When I do this practice interview with people practicing their soundbites, and it's the telephone interview, I might literally tell them to hold their phone to simulate it to get them to look down. This is also an interview that I do longer. This one may be it's not a large group. And it's not just 20 minute prep. I may do this one for eight 910 minutes, I want to go more in depth, because I want to pull more sound bites out of them. So we'll do the interview, then we play it back.
But here's what I do. I tell them, I want you to really listen. Don't worry about what it looks like. Listen, but I want you to write down and make a mark for every single sound bite element you hear now, any one soundbite if it's an analogy and an attack and as an emotion in it. Well, that's three soundbite elements. I want you to really listen strategically.
And I give them the list I give them on a single sheet of paper. For the handouts available for you in the soundbite section, but I give them the, the list of the 10 soundbite elements. And I asked them to keep a running tally of every soundbite they hear. And they say, I also want to know if you have any sound bites that are off message. So for example, if I asked them a provocative question, you know, don't you feel bad about how slow your company was to react during the initial stages of the last recession, and they say something like, of course, we were initially slow, but there's a soundbite they attacked themselves. So I want them to really build an ear quite often, most of the time.
If it's the first time you've done an interview like this, it's very easy to get somebody to say at least one or two sound bites off message. That's okay. That's why you're rehearsing with them. But you want them to build an ear for that. Ideally, they can spot it in here. You're not going to have to tell them that.
So you want them to take detailed notes, every soundbite element they hear on message, every sound bite you hear off mess, and then ask them, how many total sound bites Did you hear? You may have heard 50 if they only hear four, that's a problem. It's not that there's one specific exact perfect number if you heard 50 and they're telling you 47 or 58 that's a good sign. Now, if you're working with a group of people, and five of them say 8987 82 and one person says 10, quite often, that means that person is at 10 doesn't really get this yet, you're gonna have to give them some remedial efforts there. But that's what's crucial here is really building them the ability to hear sound bites to be aware of them. To analyze sound bites anywhere and everywhere before we go to the next big step