Page 153 - How To Sell Yourself

152 How to Sell Yourself
Don’t elaborate.
Don’t volunteer information.
Always be brief and to the point.
It is, after all, the opposing attorney’s job to discredit your testi- mony. It is your job to convince the jury that you’re telling the truth.
As in any confrontation, you can turn negative questions into positive answers. And the communication skills of mind, body, and voice will do the rest in convincing the jury to decide in your favor.
It’s not unusual for clients to tell me they did better than they thought they would. Several have even been congratulated by the attorney for the other side, telling them how good they were.
My son-in-law is an osteopath who frequently is asked to ap- pear as an expert witness in workmen’s compensation cases. He says that now that he’s worked on the communication techniques I teach, the opposition lawyers are asking him after a trial ends if they can call on him as a witness in the future.
Congressional testimony
An appearance before a committee of the U.S. Senate or House of Representatives is unlike any other experience. We’ve seen many examples of this on television. Some have been good; most have been terrible. The most familiar image is that of the witness who opens his attaché case, takes out an 80-page manuscript, hunches over the text, and says to the page, “Mr. Chairman, members of this distinguished committee, my name is...” and on he drones until the last word is read in a dull monotone and everybody has fallen asleep.
How to stand out
There’s no excuse for that kind of testimony. Very few people, including professional lobbyists, realize there’s a regulation on the books that says that testimony before Congress will be a sum- mary of what’s been previously submitted. The person who reads the entire submission in a dull monotone is being just plain rude to Congress and is in violation of the rules.
If you’re called upon to testify before Congress, first submit the full text of your statement, as required, 48 or 72 hours before