"How do you get good at interviewing clients?"
Practice . . . Practice . . . Practice

I have been interviewing people all of my life, even when I was just a little nipper. But since 1974, I have been interviewing people professionally. So here is a little recent history to help you understand my own journey. My "Ancient History" follows below for those who like to know more.

Recent History

The Professional Actor

After getting my Ph.D. in Theatre Arts from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, I worked for 10 years as a professional actor in Chicago. Do you remember that wonderful television show shot in Chicago called "Jack & Mike?" How about "Lady Blue?" No? Well I was simply BRILLIANT in both of these shows. In Jack and Mike, I was the guy at the end of the bar who said, "Yeah Pal!" It was a chilling moment! In Lady Blue, I was a young smart-alecky FBI agent who came in to tell Danny Aiello to keep his local cop hands off the case. Certainly you remember now, don't you? No? Nobody else did either. Fortunately, I did not make my living doing TV spots. Instead I was a real "blue collar" TV actor who made "industrial films." I was an on-camera presenter — One of about 10 hot-shot guys in town who literally did about 95% of these marketing and training videos. One week I was playing a lawyer, the next a doctor, the next a farmer, etc. I spent 3,000 hours on camera and did over 600 projects as a professional actor. I became very broad, and very shallow. ;-) I could talk for a short time about nearly any subject or profession, because I interviewed people to learn how they walked, talked and performed their jobs. And I interviewed people to discover how their product or service created value. The video industry in Chicago was booming. Life was great. My wife, Melanie, and I moved to a great suburb of Chicago and bought our first house. I did a big national commercial that ran on the Super Bowl. Shortly after that, the economy and the video industry took a major dive. Time to reinvent again.

The Professional Speaker

I became a professional speaker, the Nation's TechnoMotivator™. I was already better than most speakers I saw as far as speaking skills. But I had nothing to say! As an actor, I always used someone else's script. But then I discovered that I had a real skill — I could translate the value of technology. I traveled the country for over 15 years, I speaking to a very wide range of companies and associations. Basically, I worked as a "technology translator" during those years. You see, techies were not very good at explaining the value of the toys they created. Business people were not very good at explaining their needs to the techies. So I would interview people who built technology tools and systems to discover how they worked and what value they provided. Then I would interview end-users to discover what real needs they had that the technology might solve. Then I would find a way to create entertaining programs that brought those ideas together. Life was even better than working on camera. The dot.com tsunami raised all boats and my speaking career flourished. Then came 2001. The "dot.coms" crashed, the economy skidded, then September 11th killed off the rest of my speaking business. Time to reinvent again.

The Testimonial Guy

I discovered something very important in 2001. I could now do nearly everything I used to do as a professional actor in a studio, right at my desktop. I discovered that I had a real talent that few could match. I could draw out stories from customers about the value they got from the products and services they purchased. I started doing this work full time. Although I had probably done over 1,000 interviews during my career of one sort or another, I was now being paid handsomely to capture these stories for my clients. Then along the way, I discovered that if I dug a little deeper into the client's relationship with their Raving Fans, that I could discover additional work my clients could do for them. I found new ways for both my client and their Raving Fans to help market each other. I converted Raving Fans into Evangelists. I helped my clients discover their unique selling proposition and their best vertical markets to create never-ending streams of perfect customers. But though I could do this successfully for my clients, I also realized that they needed to have these conversations themselves. Thus was born the site you are on now that is dedicated to teaching you how to have client value conversations with your clients.

Want to know more?

Click here for my "Ancient History"

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