The Art and Science of a Great Podcast Interview

With the release of my book "The Invisible Organization," I have had many opportunities to appear on different podcasts which are focused on some aspect of creating great business systems and structures.

Podcast interviews have become a mainstay of marketing processes and usually help promote the product, company or personality involved. In general, it's up to you to be prepared and well-spoken when involved in a conversation with your host.

To prepare for Podcast Interviews, I start with a set of questions that the host can ask and I am well prepared with answers.  I structured the interview questions to lead the host to extract the most valuable elements of what you I to say. 

Here's how to create your own questions as either the host or as an guest on podcast interviews; Begin by establishing that you understand the problem your listener will face in creating, running or building their business, or whatever your topic may be. Create common ground for what you are about to discuss by explaining what you do.

Here's my guideline I use to explain the problem I solve right inside my introduction.

The host can ask: "Tell us about your new book, what is it all about?"

"What we do is HELP CEOs map out a strategy to shed overhead, thrill clients and energize staff while doubling and redoubling profits again and again."

This is designed to establish interest, convince the listener that what they are about to hear will be of value and set expectations about what they will hear.

The next step is to justify your position as an authority by reviewing your background and experience. Ideally, you want to do this quickly but with enough authority to begin establishing yourself as a trusted source.

Your host can ask: "How did you come about knowing how to do that?"

Here's where I start:

"When I went to work for Tony Robbins and Chet Holmes as the CEO of Business Breakthroughs, Int’l, I had to find a way to scale our sales, marketing and coaching business with radio. But I also had to find a way to ensure every lead paid off. That’s where great systems and great people come into play. So I worked hard to optimize our sales process and make everything work together and that’s when I realized how critical-path systems must have some common traits...."

This answer may take longer to answer, if you have more time in your interview to elaborate further. From here, the next step is to answer the questions our listeners are asking themselves;

Will this work for me? or I've dome something similar before, and it didn't work for me, why is this different?

Here's the question I provide the host for this part of the interview: "What is the most common mistake that CEOs make trying to use virtual systems to achieve their goal?"

My response starts with: "Most CEOs think "going virtual" is a technology issue. It’s really not. It’s a leadership issue and when approached that way, CEOs can make it happen much faster with much better results..."

What I've done with this answer is to steer listeners away from the "traditional" answer or line of thinking, here I show why what I do is different. It can open a closed mind or start a new internal dialog. 

The next step is to anticipate objections and answer them before they are asked. This builds on the last answer and keeps listeners open to a solution they need.  

The question my interviewer is prompted to ask is: "What actually stops a CEO from going down this path?"

My answer may be something like this:

"They are afraid of losing control, of not being able to SEE their staff on a daily basis.  They are afraid that staff won’t work as hard. Stanford University says that there’s an increase of productivity by 13% in their landmark study, so actually the opposite is true..."

In the final component of the interview, my job is to amplify the problem my listener is dealing with, so they will take some action to solve it. The question I use is:

"What happens if the CEO who is considering a transition to a virtual company decides to wait? 

My job at this stage is to invoke action. If my interview was interesting enough for my target client to listen this far, he or she probably knows that they have this problem and it must be solved. I might offer this as a way to incite action to take the next step: 

"Young, smart, and more aggressive CEOs are going to outpace traditional companies who DON’T EMBRACE the systems and management techniques required for leading and growing a virtual company. When companies operate more efficiently, they generally can eclipse the competition who has not continued to evolve..."

At this point the host simply asks: "How can our listeners find out more about how they too can go Invisible?"

If I've done my job, all that needs to happen is for the CEO to act. That can be by contacting me, buying the book or visiting my website. All lead to the same outcome. I would simply say:

"Just visit us at www.InvisibleOrganization.com and take the leadership assessment to start preparing for your future."

With the right target audience, your interview will have been interesting and entertaining, which hopefully gets you the response you are looking for. 

The examples I provided can be expanded easily based on the length of the interview. If your host is interested in your topic, great conversations take place and become incredible interviews. 

Here's an example of my latest interview with Danny Iny, the CEO of Firepole Marketing, who interviewed me last month. Listen in to see how Danny takes these questions far outside the parameters of a "standard" podcast interview to challenge me as the author and drive home the importance of the value my book provides.

 http://www.firepolemarketing.com/mitch-russo

Another example of a great podcast interview, which is much different from Danny's interview, came through my friendship with the host; Paul Durante who runs Jay Abraham's Ultimate Entrepreneur show. Here you can tell how well the rapport enhances the interview for listeners: http://www1.play.it/audio/the-ultimate-entrepreneur-with-jay-abraham/

If you have any questions about the ideas here or would like to add your own, please contribute.