Building a Pro-Grade Program

“My question is: What can I do to make sure leads aren’t slipping through the cracks? I’m trying to use preneed to grow my business, but it’s a challenge. Some of our advance funeral planners have been very good at what they do, but even they had drawers full of leads that were just not getting dealt with. A lot of money goes into marketing, whether it’s digital leads, direct mail campaigns, or seminars, and my people work through all the low-hanging fruit and move right on to the next thing. That's a lot of money left out there, not to mention the missed opportunities. I know that to grow through preneed, we need to reach the people who haven’t decided on our funeral home yet, even if they're a little harder to work on. It feels like we’re always struggling to take our program to the next level.”

Ouch. Losing leads is painful, and not just because of what you mention about wasted marketing spends and missed opportunities. No, it goes far beyond that. A lead is a very precious thing. It represents a family who has asked for your help.

I get a lot of great questions from funeral home owners across the country. I’ll be addressing these in upcoming columns, but this question of maximizing lead conversion is one that comes up most frequently. Thankfully, there’s an answer, and it starts by reimagining what’s possible with preneed.

Rethink Passive Business

If you're like many funeral homes, your preneed program’s production comes primarily from walk-ins and call-ins.

These are the simplest and easiest families to prearrange. You’ve already built relationships with many of them, and they know — and often love — your brand. By prearranging with your funeral home, they’re demonstrating the depth of their commitment.

But your question suggests you know this is business you can already count on. There is a high likelihood these families would have eventually become at-need customers, which is fantastic.

But like many funeral homes, you are also interested in reaching new market segments and prearranging new families. You recognize this is the key to unlocking your full, untapped potential, and it is mission-critical to be proactive.

Unlock Your Untapped Potential

A walk-in and call-in approach to preneed is like a good defense. It helps you secure families you’ve already built a relationship with and keeps them from going to competitors.

To do this, you don’t need much. Contracts, calculators, and a great preneed experience will get the job done. The problem is, this passive foundation doesn’t scale beyond the families who already know your brand.

It’s like attempting an up-tempo offense with a team that doesn’t have any speed. It’s a mismatch, and to actually win games you have to devote time and attention to reoptimizing your preneed system to engage the newcomers to your brand.

All these newcomers, including the families unfamiliar with your brand and anyone who is undecided about their own funeral preferences—they hold incredible value to you. They represent new customers who wouldn't have chosen you by default and are ready to be educated on the value of ceremony and service.

This is more important today than ever. Consumer norms and preferences are changing, and many funeral homes are seeing lower average funeral values because families aren’t choosing the same kinds of funerals they might have chosen five or ten years ago. This makes it make it increasingly important to build up the value of funeral service at earlier and earlier stages

Challenge the Status Quo

When I look back over your question, it feels like a lot is happening in your program, but the results aren’t backing it up.

I’ve seen this same thing at many funeral homes where you’re trying really hard and spending a lot but still struggling to reach beyond the low-hanging fruit.

Why?

Because when people talk about active preneed, they’re talking mainly about active marketing. Your name is on bus benches, some direct mail, and maybe some social ads.

But active marketing is just one slice of a much bigger pie. As a catalyst to drive interest, active marketing is necessary, but many families need weeks and even months of sensitive nurturing before they understand the full value of preneed and are ready to take the next step. Maximizing your preneed potential requires thinking of preneed as an entire division of your business with marketing, follow-ups, sales, and the logistics and technology to connect it every step of the way.

Without that, preneed either falls on one person’s shoulders or gets spread out between too many people. You wind up with one person working extremely hard for limited results. They don’t have the time to handle the more difficult leads.

The reverse also doesn’t work. Even when a lot of your staff is trying to help, it’s no one’s full-time job. Everyone has a chance at bat, but the ball inevitably gets dropped because it’s nobody’s primary responsibility.

In both cases, your program stops and starts. You feel like you have to constantly watch over it, you get pulled in a million different directions, and you never gather the momentum you need to succeed.

Provide Remarkable Experiences that Convert

The end goal of preneed is something all funeral home owners know firsthand—a better funeral service experience.

So many owners tell me how relieved families are when they realize mom or dad put a quality plan in place. It’s a night and day difference. The experience is simply better when bereaved families can focus on gathering, connection, and healing instead of dealing with the details or the gnawing doubt of what their loved one would have wanted.

A great prearrangement experience improves the experience for everyone and allows families and funeral homes to focus on what matters most—meaningful connection.

I want the quality of your preneed program to achieve the same level of quality as your at-need program, and it sounds like you do too. This can only happen if you’re proactive every step of the way. When quality is seamless from the very first marketing touchpoint to the funeral service, families not only become believers in preneed but also believers and brand advocates of your funeral home.

This takes a lot more than flipping a switch. There are four essential components that need to be mastered in order to be proactive, and it starts by creating a phenomenal experience years in advance of a funeral.

1. Take a Proactive Approach to Sales
   
   The preneed appointment is where the rubber meets the road.
   
   The most talented advance funeral planners create extraordinary value with families, and they do this by focusing on enlightening them about the real purpose of a funeral.
   
   We shy away from the word “sales” in the funeral profession, but when you have a service you believe in—an amazing experience that benefits people and has the potential to dramatically improve and perhaps even change their lives—it’s not selling so much as a responsibility to share how much it can help.
   
   This is proactive sales. Even if a family does not end up prepaying but walks away with a prearranged funeral and a much deeper understanding of funeral service, your funeral home wins. That family is now strongly attached to your brand.
   
   With a more passive approach, there is less built-in value. To focus exclusively on developing this level of rapport and education for families is a game-changer, but it can’t happen until you also master the art of the follow-up.
   
   One thing to start doing ASAP: Frame every appointment or meeting with a family around the idea that the decisions you make today will ultimately impact those you love most, and that those decisions are made for them, not for you.
   
   
2. Follow Up with Every Family
   
   If you have ever been bounced between a half-dozen reps when calling your cable provider, you know that not all experiences are equal.
   
   The challenge with preneed follow-ups is that many families are not quite ready to take the next step. They’re harder to reach, more difficult to nurture, and they may not yet appreciate the full meaning or value of a funeral.
   
   Still, these are families who have expressed interest and are asking for your help. They deserve to be seen as more than just a marketing lead that gets left in a drawer, a CRM, or ignored.
   
   One thing to start doing ASAP: Create or find a team whose primary responsibility is calling back every single lead, and hold this team accountable. They can support your advance funeral planner, and if they can focus on follow-ups full time, even better. Their persistence and drive will be instrumental in inspiring and exciting families to take the next step.
   
   
3. Think Beyond Likes, Clicks, & Returns
   
   Once you start following up with every family, I guarantee you’ll see better performance from your marketing.
   
   A follow-up system connects your marketing directly to the rest of the preneed sales pipeline. The result is that every touchpoint becomes more valuable. You start to dial in performance because marketing spends are not being wasted, and your lead generation programs become more efficient.
   
   You’re also not burning bridges. Today’s consumers expect exemplary customer service. Failure to follow up after they respond to an ad or attend a community seminar leaves a bad first impression.
   
   One thing to start doing ASAP: Don’t stop your measurements at marketing returns. In your next campaign, track the number of leads who set appointments, and begin using that as a benchmark to continuously improve. When you can track performance all the way through the preneed pipeline, you start to see significant and sustained growth.
   
   
4. Make Sure It All Just Works
   
   Even with all these pieces in place—consistently great prearrangement experiences, active sales, quality appointment setting, and performance-driven marketing—a lot of funeral homes find that their programs still sputter.
   
   Why? Because of the in-between pieces that are so hard to successfully mesh. Getting leads is one thing. An effective system for managing every lead is another thing altogether, not to mention the technology needed to sort, evaluate, and assign each lead to an ideal nurture path while also tracking its progress through the entire preneed pipeline.
   
   To successfully measure and analyze it all, these various pieces need to talk to each other. They need to connect.
   
   One thing to start doing ASAP: Assign every task of the preneed pipeline so that responsibilities are clear. Narrow it down to the finest detail—who is taking in leads and entering them into a CRM, who is tracking set rates, who is analyzing campaign performance, who is tracking appointment hold rates. When you add up all of these things, they make a big difference and help you deliver the best possible experience to families.
   
   

Conclusion

At the end of the day, you have two choices for taking your program to the next level: 1) You can do it yourself and start building all the necessary pieces of a proactive program, or 2) you can outsource the work to a trusted partner.

The aim of this column is to continue sharing proven strategies and tips so funeral professionals like yourself can make the best possible choices for improving their preneed programs. Think of it as a preneed playbook. In my next installment, I’ll dive into the question of accountability. In the meantime, here’s a step you can take right now to begin evaluating the strength of your program.

By strengthening your program and setting a higher standard for preneed, your funeral home can reach new heights. You’ll grow your brand, prearrange new families, and increase both average funeral value and at-need case volume. Together, let’s reimagine what’s possible with preneed.

Have a preneed question? Please reach out to me at preneedprotips@precoa.com and I’d be happy to answer.

---

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.