When you work in TV and radio, at some point in your career, you will encounter people who make horrible guests. They are boring, nervous and just plain dry.
But Beatrice Leonard was the complete opposite. She was recently a guest on Perspective, the Community Affairs show I host here in Chicago. Despite her blindness, she came to our set with a great attitude, a wonderful sense of humor and was a joy to interview.
Unlike most people, she hit the mark on several interview strategies I always encourage my clients to use:
1.) Use the hosts name frequently. This makes you come across more personal and endears you to the host.
2.) Tell a great story or give relevant statistics. Everyone loves a great story because it gives us a chance to visualize a situation and brings us closer to someone else’s experience.
3.) Avoid the hard sell. Anyone who gets a chance to do a media interview wants to make sure to promote their product or service. The key is do it subtlely. Don’t oversell or turn the interview into an infomercial. That will immediately turn the listeners off and ruin your chances of getting invited back.
Kudos to Beatrice Leonard. She did everything right. Add to that, she made a topic that could have boring a lot of fun. Take a look at a portion of her interview.
