Ottawa businesses turn to Mayflower Madam for tricks

Ottawa ? Struggling businesses in Ottawa can learn a lot from the sex industry, especially when it comes to pampering clients, says the former ?Mayflower Madam,? Sydney Biddle Barrows.

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Sydney Biddle Barrows

Best Selling Author ? Speaker ?

The Mayflower Madam

The Experience Blueprint:

Create a Unique and Compelling Customer Experience

Consumers are now seeking to have an Experience while buying and/or using an item or service. The more memorable or meaningful an Experience you present, the more you will differentiate yourself from your competitors, the more you can charge, and the more successful you will be.

Sydney Biddle Barrows is a recognized authority on the Customer Experience, the emerging economic shift to an Experience Economy, and the challenges and opportunities we face in today?s ever-changing economic climate. She assists entrepreneurs, business people and professional practices to re-imagine the way they interact with their customers in order to create unique Experiences that delight and touch them. Because those Experiences add value to the product or service because they are meaningful to the customer, there is minimal resistance to paying premium prices for them. And happy, satisfied customers are loyal customers who gladly spread the word to their friends, family and colleagues.

Known to millions as the "Mayflower Madam," Sydney Biddle Barrows is a unique American success story. Sydney began her business career as a retail executive at Abraham & Straus, the May Company and a boutique resident buying office. Six years later she found herself moonlighting as a phone girl at an escort service to supplement her unemployment check after having been fired for refusing to participate in a kickback scheme.

It may have been the World's Oldest Profession but it certainly was not being run very professionally, and less than a year later she decided to open up her own agency. Relatively small but very upscale, Cachet prospered for five and a half years until New York's Finest closed it down, only to later publicly concede that it was the most honest and professionally run business of its kind ever operated in New York City.

The recipient of intense worldwide media coverage, her first book, Mayflower Madam, went right to the top of the New York Times bestseller list. Fortune Magazine named it one of the Ten Best Business Books of the Year. This book was reprinted 28 times and translated into seven languages; business schools all across the country, including Harvard, included it in their curriculum.

Sydney enjoys an extensive speaking career, guest lecturing at colleges all over the United States, including some in the Ivy League such as Brown and Columbia. Speaking engagements have taken her all over the United States and overseas; she was an extremely popular fixture at Young Presidents Organization and CEO Club events, among others, for years.