Here's the scenario. You're the owner of a wholesale fruit and vegetable business. Things are humming along just fine when: (Pick your favorite crisis)
1. One of your employees, who turns out to be undocumented, gets into one of your company trucks and drives through a barricade at a farmers market while making a delivery.
2. The green onions you delivered to the local Taco Johns cause more than 100 people to become violently ill with e coli poisoning.
3. While trimming some lettuce, an employee loses a finger that ends up in a grocery store salad bar.
Would you be ready to represent your company in interviews with the media? Do you know the techniques you can use to answer a reporter's question and still convey your company's key messages?
If the answer to either of those questions is no, then you should get professional media training. An objective third party expert can coach you and your executive team on how to get the best possible result from a potentially contentious media interview.
This is my first post in a series on media training. In the next couple of weeks, I will cover these topics:
- Who needs media training and why?
- Developing key messages
- The training process and how it works
- Practice makes perfect
You may think that you will never be in a situation where you will be the key spokesperson in a media interview. Here's a funny interview my colleague Jane uses in her media training sessions. This poor man was at the TV station to interview for a janitorial position. They asked him if he was here for "the interview," to which he said yes, so they miked him up and put him on the set. The hilarious results speak for themselves.
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