Kates-Boylston Product Spotlight
Addressing Core Funeral Home Challenges Through ProActive Preneed
With Tyler Anderson & Stan Goldstein
“If you ask a funeral home owner, there’s many,” Tyler Anderson, Precoa’s vice president of business development, tells Stan Goldstein of Kates-Boylston Publications. “When we partner with a funeral home, we address the two biggest challenges facing the profession today—decreasing revenue per call and the increasing cost of doing business—but our model is designed to also solve some of the day-to-day headaches of running a preneed program.”
For nearly two decades, Precoa has partnered with leading funeral homes in markets both big and small. The company’s ProActive Preneed® system was built to maximize preneed performance for funeral homes with a unique focus on delivering exemplary consumer experiences. The results include a sustained increase in preneed volume and increased at-need market share.
There’s also relief for the three most persistent preneed headaches that Tyler has heard come up again and again.
When funeral homes want a more robust preneed program, it can feel demoralizing to see the same outcome year over year.
Stagnant results happen when a business fails to adapt or try something new, Tyler says.
“When you peel the layers back, that’s often due to a lack of innovation in lead generation strategies where you’re expecting a different result but not actually changing any of the tactics.”
But what differentiates Precoa’s ProActive Model is how those tactics have been rigorously tested and refined to ensure a constant flow of quality leads.
Focusing on the quality of your leads is important. It ensures a better outcome for Advance Funeral Planners. They should be able to meet with families who are legitimately interested in preplanning, and when coupled with a system for appointment setting and nurturing, these will be families who are actually excited to take the next step.
It’s in that respect, Tyler says, that ProActive Preneed® provides the innovation so many funeral homes are looking for.
Every industry right now is struggling to find the right people to fill roles.
But in funeral service and preneed especially, it’s difficult to find someone who has the prerequisite skill set or experience.
“We focus on recruiting as a marketing effort,” Tyler says. “We market and sell the positive impact that a career in funeral service can have. That has enabled us to find the people who have the right heart for the position.”
A successful Advance Funeral Planner is someone who is sensitive and passionate about helping families put an intentional plan in place after the loss of a loved one. They are also extraordinarily skilled salespeople. It’s this balance that is key.
And through personality and cognitive tests – benchmarked against the most successful Advance Funeral Planners – Precoa can predict with high likelihood how successful a prospective advance funeral planner will be in the role.
For a lot of funeral homes, the responsibility for preneed falls primarily on the shoulders of the advance funeral planner. Owners will often oversee their preneed program, but because they’re also being pulled in a hundred different directions with their core business, it’s a challenge.
Tyler says an overdependence on individual performance can lead to inconsistency.
“If you talk with the most successful Advance Funeral Planners across the country, they’ll tell you their favorite part of the job is actually meeting with families,” Tyler says. “Most will spend 70 percent of their time prospecting and scheduling, leaving less than a third of their working hours dedicated to sharing the importance of ritual, ceremony and gathering.”
ProActive Preneed® turns that ratio on its head. Through Precoa’s proprietary Funeral Planning Center, Advance Funeral Planners are able to spend 70 percent of their time in front of families, creating lifelong brand advocates for your funeral home.
The result is a more fulfilling experience for the Advance Funeral Planner who gets to focus more attention on doing what they’re most passionate about. Of course, your funeral home also benefits. Having as many conversations as possible with families before a loss has a dramatically positive impact for a funeral home, both in terms of growing your brand and increasing your preneed volume.
“It’s important that you look at the model you’re running as well as the performance of the individual,” Tyler says. “When you put those two things together, the results are unmatched.”
So what can you do to improve your preneed program? Tyler says the most important step you can take is to be active. Get out in the community and have as many conversations as possible about why a funeral matters.
“More and more families are trying to find out what a funeral means to those left behind,” Tyler said. “If we’re not out there having those conversations, they’re finding those answers somewhere else. ProActive Preneed® can help you reach those families and educate them on the value of ceremony and gathering.”
Tyler says the funeral business has done an incredible job of creating customizable and personalized at-need experiences for families.
“But we may have overlooked that it’s only relevant to the willing purchaser, and research shows we have fewer and fewer willing purchasers,” Tyler says. “We create more willing purchasers by talking about ritual, ceremony and gathering in advance instead of waiting until the day we’ve lost a loved one.”
“That’s really where we see the value of ProActive Preneed.”
If you’d like to reach more families and start your journey toward 2X Preneed, request a free market share analysis today.