Quickstart Product Creation – Using Expert Interviews

You may hear people say that this is not the way
to go to developing an information product but I
say don’t listen to them because they’re wrong.

If you’re not an expert in the niche that you want
to break in to, there is absolutely no rule or law
that says you can’t develop a product unless you
‘personally’ know the subject matter.

It’s bull.

So here are 5 steps you can take to developing an
information product using expert interviews:

1. Identify the expert(s)

2. Contact the expert(s)

3. Give expert a reason why (WIIFM)
( What’s in it for me )

4. Create a list of questions

5.  Agree on terms / Conduct the interview

So let’s take a look at each of these steps individually
and explore them just a bit further. If you’re looking
for a step by step course this isn’t what this is but rather
a birds eye view of the main process.

At step one all you’re going to do is brainstorm who the
experts are in that niche. For instance if you were to
take the make money nice or internet marketing niche and
I wanted to do an interview with experts who are specifically
making money using information marketing then I would look
at everyone I could think of and begin making a list one by
one like so.

1. Mike Filsaime
2. Frank Kern
3. Eben Pagan
4. Jeff Walker
5. Etc….Etc….

Now I know these guys off the top of my head but what if
you didn’t? Well you can use a couple of places to get you
started in the right directly. The first place I like to
start doing any type of research is at Google. I would go
to www.Google.com and I would search for my niche keyword
and then the term expert after it. So my search in Google
looks like this:

information marketing expert

And I got a little bit of feedback from Google on who Google
thinks is my info marketing gurus ( experts ). I see Adam Urbanski
who I don’t know but the name sounds familiar, I see Joe Polish
which Joe is actually a big name in the industry and he lives here
in Arizona where I live so I know that name very well. And what
you want to do is go through and find names of people who are
in the industry and begin making a list of possible experts to
ask to do an interview with.

The other place you can use to find experts could be a site like
Big Boards and you can find them at big-boards.com. This is a site
that has a listing of a ton of forums and message boards where you
can look in very niche specific and find experts. For something like
this it’s best to search your target niche and then go to each board
one by one and begin looking for the guys with a lot of authority and
tons of posts.

The guys with the most posts are going to be the ‘gurus’ of those forums
and will have a lot of authority within that community and even outside
of the community. Your goal is to again make a list of all the big names
you can find, where you found them and a way to contact them once you’re
done with your research.

Ok, so step two is where we’re going to actually contact the experts and
try and get them to do an interview with us. This is a crucial step and it
is more than just sending an email saying “Can I interview you?”. If you
blow this step then there will be no interview, this is crucial. You don’t
have to have some elaborate fancy letter to them but you do need to have
a damn good reason for them to say yes to you.

Which leads us into step 3…

Step 3 could easily be the most important step of all because if you come
off the wrong way or you don’t have a good WIIFM for the expert, there will
not be any interview at all. You just need to give the expert a reason why
they should spend any time with you being interviewed.

Keep in mind that they are human beings and not someone who is not approachable
by any means, but, you have to also understand that they probably see a LOT of
offers like this everyday and they can’t say yes to every one who emails them
so in order to weed out those who are just going to waste their time, there must
be a good reason why.

So keep thinking to yourself “Why should they say yes to me?” What are they going
to get out of me (you) interviewing them? It could be that you’ve already lined up a
lot of different experts in the industry and if they do this interview with you there
will be a ton of exposure that will instantly put them in the spotlight as the expert
in the industry, it can be anything but you must give them a really good reason why.

If you get other names that they recognize that have already agreed to do an interview
with you then they’ll be WAY more likely to say yes without much thought about it, no
one wants to be the one to say know when another recognized name has already said yes
Even letting them know who you plan to contact could be something that can be used to
persuade them to say yes.

The experts are going to want to know the type of audience is going to receive the
information and how qualified they are to receive it. In other words, who specifically
is going to hear the interview, how targeted are they to the information. So you wouldn’t
send traffic that is interested in information marketing to a gardening call right?
It just wouldn’t make sense and also, when we say how qualified are they for the information
we’re simply asking at what stage are they in learning this information? Are they new
and know nothing…Are they intermediate…these are all very important to know for
the expert and will decide on the overall content for the call.

So step 4 is really about tailoring questions to the specific expert. What you want
to do here really take time and develop questions with the specific expert in mind.
Don’t just come up with generic questions here or you’ll never get that expert on
the phone again. If this is something that will be used as a product, you can easily
gather questions on the subject by doing surveys.

If you have a list already you can easily create a survey and send it to your list
asking them for their top questions related to ‘x’. Surveys are a great way to come
up with questions that you may not have come up with otherwise on your own. You can
also use services where people are asking questions like in forums or Yahoo answers
etc. People are asking questions on a variety of things all day long, if you find and
deliver clear and valuable information to their question and solve their problem then
you’ve done your job well.

And the final step is for you and the expert to agree on terms for the interview.
You may not think that this would even be in here but it’s vitally important that you
understand that it’s not enough to get someone on a phone and ask them questions and
think that is it. Not even close. Because you have plans to use this call to do
something very specific whether it’s to make money or give it away for free.

The other part of this is that the person being interviewed also has rights to that
same call and not just yourself so you really need to sit down and think about what
each of you want to get out of the deal. You need to think about and discuss the
resell terms for both of you. Let them know up front what you would like to do with
the content of the call and whether you plan to sell it or not and give them the
same option you have.

You need to agree on publishing the content and whether or not the call will be done
live with an audience or by yourself. And who will conduct and manage the audience
while the interview is going on. Again, these are all things you need to consider
before getting on the phone with anyone.

Putting on several of these calls with targeted experts and packaging them up can
turn into big profits. I know one of my friends Kristi Sayles who started out using
this same business model and turned this into a nice business for herself. Not only
do you have an instant product to sell but it also positions you as an expert by
default.

Try it, come back and report your results

Chris

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Tagged as: Kristi Sayles, new product creation, new product development, product creation, product development