The Portfolio Partnership

The Ballad of H-P & the Wake Up Call for SMBs

by Ian Smith | Nov 8, 2012 | Strategy

Wednesday’s WSJ headline read: “What’s Gone Wrong With H-P”? Well first the backstory from the article: Backstory 9 months to July 2012 $5.8Bn loss – compared with 9 months to July 2007 when they made $5.1Bn profit Same period sales...

Telephone Screening Candidates

by Ian Smith | Nov 7, 2012 | Recruitment

I’m recruiting for several portfolio clients at the moment covering sales and customer service roles. I thought I’d share a little checklist of questions that I’m using on the phone to establish fit. Once I have a quality resume in front of me I...

Sales Professionals – 15 Questions To Ask Yourself

by Ian Smith | Nov 6, 2012 | Sales - Farming, Sales Tips

Sales is a great place to be if you want to be in sales, as one of my top salesmen once said to me! It’s like running your own business. It demands that you think like a businessman. So here are my top 15 questions every sales professional should be asking...

As the owner of an SMB – 10 Questions that determine Increased Market Value?

by Ian Smith | Nov 5, 2012 | Building Business Value, Strategy

Whether you define an SMB in terms of employee numbers or some other metric the evidence points to the majority of employment is created by SMBs. Are these businesses actually creating value? Are these businesses becoming more valuable over time. In the U.S. there are...

10 Questions To Ask Your CFO

by Ian Smith | Nov 4, 2012 | Business Questions & Answers, Management

The Questions What are the key drivers to drive the profitability of our business? What products are the most profitable? What are the main reasons for quarterly Gross Margin & Net Margin movements over the last 12 months? What are out most successful distribution...

The Map of U.S. Employment

by Ian Smith | Nov 3, 2012 | Strategy

A majority of the 120m U.S. employees work at large firms. True or False? Depends on how you define large. If Large = 100 employees or more then Yes, 65.1% of employees work at large firms If Large = 500 employees or more then Yes, 50.6% of employees work at large...

Raising Money – Exceptional Preparation

by Ian Smith | Nov 2, 2012 | Angel Investing, How to Raise Private Equity, How to Raise Venture Capital

The odds are stacked against you. You knew that. Even for serial entrepreneurs like Dharmesh Shah (founder of HubPpot) who despite compelling evidence struggled to raise angel money after his fist big hit. At a recent Founder Dialogues event he explained that he had...

Practice Makes Perfect – 3 Skills of Practiced Acquirers

by Ian Smith | Nov 1, 2012 | Acquisitions

Practiced acquirers like Google, ITW, Oracle, EMC, who have closed dozens of deals get really good at three things: What questions to ask the target. How to listen and understand the answers. How to integrate targets effectively. Less practiced acquirers can shortcut...

A New Role for the Finance Team

by Ian Smith | Oct 31, 2012 | Leadership, Management, Metrics

These days a finance department is a metrics department. What gets measured gets done. There needs to be much more clarity around whose job it is to take action when ratios are going the wrong way. There needs to be more visual cues in our dashboards, reports and...

5 Questions to Ask Your CMO

by Ian Smith | Oct 30, 2012 | Marketing

Can you name the 20 most popular pieces of content we published in 2012? What is the cumulative return on investment % of our 2012 Adwords? What are the trend lines over the last 3 years for online form sales inquiries and inbound sales calls? What are the 5 highest...