I was lucky enough to be part of the Connective National Conference 2018 last week and I want to share this wonderful experience from the inside. These two days were packed with incredibly inspiring speakers and lots of practical advice, plus… To me, the fantastic part of this conference has been that it has challenged my thinking, my vision of the near future, my comfort zone…

Part 1

The first speaker, Guy Balbontin, former executive director of Lonely Planet, was extremely dynamic and introduced such clever reality! Receiving from him what has been my highlight of the conference with this well known and powerful sentence: ‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is most adaptable to change’.  Combined to the below graphic, it all makes sense and I realised how much the ‘new Tech’ have been impacting the industry I am in and that high resilience has become the new normality. We absolutely must step out of our comfort zone and always pay a close attention to our momentum that he clearly described as ‘deadly’ for our business! He also made a great point explaining how much resourcefulness is more powerful than resources. Just brilliant.

Amanda Stevens was also one of my favourite speakers. She embodies optimism and passion over customer service and couldn’t stress more the importance of the later in our industry. What used to appear as the ‘extra miles’ has now become the normal level of expectation and great customer service isn’t just great, it is a must. She invited us to think about our killing question. You know? The little question which activates curiosity and creates a special connection with our clients. The more personalized it is, the more clients will feel good about it. Never stop being curious, always ask without fear to be rejected, it is a winner. Do you know that the ‘Would you like to add a Kit Kat for an extra $2?’ question is weighting $678,000 extra revenue per year to a petrol station?! This is, for sure, a killing question!