How to Prepare for TV/Radio Interviews

Thanks to Martin Bellinger for posting this question on my professional speaking Facebook page.  If you have questions for me you can either enter them in the comments selection below OR you can post them on http://www.facebook.com/professionalspeaking

Hey everybody thanks so much for tuning in to my speaker blog. I’m Topher Morrison. If you’re watching this on anything other than my speaker blog, that’s just fine. We’re glad to have you on YouTube or Vimeo or any other video sites, but listen: You’re probably missing out on a lot of great content so head over to www.TopherMorrison.com and subscribe to my blog where you’re going to be getting a lot of great information on professional speaking. So, today’s question actually comes from Martin. And Martin, I know I told you on Facebook that if you posted a question, I’d answer it by the weekend. Unfortunately, you were superseded by people in my private membership program that had questions so I had to attend to them this weekend so as a result you are getting it a couple days late and I apologize for that but I do try to get these things back within a couple of days and then of course my private members get them back within four to five hours. Anyway, Martin’s question was….Let me find it here…. It was “Just been asked to do a USA Radio Blog interview. They want me to supply about 12 to 15 questions about becoming an author. I know I’m seeing you in the James’ VIP thing. This has come now. Please help.”
So Martin, you’ve got to take into consideration a couple of things in regard to radio interviews, TV interviews, or whatever, right? One is that the host has an agenda and it’s not for you to decide what that is so, you need to find out what’s their outcome. I always ask my host, “What do you want to get out of this interview? What’s your outcome for this interview so I can make sure that I cater to that need?” Maybe their outcome is to drive people to one of their programs. So if I can somehow fit into my interview talking about their program provided that I believe in it, they are going to be all the more grateful for me being on that interview. However, if their outcome is just to have something entertaining, provide a lot of value for their current guest, well that’s fine too. So just find out what their outcome is and make sure that you have structured in your way / in your thought process ways in which you can endorse their programs or at least reinforce their outcome.
Then you have your outcome. So there are usually two types of outcomes during an interview. One is for you to sell your product or number two is to use the interview as a springboard to a greater interview. So for example: Let’s say I’m doing a local TV show. I may not care about selling my products but I will care about creating an awesome interview so then I can submit that into a major network and they can see that I am comfortable on camera and then I can get a bigger interview on a bigger network on a nationwide channel or something like that. Then when I’m there, my intention shifts to “Now I’m here and I want to sell some product”. So I’m going to assume that you want to sell product, for example. Whether it is to audition or whether it is to sell product, start your outcome in mind, ask yourself “what are the things that I want, what are my objectives”, and then “what are the statements that I would need to make in order for those objectives to be fulfilled”, and then ask yourself “what would be the most natural question that they could ask me that could lead me into that statement”.
There’s how you build your questions in very short order. Now having said that let me give you an extra tip. And this is something that I go into great detail. I provide samples with www.InsideBulletProofSpeaking.com, which is my private speaking membership and I recommend everybody join if you’re watching this video. I go into a lot of detail in making sure you think in terms of systems and only do things once. So the fact is Martin, you are getting an interview opportunity right now; you are going to have many more in the future. So what I’ve got is my three main interviews that I use; maybe it is to promote my book or is to promote my speaking membership site or it is to audition, right? So what I do is I have pre-created questions for all of those already setup with template emails so as soon as I get a booking, I can send that out within about five minutes and it really impresses the promoters of that show to let them know, man this guy is on it. So remember, whatever questions you come up with now, save them for later because they are going to be able to used in a future interview.
Alright, I hope that is useful Martin. Good luck with your interview, let me know how it goes. For the rest of you watching, please if you would like to get more speaking tips, make sure you go to www.BulletproofSpeaking.com. Sign up for my free eBook their called “The Professional Speaking Secrets of Topher Morrison” but also take advantage of the membership program there. It is about the cost of a modest dinner for two each month and you get direct access to me, you get loads of these kinds of videos that are far more in detail, you get a lot of examples for you in developing your speaking business to help you shift from becoming a public speaker into a professional speaker. Alright, hope you enjoyed that one. Please take care. Dare to dream and I’ve got alarms going off and that means I’ve got to get out of here. Make each day an epic adventure. Bye for now.