcomes.
Pete explains that data and modeling are at the heart of analyzing your company’s current and historical performance. In the interview, he dives into three key mathematical functions:
- Correlations
- Forecast modeling
- Benchmarking
Accurately leveraging some of these mathematical equations is of course beyond the skill of many of us – which is where data science and business intelligence tools can help.
Realistic Goal-Setting
As Pete shared in the interview, “Data can play a huge role in setting realistic goals… there needs to be a process for goal setting that uses data, not just at the beginning of the year, but throughout.”
Pete has built a system that adapts the popular OKR framework into what he calls OGIs – Objectives, Goals, and Initiatives.
Whatever you call them, the key ideas are the same:
- Define 3–5 company-wide objectives
- Assign measurable goals to each objective
- Identify initiatives that directly ladder up to those goals.
Transparency as a Growth Multiplier
Many of us have heard Pete’s strong opinions on data transparency. As he shared in the interview:
“More than 50% of companies don’t share performance of the company beyond the manager level. I think that’s a big miss. What it does is it disempowers the rest of the organization from even caring about their own performance because they don’t see how it impacts the rest of the organization.”
At Databox, the opposite is true:
“Every quarter, we literally share everything, including our bank balance with the whole company. Everybody at the company has access in real time.”
Scaling as the Reward
In his final chapter, Pete outlines five levers that can unlock scale:
- Enabling customer self-service
- Partnerships
- Automation
- Outsourcing
- Delegation
But Pete emphasizes that you can’t jump here first.
“Scaling is the reward, when you can start to grow your revenue at a pace that outpaces the growth of your costs. But you have to really think through your strategy first. Otherwise, you’re just automating stuff that’s not important, or trying to make things self-service before you’ve proven whether a customer cares about it.”
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