When getting experts for my audio interviews, what I would do is think of my PR expert. My public relations expert does not sell information products. It has a basic website about its PR services, it doesn’t have a huge list, but it’s like a promotional agent. So even when I was starting out and I didn’t have a lot of interviews, I did have a few interviews.
Now, it’s easier for me because I have a lot of evidence. When someone visits my website, they see all these interviews. I mean it’s really easy now because I have all these interviews behind me.
But I didn’t always have all these interviews. I mean I had to get that first interview, second and third interview. So you have to position yourself as the PR expert.
Why do people hire public relations experts? Because they want media, they want airtime, they want promotion, they want customers, and they want publicity. An interview for them is free publicity.
Let’s say I got to talk to someone on the phone and they heard the passion in my voice and I said “I’m planning on interviewing them, Bob Blye, Clayton Makepeace, Joe VItalie, John Carlton and Ted Nicholas. You guys are my dream interviewers and you’re going to be on the book and I’m going to interview you and the transcripts are going to be in the book and I plan on putting this up on Amazon I’m going to build a website I’m going to do joint ventures I’m going to market this like you wouldn’t believe you know the interview is only going to take about an hour of your time. Would you consider doing an interview with me?”
I think they’d be crazy if they didn’t because what do you have to lose? As long as the people in your market read that book, you can’t lose.
It’s the same, that example, you’re publishing a book with the best experts on this subject, it won’t come out until next fall. Think of all the books and publishers that compile interviews when they approach these experts they are just selling potential. There is no guarantee that the book will sell. In fact, 90% of them don’t sell. Most of the books, the interview compilation books, fail. So there are a lot of people who have given interviews for books that probably didn’t get as much media, but you never know.
So you sell your potential. You can walk up to someone and tell them that you are doing a story about an expert in the field of marketing. It will be promoted worldwide through the Internet. Are you open to participate? Why not? Especially someone who pays a public relations expert; that’s pretty revealing. They need more clients, they want more exposure.
See the problem in our marketing world is distribution. How do you get your message out there? There are so many people out there and they all want more distribution and that’s what it means to approach someone for an interview. It represents potential distribution and with the Internet, once it’s on the Internet, you never know who’s going to pick it up.
So there are no guarantees, you know that we are all business people, they understand that it can work out, it can not. All they have to do is negotiate an hour’s worth of their time and give you the rights to promote it. It is a win-win situation. So position yourself that way and be willing to ask and you shouldn’t have a problem.
