Josh Cassel

I just got in from another awesome GKIC-Philly meeting. It was a packed house, full of local entrepreneurs who all came out to hear the guest speaker, Sydney Biddle Barrows. While many people’s thoughts immediately go to what she refers to as her “previous life” when she was the “Mayflower Madam”, Sydney will be the first to tell you that her main focus is not, nor was it ever the “sex business”. The element that made her successful was creating the customer experience, which just happened to have its beginnings in an escort service.

After losing her job and becoming unemployed, it was a friend that suggested she come and answer phones at an escort service in New York City to make some extra money on the side. After a while, she and her friend decided that they could do better on their own, so they started their own escort business. By creating a unique and compelling customer experience, they quickly became successful and rose to the top of their local industry.

Now, years later, Sydney is a marketing consultant, putting into practice the skills she learned from the escort business. She helps companies of all types improve their sales by analyzing the customer experience. Often times the experience is all that stands between a customer and a sale.

It all must start with the story of your business. Every business has one and in order for things to run as smoothly as possible and for customers to buy and be totally satisfied, you must be doing business in accordance with your businesses story. From that story, you can create the customer experience. Consumers are weary of generic buying experiences and more and more are seeking to have a meaningful, memorable, fun, interesting and/or exciting experience during the selection and buying process. The more compelling an experience you give them, the more you will differentiate yourself from your competitors, you will be able to charge more and they will willingly pay more, you will see an increase in referrals, and happy, loyal customers will be out there telling everyone they know about you.

The most obvious, yet most compelling piece of information that I took from hearing Sydney speak was that you have got to make it easy for your customers to do business with you. If they can’t find your place of business, or can’t find a phone number or contact information, or if there are huge inconsistencies between your marketing and your actual sale, the experience will be shot and you will likely lose a customer or two. You have to go overboard in making it easy for the customer. Sounds so simple, yet there are so many businesses out there that just make it down right difficult to do business with them.

For more information on what Sydney is up to these days, check out her website at http://www.sydneybarrows.com. And don’t forget, make sure your customers are having good experiences with you!