Doug: This is Douglas Potts. Today you have the privilege to listen in as I interview marketing expert Michael Senoff, Founder and CEO of HardToFindSeminars.com as he shares powerful tips to planning and conducting audio marketing interviews that you can use to increase your visibility and credibility with your target market and instantly create valuable audio information products that you can sell to your prospects. So sit back, get comfortable and get ready to listen to a information packed interview with Michael Senoff .

Doug: Thank you for joining us today and sharing your expertise on developing and conducting audio interviews. Michael, today I’m going to ask you to reveal some behind the scenes techniques and tips that an audio interview marketer can use to launch their interview skills light years ahead of the pack. I’m not going to let you off easy either and I’m going to dig deep into your years of experience as a successful audio marketer. Having interview many highly profiled experts such as Tom Hopkins, Ted Nicholas, John Carlton and Jay Conrad Levinson to name a few, I’m going to ask you to reveal powerful insights about planning, preparation and conducting audio interviews. I’m going to ask you specifically to address how to select and conduct interviews participants, how to negotiate interviews terms and rights, how to plan a topic, how to research and develop questions and how to manage and control an interview. Okay, we have a lot of ground to cover and a very short time to get through everything so let’s get started.

Michael: Okay, great let’s do it.

Doug: Okay. The first area I’d like to ask you about is planning an audio interview. Michael, how do you go about finding and selecting an expert to interview?

Michael: Well, you got to ask yourself why are you interviewing this expert and there’s lots of different reasons. For instance, on my Web site HardToFindSeminars.com I’ll interview experts for different reasons. One reason is called Markey Value. So if you can get a really big name like a celebrity, and it doesn’t have to be a Hollywood celebrity it could be a celebrity in your type of business your niche, who are very high profile multi millionaire billionaire having that – being able to say that I’ve interviewed, you know, this expert in this field. Instantly and magically increases your credibility and it’s all by association. So if you say you’re interviewing the founder of Go Daddy that’s pretty valuable there’s a lot of people who would like to know how that guy started in his one bedroom and ended up, you know, building one of the largest web posting services on the planet and making tens and hundreds of millions of dollars all along the way. That guy knows some pretty good stuff he’s gone on a journey that a lot of people may be in that field would like to know and can learn from. And so having that interview is great it’s a feather in your cap, it’s a collection, it’s a big name interview and you should be proud to have that and that will instantly help you get traffic to your site, build your credibility, and very importantly help you land other big name interviews who are on the same level as him. Now, that’s one way. Another reason you may want to interview someone is if you’re doing some selling. So on HardToFindSeminars.com I have a lot of interviews where I’m interviewing an expert in a specific topic or field and they have something to sell. Now, the interview is designed to give a lot of great value but it won’t give everything and at the end of the interview I say for more information go to this Web site, and going to this Web site is a URL that I have registered and I control which will forward the listener to an affiliate link that I have setup that if that listener like what they’ve heard in the original interview and they go to that URL that I control and they’re automatically forwarded to an affiliate lin. An affiliate link simply sets me up as a salesman for that expert that I interviewed and if they buy from that Web site, that affiliate link I will make a commission either offered by the seller or maybe negotiated by myself. So that’s a monetary interview, that’s a promotional interview designed to sell a listener on, you know, on buying something. In the manner that I do it it’s usually by going to a Web site and then their Web site does all the selling I’m just basically endorsing and referring an expert to their own product. So that’s an interview that’s designed to make me money. And then there may be another interview where it just may be a great interview, a big name so I get some advantages by having a big name Markey Value and credibility for my collection of audio interviews but it may not refer the listener to anything. So it may be Jay Conrad Levinson, for instance, very well known marketing expert and I interviewed him and just having his name was enough. So being able to say I interviewed Jay Conrad Levinson was the main goal. So Hard To Find Seminars has an interview with Jay Conrad Levinson I’m not referring any sells, I’m not making anything if I refer someone to his site and some of your interviews may be like that where you don’t make any money off of it but you get to use that name to boost your credibility. So those are a few of the reasons and there’s more too, but that should the main focus on your interviews.

Doug: Having identified the expert that you’d like to interview, how do you go about contacting them?

Michael: It’s real simple, you know, you could contact them you could find their Web site, you can email them directly, you know, with an invitation to be interviewed, they may have a PR person or marketing department that you can interview and if it’s something that the marketing department is interested in they will forward it to, you know, their secretary or their personal assistant and if it’s something that makes sense for them they’ll get back with you, that’s one way by using email. You could go to their Web site and find their mailing address and simply your invitation that you’d send in email you can print it out in Microsoft Word in mail on the letter. That’s another way and it’s probably not a bad idea if you’re going after high profile interviews that would mean a lot to you by doing both an email follow it up by a letter. If you really want to create some great impact and you really want to land this guy spend $6 to $10 dollars on a Federal Express overnight letter, you know, with an invitation, you know, professional typed out on maybe a letterhead explaining who you are and that you’d like to interview them for your Web site or for your product launch or for your new book or for whatever reason. So those are some ways to get noticed you just got to – and then another way is you can pick up the phone and call. Haul the message above work.

Doug: What is your preferred way to structure and negotiate an interview with an expert? Once you’ve made the contact how do you want to introduce the idea of the structure of the topic matter and also the format?

Michael: Well, I want to make it, as the interviewer, I want to make it as easy as possible on me so I’m going to look at what this expert is doing and you got to keep in mind your expert will say yes to an interview if there’s something in it for him. And I always use this example when Tom Cruise goes on Oprah he’s not going on there to be nice he’s going to promote his new movie or his book. And the same thing with the people that go on talk shows and such there’s a reason they’re going on these shows, they’re promoting something. So your expert you got to find out what is he selling, what is he promoting? When I make an initial contact with an expert I’ll ask them I’ll say hey, what are you selling, what do you want to promote because it’s an unspoken rule if they’re going to grant you an interview you’re going to plug something of theirs, you’re going to plug their new product, their seminar, their movie, their book, what have you. So structure your agreement based on what they’re selling and if they’re selling something and if they have an affiliate program structure it in your favor, make sure that you get signed up as an affiliate. Say hey, I want to sell your products and that’s been a secret that I’ve been able to land some very high profile interviews by going to these experts saying hey, I’ve got a list of hungry customers who come to my site who want to learn a lot and I’d like to interview you, but at the same time I’d like to promote all your products as an affiliate. And I did that with Ted Nicholas and I did it with John Carlton and I am an affiliate of theirs and I continue to generate sells for them and affiliate commissions for myself and so it’s understood. So you structure it where it’s going to benefit you, benefit them, and benefit the listener all at the same time. Every interview will be different because it depends, you know, the reasons that I just gave you why you’re doing the interviews. So just make it make sense and it’s a win-win for all involved.

Doug: How often do rights become issue a while hammering out the details of their recorded interviews?

Michael: You know what, I always thought it was going to be an issue it’s never become an issue with me, not in all the years I’ve never had a problem. You know when Tom Cruise goes on Oprah he’s not worried about rights, when he grants an interview it’s understood that Oprah has the rights to, you know, Oprah has the rights to that show. So when someone agrees to an interview there’s an unspoken reason why they’re going on the interview it’s free publicity for them, for their book, for their promotion. Why would they want to hold back their rights for the interviewer to publish or broadcast an interview? So there is – there’s a reason why the interviewee is doing the interview and it’s understood that the interviewer is going to use that interview to do what he wants with. Now, if it’s a concern you can spell out your rights at the beginning of the interview where you’re setting it up you can say “You know, Doug you understand we’re going to record this interview and I’m going to use this on my Web site I’m going to use it to train some of my students and I sometimes package different products, this interview may end up as a packaged product with some of my other interviews on the expertise and secrets of audio interviews. Is that okay with you?” And they’ll say sure, no problem. So you’ve got that as a recording and you’ve got a contract, an oral verbal contract but it’s mostly a fear and if it becomes an issue and the interviewee has questions hammer it out, make it work and just be upfront about what you’re going to do with it and what you want to do with it. But it’s never been an issue and I’ve never had an interviewee say hey, you can’t sell my interview and I want half the money and stuff like that. You can pre-negotiate it but determine why are you doing the interview and you should be able to hammer out a deal.

Doug: With the intention of building an information product do you ever plan multiple sessions with an expert to create a series of topics, specific interviews?

Michael: Sure you can. A lot of my interviews are two-part interviews, super long ones, sometimes they’ll go 60 minutes and we may run out of time and say Uh, Doug we’re out of time let’s go ahead and do a part two and you’ll reschedule it for another day. So if you’ve got a great interview you want to get as much great information as possible, you may not have enough time and then you can reschedule and many times in almost all cases, all of my interviewees that went over time were willing to reschedule and could do another part two to finish it out, not a problem.

Doug: Well Michael, that covers everything with planning an audio interview, let’s move onto preparing for an interview. How do you prepare for an interview that you are planning to conduct?

Michael: Well, there’s, you know, it’s really a lot easier than you think depending on who you’re interviewing, and like I said, depending on what they’re doing, what are they promoting, what are they selling, you’re going to see that they’ve already prepared all the questions for you so, for instance, if it’s me selling my auto interview service you can go to my Web site HardToFindSeminars.com and you can find a sales letter on my audio marketing service and you can look at all the bullets on my sales letter and see all the promises and benefits that I offer for the service and you can turn those benefits into interview questions. So if someone’s written a sales letter you can outline the whole – you can have all your questions already written for you. Now, if you’re interviewing an expert on how to fly kites and they don’t have anything on their Web site or there’s limited information that they have you can go to Amazon.com and type in how to fly kites in Amazon and look for books, you’ll find books on how to fly kites. And then on Amazon you can look at the Table of Contents, the Index online and you can see all the subjects and topics about what, you know, the information in the book on how to fly kites and you can use that as an outline. And so using that outline gives you a good structure for questions to ask. You can look at the Index in the very back on the all the topics. You can look for articles in kite flying magazine that cover the 10 best tips for flying kites and you’ll have an outline for all your questions. It should not be any work at all for you to come up with questions, all the questions have been asked before by someone else, whether it’s newspaper article, magazine article, a Web site, what have you, your job is to compile the best questions or the ones that you think compile a great list of questions that you’ve seen asked before and just ask your quest. They’re not the only one in the world answering these questions it’s all been done before.

Doug: Do you normally share your questions with the expert you’re going to interview before the actual interview?

Michael: If they ask me to I will, I’ll prepare and send it to them, but most of the time I don’t because if they’re a real expert on this subject they’re going to know their answers, their answers are already internalized. You know I didn’t really – you did submit me some questions I’ll looked over them briefly, but I didn’t sit and study them and prepare my answers. I mean I’ve got this stuff in my head I understand it, I know it, and you’ll find the – that your experts that you’re interviewing have this stuff they don’t have to think it up or have an outline, they understand it internally and they’re able to talk about their expertise simply. So I don’t think you’re going to have to do that.

Doug: How many questions make for a good interview, Mike?

Michael: There’s no set amount, you know, if you’ve got a certain amount of time you want to get as many answers as possible. You know, you want to be asking questions that you think your listeners would want to know or if you’re really seriously interested in the subject you’re talking about you want to get all your questions answered. You know if you’re interviewing a high profile guy you want to rifle off as many questions that you have on your mind or that your listeners have on their mind and use that time wisely.

Doug: Can you tell us a little about different interview formats, for example, chronological Q&A?

Michael: Yeah, okay, yeah. Theirs is, you know, some of the interviews I’ve done if I’m interviewing an expert and you can use a chronological format where you say, you know, so tell me how did it all get started, you know, where were you born, what were your parents like, and you have them take you through their live and if you want to begin it at their career and you’re interviewing about their career and their business expertise you can start from there. If you want to get into some of the history of there, you know, upbringing and influences you can start back at childhood. And you just say, and then what happened?’ And then they’re thinking chronologically and then they come up with all the things that kind of brought them up to where they are. And you just got to be a real good listener and you got to say okay and then what happened and how did that affect you, and what was important about that and what did you do after that? And many times they’re recounting stuff that they haven’t thought about in so long and if you do it chronologically and you make them think back they’ll come up with some real good ideas some business lessons, some failures some, you know, successes, some setbacks and that’s a chronological life story and it makes for a good interview in many cases. Question and Answer is just you can – if you have an email list or you have a way to contact customers, maybe previous customers who are interested in more information on a topic, you could do what’s called a ask campaign. So you could email out and say “Hey, you know, Doug – let’s say you had a list of 1000 people and you say “Hey, I’ll be interviewing interview expert Michael Senoff on this Wednesday at 2:00 and I’ll be asking him your questions. If you want to submit any of your questions to me that I’ll ask on your behalf for Michael send them to me by email or you can send this to a Web site where they can fill out a form. And then you collect all your questions, you eliminate all the doubles, you eliminate the bad and stupid questions and then you just have them on a list and you just rifle them off just like you’re doing right now. And so then, that’s really important because you’re asking the questions that your list really wants to know, so you’re giving your list exactly what they want to know and in many cases this is one of the most powerful interviews because you’re not guessing what your listener wants to know you are delivering exactly what they say they want to know, and that’s very important.

Doug: Which interview format do you prefer or do you find that you mix?

Michael: I do a mix but I really prefer that Ask It campaign because you don’t have to do any work you just setup the Ask campaign, you announce an interview, you say send in your most pressing question about this subject or this topic and then they come in, you organize them and you’re set. And like I said, you never have to guess whether you’re delivering an interview that your listeners are going to be interested in. They have raised their hand and they have shown you what the most important questions are because you can tabulate the questions coming from your list and you’ll see multiple people asking the same questions and that’ll determine what is most on your list mind and you’ll put those at the top, you’ll make sure that the people who are asking the most commonly asked questions that you cover those and that also makes for very valuable marketing collateral and information if you’re selling a product because in your bullets and in your sales letter you’re going to focus on answering these – that your product is going to answer these questions that your list wants to know. Does that make sense?

Doug: Oh, totally. Let’s talk about conducting the interview. What is the best time of day? Do you find some time that’s better than any other time or making sure that everybody’s alert?

Michael: I don’t think, you know, sometimes the mornings are nice, you know, when you schedule the interview it depends on what you have going and what you like. I like knocking it out in the morning but if I have something to do in the morning but if I have something o do in the morning I’ll schedule it where it’s more relaxed in the afternoon. There’s no best time, the best time is what works best for both parties. So you’re going to, you know, if you’re getting a high profile interview, you know, you could say well I can do it at this time and this time what’s best for you? It’s up to you, whatever; best time works for each party is the best time.

Doug: What type of pre-interview talk that you have with the expert before you start the interview? For example, when we started today we had a little bit of a side discussion prior to rolling tape.

Michael: I’d say, okay, Doug, you know, let’s say you’re a high profile interview, I’ll say Doug, I really appreciate you taking the time, here’s what we’re going to do I’m going to record the call, you know, I’m going to be publishing this interview, you don’t have to worry about messing up I’m going to be recording everything, I’ll do all the editing, I’ll let you – you can preview it if you want to make sure everything’s good. If you say something you don’t want to say and you want me to take it out that’s not a problem it’s just you and I talking I just want you to relax and I’ve got a lot of great questions which you’re going to answer and it’ll be a lot of fun, and I may want to use this interview down the road for promotional purposes and I may package it with a product, but it’s all going to help promote you and your product and your service and get your name out there to my list, is that okay. And then you say let’s get going and you start off with here’s Question Number 1. So you keep it short, you don’t have to do chit chat, how’s the weather, how’s the – you know if you feel like it you can, but both parties understand it’s a business arrangement. It’s free publicity for the interviewee and its promotional collateral for the interviewer.

Doug: How do you handle an interviewee who is not talkative giving short answers?

Michael: I would just keep asking questions. You can ask open-ended questions, you know, if they say, you know, I did this you can say tell me more and why was that important to you? How did that affect this, you know, you got to move them along. If you have a real, you know, you may get a dud interviewer like that but it’s your job as an interviewee to pull out the answers. And if they’re just being stubborn or they’re not, you know, giving with their information it just may end up being one of your bad interviews, it happens sometimes or they may not be that willing to actually do the interview, but rarely does it happen, most people love talking about themselves they really do. And if you give them a chance to talk they won’t shut up and they’ll tell you everything you want to know just be a good listener, just listen, listen, listen.

Doug: What about technical problems, how do you handle technical problems that may arise during an interview?

Michael: Make sure that they’re on a landline phone. You’re on a landline, Doug?

Doug: Yep.

Michael: Okay, I’m on a landline that’s very important. Voice over IP I would hold off on that just a good old regular landline phone, make sure you have a backup way to record the interview, I’m recording on a digital recorder, and you’re recording on your end so we have two recordings. Sometimes it happens if someone’s in an office and like if they have a main central line and they have to be patched through to another line that can cause interference. Make sure you got a direct line and if they have to go to a different place for a direct line do it, especially if it’s a big name interview. You can, you know, when you’re on the phone with them you can hear if they’re coming in soft you can ask them to speak up. You may want – if you can’t get a good quality sign you may want to reschedule it or have them – I’ve had people go to a different phone in the house or a different phone in the office, if you have a bad connection you can say hey Doug, hang up and just call me right back and when you call back you’re on a different line you can solve the problem that way and if there’s just no way to solve it you’re going to have to solve it through editing and in the editing process you can increase the volume on the other side and lower and do some filters and stuff like that.

Doug: What type of follow-up do you conduct with the expert after the interviews has been completed and edited?

Michael: After it’s been completed and edited I’ll say Doug, hey the interviews done here you can take a look at it if you promise to let them review it you can say here’s where you can review it, or if it’s finished and published and up there you can say here you go and you’re welcome to send anyone you know to the interview, you know, feel free and thanks again for doing it I hope you like it.

Doug: Well, Michael we’re getting short on time and I’m going to have to wrap it up. One final question though, is that okay?

Michael: Yeah.

Doug: What is the Number 1 thing that you must do to guarantee a successful interview?

Michael: The Number 1 thing for a successful interview I would say is to make sure that you’re listening and that you’re asking questions that your target market wants to hear the answer to and just be a good listener. It’s not just one – that’s the most important thing because an interview is, that’s your product and depending on what your products, you have to deliver a good professional interview and also, Doug, you did a great job. I mean, you know, talking you didn’t really – you didn’t interrupt, you didn’t add any personal stories about yourself for your opinions, which is really great and that’s hard not to do that sometimes. I use to talk way too much in my interviews. You just ask the questions and shut up and you did a great job. That’s exactly what you need to do because understand that this interview because you’re the interviewee, you’re the interviewer and I’m the interviewee, if the interview isn’t about you. When I’m doing all my interviews it’s not about me, they’re not listening to me they’re listening to the expert, they want to hear the expert. So just keep the questions nice and short and succinct just like you did and if your expertise is true expertise they’ll give you the answers that you need from your questions. I think you did a great job, so listening and not talking too much in the interview is a great place to start.

Doug: Well, Michael I’d like to thank you for taking your time and sharing the audio interviews secrets with us. You revealed some great information that can be really put into plan in creating outstanding audio interviews. Again, thank you so much it’s a pleasure.

Michael: You’re very welcome, Doug.

Doug: Mike, I appreciate that.

Michael: Yeah. So Doug that was a great interview, I mean you could put that out with barely any editing just cut the, you know, the beginning off and the end and you’ve got your interview.

Doug: Yeah, I can’t help being extremely – actually uncomfortable, I mean, you know, just fairly intense I think it came through because that was as natural as I could have been.

Michael: Yeah, well you’ll relax – as you do it you’ll relax more. Believe me every time you do it, it gets easier and easier. Yeah, there’s nothing, you – look there’s no reason you should be tense because you’re not dreaming anything up. Now, the beginning and the end you had scripted but you can do that not on the phone with your guest you can do that when you’re totally comfortable by yourself, and then your questions are in front of you. At worst case all you’ve got to do is just read the questions and shut up.

Doug: One of the things I found – you mentioned at the end that listening is very important – and then also being able to, I would see that being able to expand on the responses, and I found I was so focused on the script that I was unable to …

Michael: That’s alright but you got the meat of it but as you get more relaxed, and you knew you were limited on time so we had to kind of rush it…

Doug: Right.

Michael: …but you will be able to expand as you get more comfortable and you’ll be more comfortable and you’ll be listening more. But I think you did a great job, you know, you really did that was fine.

Doug: Thank you. Well, I look forward to getting more comfortable and a little bit more seasoned at this I’m going to actually try it out with some colleagues of mine. So I have three or four or five of these under my belt…

Michael: Yeah.

Doug: …prior to working with Bob Parsons.

Michel: Yeah, no I think that’s good. A tip you may want to do, you know, one of the interviews I do I make it where I’m not really interviewing to a bunch of people it’s just I make it like it’s two people talking, you know, in a normal conversation and that way it’s like someone’s listening in on a conversation and that draws them in a little bit more rather than them knowing that you’re broadcasting an interview to everybody, you know.

Doug: Right, right. Let’s put it as a person-to-person voice and…

Michael: Yeah.

Doug: …make it a little more intimate and so it allows for the audio for the folks that will listen as if they’re listening on a special personal conversation.

Michael: Yeah, I think that’s right. But overall I’ve give you an A, really.

Doug: Thanks Mike.

Michael: Alright, well let me know how that – send me the - after you do that interview I’d love to know I’d love to hear it.

Doug: Yeah, I’ll boil it down and then send you the file.

Michael: Okay, and re-listen to this because I gave you some good tips that you can use.

Doug: No, you did dynamite, that’s what I was looking for.

Michael: Okay.

Doug: Alright, thanks.

Michael: Bye.

Doug: Alright, bye-bye.