Business Advice From The Mayflower Madam

Entrepreneur has an interview with the notorious (former) madam Sydney Biddle Barrows. She is transferring her sales skills to the world of marketing at-large, and so she has a new book where she talks about what she's learned that can help even less lurid businesses. An excerpt from the interview:

One of the things that I really do want to point out--and I mention this in the book, too--is when it comes to the sales presentation, when it comes to how you talk to the customer about buying your thing, business owners really, really have to do it themselves for a while. Because it's one thing to sit down and write a script, "This is the way you should do it." But until you have actually tested it and seen how the customer responds [you have no idea if it works]. One of my perfect examples was, in the very beginning, when I booked a call and the man would choose the young lady and I would say, "OK. What's your name?" And we would lose the call. So I figured out to ask, "What name are you registered under? What name is your phone listed under?" It's the same question, but when you ask it that way, it makes all the difference in the world.