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Everyone likes to start the new year off on the right foot. That's the driving force behind resolutions like getting a new gym membership or finally learning to play the piano. And for business owners, this is the perfect time to hit the ground running so you can reach new customers, grow your market, and make 2025 your best year yet.
But how should you ring in the new year with preneed? By resolving to get proactive. A proactive program is a proven source of tremendous growth. Not only will it help to address the biggest challenges facing the profession today, but you'll also tap into entirely new market segments and set yourself up for long-term success.
You've probably heard that a proactive preneed program is the best way to introduce new families to your funeral home and grow your business. But how exactly do you do that?
It starts with making preneed a full-time focus. A successful proactive preneed program can't be sustained on spare time or distracted effort. That's a surefire way to move in fits and starts, which is a recipe for ineffectiveness, lost momentum, and missing out on all the benefits being proactive entails.
Notice I didn't say it needs to be *your* full-time focus. Funeral home leaders have enough on their plates, between helping at-need families and the day-to-day effort of running a business. Adding managing a proactive preneed program to your list of to-dos can be a distraction from everything else. But that doesn't mean preneed shouldn't be *someone's* full-time focus.
The simple fact is there are people in your community who are interested in preplanning but don't know how to take the next step. I've lost count of the funeral home owners I've met who are frustrated because they know there's more preneed potential in their markets, but they don't have the time, budget, or staff to tap into it.
If you're looking to grow your business, preneed isn't something you can focus on once and then move on. While there might be pent-up demand the first time you launch a marketing campaign, there will also be demand a month, a year, or ten years from now. And a proactive program is the only way you can ensure you're consistently meeting this demand and maximizing the potential of every preneed prospect.
Your First Small Step: Think of your team. Whose shoulders does your preneed program rest on? To whom do you delegate the work of strategizing, marketing, following up, and meeting with new families? If it's everyone's responsibility – in addition to their core role – then it's no one's responsibility. Making sure there are clear roles and accountabilities is the key to being more consistent and effective.
As a funeral home leader, you know the value of ceremony, ritual, and gathering after a loss. But that is not the case for a growing number of families. More than a quarter of Americans are no longer religiously affiliated, meaning fewer people inherently value funeral service because they're not as closely tied to traditional institutions.
The good news: You can change the shifting tides. By proactively reaching out to families within your community, you can build new relationships with families *and* educate them about the value of ceremony, ritual, and gathering at your funeral home.
Too often, we encounter funeral homes who rely on a yearly mailer or price increase notice to drum up business. That approach appeals only to the minds and pocketbooks of your community, with the unintentional consequence that it downplays the importance and meaning of the services you offer. The result is that people start viewing a funeral as a commodity, not an essential part of the healing process after a loss.
Instead, a proactive preneed program can shift the conversation back to meaning. Through an omnichannel approach, you can appeal to the minds and hearts of those in your community who are interested in preplanning. Your message can be crafted to tell your story and show people how you'll help them navigate grief and uncertainty following a loss.
Your First Small Step: Take a closer look at your marketing channels, your messaging, and where you can make an even bigger impact. You might start with community events. When done right, Community Education Programs are one of the best ways to share the value of what you do and educate families on the power of funeral service at your funeral home. Start testing which event ads get the most RSVPs, which events get the best attendance, and which attendees result in the most appointments and prearrangements. Over time, you can improve your success rate and connect with more families.
A strange thing happens to many businesses after they generate a lead: They lose sight of the fact that a lead represents so much more than just a name in a database or a potential sale.
My hunch is that this is largely because of missed follow-ups. When you let leads slip through the cracks or forget to call them back, it's much easier to explain them away as data points.
But a lead is obviously more than a data point. It's an individual who raised their hand and said, "I'm interested in preplanning with *your* funeral home."Don't we owe it to these individuals to do everything in our power to help?
That's the philosophy behind Precoa's Funeral Planning Center. A lot of families express interest in preplanning but need nurturing and a series of follow-ups before they're ready to take the next step. Our mission is to help them do that.
Here's what it takes to get started: First, a systematic way to track and manage every lead and touchpoint. Over time, you learn a lot about the families most likely to preplan, which allows you to create a series of personalized nurture paths so that you become even more effective and prearrange even more families.
The fact is, improving your follow-up process is one of the fastest ways to start growing through preneed. It's the bridge between interest and action, and while it may involve a bit of phone tag, the results and connections you make will be worth it.
Your First Small Step: Gather the leads from your next marketing campaign and start tracking every call and follow-up. By being more attuned to where each family is in their journey, you can be more strategic about future follow-ups and your nurturing process.
Preneed marketing and sales should never be a mystery. While there are a lot of steps between clicking on a preplanning ad and actually prearranging a funeral, the only way to consistently improve is by having total visibility into the whole process.
We call this process the "preneed pipeline."Measure it effectively, and you'll not only optimize performance but also gain deeper insights into your business and the preferences of the families in your community.
Of course, making solid business decisions starts with solid data. For funeral homes, this means integrating the various pieces of the preneed pipeline—lead generation, follow-ups, and sales—into a system like a CRM or even a dashboard. The goal should be to see everything at a glance so it can always be managed and tracked.
This typically involves a few hurdles. Funeral homes working with multiple vendors often have trouble getting across-the-board alignment, and there's also the matter of getting buy-in from your salespeople.
The best way to solve the latter is to make sure your Advance Funeral Planners see the value of logging information into your system. If it triggers a clear action—an appointment that doesn't result in a sale gets moved back into the follow-up workflow—they'll be more inclined to do it.
Your First Small Step: Start measuring preneed appointment set, hold, and close rates to increase the effectiveness of your preneed pipeline. Your set rate is the ratio of appointments set over leads generated. Your hold rate is the ratio of appointments that do not get canceled over the number of appointments set. Finally, your close rate is the number of appointments that result in a prearrangement over the number of appointments held. Each of these gives you insight into critical stages of your preneed pipeline, and you'll have evidence for where to improve.
It's no secret that consumer preferences are shifting faster than ever. According to Accenture, 88 percent of business owners say people are changing faster than their businesses can keep up.
As a funeral home leader, you have likely already experienced the effects of these changes. More than 60 percent of Americans no longer live in their hometowns, and families are more fragmented through the rise of so-called "Gray Divorce"– an almost twofold increase in divorce among those 50 and older.
With fewer institutional and personal ties, a growing number of families are more often looking for convenience and savings when they come to a funeral home. Many of them have already made up their minds or else they don't know what resources, guidance, or value your funeral home can offer. A proactive preneed program allows you to reach families earlier in their journey and educate them about what you do, but it's crucial to know as much as you can about your customers in order to effectively reach them.
We've worked with funeral homes across the country, and while every market is different, there are a lot of similarities when you look at the makeup of your ideal preneed prospects. Understanding who they are allows you to better understand how to reach them, and which marketing messages and channels will resonate.
Not only will this result in more informed business decisions, but you'll be able to share your story and grow your brand. Yet this work can be arduous and time-consuming, especially when you are starting from scratch. Many funeral homes find it easier and more effective to work with a trusted partner who specializes in preneed data analysis and has decades of experience proactively expanding preneed in a variety of communities.
Your First Small Step: Start analyzing the potential in your market by looking at specific demographics. A good place to start is with a standard demographic factor like age, but you'll soon find there are a lot of other factors that correlate with the people who will be most likely to preplan. If you need help, we offer a free Market Share Analysis expertly crafted by our preneed data scientists. It's no strings attached and will give you more insight into the families you could be reaching.
Be sure to read next month's Preneed Pro Tip, where we'll talk about what a market share analysis looks like and how knowing more about your market can lead to significant and sustained growth.
Tyler Anderson is senior vice president of business development at Precoa, a preneed company that helps hundreds of funeral homes prearrange more families and grow their markets. Born and raised in the funeral profession, Tyler appreciated the importance of ceremony, ritual, and gathering from an early age. He is passionate about sharing a new vision for preneed that helps more families across the country experience a meaningful funeral service.