I’ll be picking a jury a week from Monday in a difficult and tragic wrongful death case. I approach jury selection as a chance for me to get to know the people who will ultimately serve on my jury and to try and figure out if they will be a good fit for my case. I want to make sure that after hearing all the evidence, they’ll try to render a fair and impartial verdict in our case.

So how do I pick my juries and what can you take away from this process?

Well, one of the first things I do is to try and figure out what’s going to be the white elephant in the room. Will I be dealing with a single large white elephant or an entire herd of elephants?

I do this because the fact is, it’s getting harder and harder for people to connect with other people. Sure, technology makes it easier for all of us to interact but truth be told, the attention span of today’s audience (my jury and your sales prospect) is only about 9 seconds—less than the attention span of a goldfish.

The point is that you have a very short window of opportunity to gain someone’s trust. You simply can’t say or do something that’s going to interrupt the process. You need to gain trust as quickly as possible and if you avoid the white elephant in the room, everyone will know it.

There’s probably no more difficult of a place to gain trust than in a courtroom with 12 random jurors who, prior to trial, you’ve never met. I guess what I’m saying is that in light of the above, if these 6 steps work for me in court, they’ll most certainty work for you during your next presentation.

But first, what’s a white elephant? Listen to my podcast to learn this approach...