Compelling Stories | The Portfolio Partnership

The Magic Years – Revisited

by Ian Smith | Jun 10, 2011 | Building Business Value, Compelling Stories, Strategy

Back in January, I introduced you to the concept of The Magic Years. A period of time when you can really build value in your company. A period of time when your objective is to define and dominate your space. The timing of the Magic Years is decided by you and your...

The Surprising Value of Being the Best in the World

by Ian Smith | Apr 15, 2011 | Being the Best, Compelling Stories, Exiting your business, Management Help, Repositioning

“Our culture celebrates superstars. We reward the product or the song or the organization or the employee that is number one. The rewards are heavily skewed , so much so that it’s typical for #1 to get ten times the benefit of #10, and a hundred times the...

Dad, What Do You Do at Work?

by Ian Smith | Dec 24, 2010 | Compelling Stories, Maximize exit proceeds, Positioning drives growth, Repositioning

Confusion This post was inspired by the recent WSJ article of the same name. Of course it’s a question we are constantly asked. In fact it is a deceptively important question that extracts some pretty weak answers. Ask a panel of CEOs at a conference to...

Sales Tip: The Translation of a Compelling story

by Ian Smith | Oct 18, 2009 | Sales Tips

The recession feels like the new norm to me. Sometimes we need to just ignore those big ugly macro statistics and get stuff done. Assuming this difficult climate has allowed you to fine tune your Big Story, the compelling reason for you to exist (what else are...

The Smith Report – Compelling Stories – on Blip TV!

by Ian Smith | Aug 12, 2009 | Compelling Stories, Management Help, Positioning drives growth, Repositioning

My first show is up on Blip TV. Apologies that it’s 22 minutes long! The next one will be shorter. Many thanks to the team at BevCam for their help. [lightbox style=”modern” image_path=”/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/IansHeadVideo.jpg”...