Scotland ended the opening block of Nations Championship fixtures with a bonus-point victory over Fiji, building on an impressive away win over Argentina and a competitive display in defeat to world champions South Africa in Pretoria.
Those performances followed Six Nations victories over England and France, leaving Gregor Townsend's side heading into the fixtures against the All Blacks, Australia and Japan with renewed belief after the disappointment of last autumn.
"It's the story of the Scotland team in the past few years - it's always been the what ifs," Smith told BBC Scotland.
"We're so close to doing something so well and it gets away from us. It's just brought us together as a group.
"If you look at how we finished the home series nearly [in November], the performances against New Zealand and Argentina, we were so close against New Zealand and we were 21 points up against Argentina and then ultimately lost.
"The way that some people were commenting on us as a group, I think it really brought us closer together. We really had to look inwardly.
"The Six Nations didn't start the way we wanted to. It was a poor result against Italy but our response against England, the way we finished, playing against France the way we did and putting 50 points on them, I think we really showed the people on the sidelines what we can do and what we can do against the big nations and take it forward into the World Cup next year.
"There's a lot of good rugby to come and a lot of teams that we want to beat."