Tommy Kramer Tip #79 – Making Contact

Think about how often you’ve heard someone say that a performer, during a concert, looked RIGHT AT him (or her). This is not an accident. One of the biggest singers of the seventies told me once that he purposely, at some point in his performance, looked at all 9 “zones” of the venue: Left, Center, Right. Upper, middle, and lower seats in each direction.

He didn’t do them in that order; it was random, but this enabled every single person in the audience to think that they made eye contact at some point.
The truth was, because of the lighting, he couldn’t really see anybody very well. But the illusion was powerful.

It’s the same way in radio, except we have to make contact verbally. To accomplish this, you have to say something that is shared—something that your listener can totally identify with.

This means you can’t simply grab something from a prep sheet or Facebook or a website and basically just read it to me. You have to make it personal.
In every city, there’s a small number of jocks—maybe only 2 or 3—that really make contact on a daily basis. You can always find them at the very top of the ratings.

The benefit of coaching is that there are very specific techniques that can help you get the hang of this in a pretty short amount of time. If you’re not getting that in-house, reach out.