Sometimes a reporter will call under deadline and your goal is to get as many quotes in the article, while at the same time, eating up the clock to make it unnecessary and undesirable for the reporter to call your competitors for a quote. Below is a link to a story where I was interviewed for a story by Forbes.

http://www.forbes.com/leadership/2008/04/21/ceo-corporate-image-lead-manage-cx_mk_0421tv.html

In this particular case, the reporter told me that he was posting the story in just a few hours. I therefore deduced that he didn’t have lots of time to call every media trainer around. I didn’t have a message I cared about getting into the story, but I wanted to get lots of real estate in the story–and make sure my competitors didn’t. So in this case, I broke the normal procedure by taking the call and doing the interview immediately. I went into full sound bite mode in an attempt to overwhelm the reporter with great choices for column filler.

Below are my actual quotes that made it into the story along with an analysis of the sound bite elements that made them quotable for the reporter:

“It’s not like when Lee Iacocca (#1 pop culture reference) could buy (#2 action oriented) an ad on three networks (#3 specific example) and hit (#4 action-oriented) the whole world (#5 absolute) in 1979 when everyone (#6 absolute) would see it,” Walker said, adding that this is the one task a CEO can’t simply assign.

“A CEO can delegate (#7 action-oriented) sales, accounting (#7 action-oriented), marketing (#8 action-oriented), but the one thing (#9 absolute) that the CEO cannot delegate is speaking (#10 action-oriented) on behalf of a whole organization (#11 absolute) to the entire world (#12 absolute).”
 

One dozen sound bite elements–in under 5 minutes. That’s how you don’t end up on the cutting room floor.

 As much as I think Bill Clinton is a master communicator, no one is perfect. Lately, he has been a little too quick to appear angry at reporters. There is a role for anger, but it must be used sparingly and for big issues only, especially if you have the stature of being a former president.

In America, the fastest way to look like a rank amateur is to ask a TV producer what you will be paid for being interviewed. You don’t usually get any fee unless you have been on for free as a guest and now are being promoted to the level of an official commentator or expert for that show or network. But in England, for example, the rules are different. Check out this article for how things are done there.