Every week I tell you about the basic principles of good marketing. Some weeks good marketing intersects with real life events. Last week was one of those weeks. I had been called for jury duty, and it was time to fulfill my civic responsibility. What I assumed would be a minor inconvenience for my business devolved into one of the most stressful hours I have had in years, thinking I might lose a month of income and clients to serving on a case. But this is a tale of how good marketing skills got me dismissed.
I was called for the Superior Court in my county. That means sitting in a waiting room with about 250 people for two days. During those two days, your name might get called to be interviewed (voir dire) by the judge to see if you would be a suitable juror for a case. The average case lasts about a week and a half, so they tell you to be available for a couple weeks total. For most, the two days is all they will serve.
For the first three cases, they had called for two groups of 50 and one group of 35 potential jurors. After lunch on that second day, they asked for a whopping 80 people. And so my name got called for the biggest case. However, they called the first 50 up to the room for voir dire, and I was number 65. My fingers were crossed that there would be some gems in that first group and they wouldn’t need me at all. Five minutes later, at least 35 of those people marched back into the room. The employee in the room told the rest of us to get ready. I started to feel nervous. I heard one of the jurors mention that the case was estimated to last 3.5 weeks. Now I started to panic.
As a small business owner, I don’t have 3.5 weeks to spare at the spur of the moment. In fact, I had some commitments as early as the following week and missing them meant lost revenue. I thought about broken engagements, broken contracts, lost prospects. I appreciate civic duty, but I didn’t see how I would cope with losing income for a month. I felt about as much fear as I remember feeling in years. I couldn’t afford for jury duty to be that long-term.
This was the time to use my marketing skills in reverse. What could I do to make myself unselectable without being obviously inauthentic? I had ten minutes to come up with a plan.
Step 1: Build credibility. I put careful thought into how I reported my profession on the form you have to fill out. I made sure to note that I was self-employed. I noted that I was an event manager. I decided to leave out the part about marketing so they wouldn’t think I was good at convincing people of things.
Step 2: Listen. As the judge explained the details of the case (which was horrific, by the way), I took mental note of all the different aspects of it that I could use to ask for dismissal. All the ways that I could be the wrong juror. I identified two good reasons and one long shot.
Step 3: Plant multiple impressions. I intended to show the attorneys and the judge in a variety of subtle ways that I was not the right juror. I made subtle, clear, but silent reactions to anything that I knew I would fight later. I took advantage of the first appropriate opportunity to state a reason for dismissal: hardship. If that didn’t work, I would be persistent with my approach.
Step 4: Know your audience. About a third of the thirty of us potential jurors claimed a hardship. The judge went through one at a time, probing at least half of the people with numerous follow-up questions. My fear heightened as I watched the judge interact with the juror before me. She hated him. He was a pediatric something-or-other. He made a comment about having scheduled a bunch of patients in the next couple of weeks. She asked him why he would schedule patients when he was supposed to have jury duty. He back-pedaled. She closed with “I once had a pediatric [something-or-other] serve on a case for three weeks….number 65!!!” Terror. This woman had heard it all, and she was stone cold.
Having some evidence of what was and wasn’t working so far, I revised my pitch on the fly. I told her about being self-employed. I mentioned that I had six speaking engagements coming up “during the projected time of the trial.” (Not mentioning the fact that three of them were the next week). And I raised the stakes. I told her that some of those speaking engagements were for nonprofits or chambers of commerce, so those organizations would lose revenue from ticket sales if they had to cancel the event. She flipped to my form to check my profession. She asked no follow-up questions. I was dismissed.
Of course, if you can serve on a jury, serve on a jury! I am sure it would have been an interesting experience. But, with my livelihood on the line, serving on the trial was not a viable option. Although it was a brand new forum for me, and I was totally out of my element, I was able to rely on good marketing skills to ensure that I made the strongest pitch for myself. These skills truly are transferable outside of business, and if you look around you may find that applying your marketing knowledge can help you connect with people in more productive ways in life. After two days in a waiting room and one tense hour, I am now back to work!