Playing the Long Game
Preneed Pro Tips is an ongoing column where Tyler Anderson, Senior Vice President of Business Development at Precoa, answers questions about preneed from funeral professionals.
BY Tyler Anderson
A lot of people say consistency is the key to success in business. Offering a consistently great product or service, getting a consistent inflow of customers, and delivering consistently remarkable consumer experiences are the hallmarks of all the best brands.
But for funeral homes everywhere who want to grow through preneed, consistency can be a struggle. The challenge comes in how most preneed programs are put together. Yet by taking a few of the strategic steps explained below, you can turn preneed from a challenge of consistency into an ongoing source of serious growth.
As you already know, the best decisions in business are strategic. They’re geared towards long-term success and growth, which is why an effective preneed strategy should map out a clearly defined plan for your next quarter, year, and three to five years, along with how it will all be executed.
The mistake a lot of funeral homes make with preneed is settling for a quick fix. Want a few more preneed leads? Just turn on the marketing faucet and see if you can drum up a little interest. But there are a couple of reasons why this approach is a drain on resources and winds up costing you a lot of potential customers.
The first reason is that marketing is about relationships and familiarity. Not everyone is ready to act the moment they see a message. In one study done by Google, it was found that the average customer journey today includes between 20 and 500 touchpoints. 1 So while there’s a whole reservoir full of leads who are interested in preplanning with your funeral home, they won’t come spilling through that preneed faucet all at once.
The second reason is that it’s inefficient. A campaign that runs briefly but gets sidelined or abandoned is like a road not taken. Who knows what might have happened with more time or a few tweaks? Not only do you lose out on momentum, but you also lose out on learning how to improve.
So how do you consistently attract new families to your funeral home and nurture those harder-to-reach people in your market?
Develop a long-term proactive preneed strategy. Start by analyzing the consumers in your unique market, and then use that data to inform your marketing plan. When you reach the right people at the right times with the right messaging, you’ll start getting a consistent inflow of high-quality leads who are interested in prearranging with your funeral home.
Even the most talented and determined salesperson will struggle without support. Whether it’s using their valuable time to schedule appointments instead of spending time with families or only following up with families who are ready to preplan and prefund right now, consistency will always remain an issue for AFPs without a support system.
But here’s an unfortunate truth: If everyone is accountable, no one is accountable. It’s tempting to delegate responsibilities in your preneed program to other members of your team, piecing out jobs to whoever has the bandwidth at the moment or to those whose current roles are “close enough.”
But if everyone is trading off responsibilities like answering phones or scheduling events and appointments, tasks inevitably fall through the cracks and your funeral home’s preneed program will struggle to sustain performance or grow.
It takes thoughtful hard work to sort out which roles are needed to sustain a successful program. An outstanding advance funeral planner is at the center, but who is setting appointments? Who is setting up marketing campaigns? Who is keeping track of RSVPs for community education events? There are a lot of spinning plates involved in the day-to-day operations of a growing preneed program, and it’s more than any one person can handle on their own.
There's also the question of your advance funeral planner's development. On top of logistical support for all the steps involved in the preneed pipeline, a great advance funeral planner can become even greater with the right guidance and coaching. Another key role is a sales enablement expert who can help your people hone their skills.
Building a support system doesn’t mean adding more to everyone’s to-do list. It means finding people who are uniquely suited to fulfill the needs of your program. Sometimes this means hiring an in-house team that only focuses on preneed. More and more funeral homes today choose to work with a trusted partner to implement and execute their preneed strategy. How you get there is up to you, but without clear roles, it’s an uphill battle.
So what does that support look like? In part, it’s what we mentioned above: enabling your advance funeral planner to meet with families face-to-face and share the value of ceremony and gathering at your funeral home. But it’s tough to know if that support is succeeding without concrete data on every touchpoint, from the first digital ad a family sees until they have preplanned and prefunded their final wishes.
We deeply value data at Precoa. In fact, when the company started back in 2004, our very first hires were data analysts and database specialists. One of the biggest reasons we did this is because the preneed pipeline is so complex. There are thousands of demographic details to consider in every market, thousands of variations and tests you can run with your marketing campaigns, and thousands of lead details to manage and keep track of at every step.
With so many data points, it’s important to develop systems that give you direct insight into your program’s performance. Your aim should be maximum clarity. Every piece of the preneed pipeline, from lead to prearranged funeral, should be visible so that you always know where you can continue improving.
If you want to get started tracking the success of your preneed program, we suggest you start with these three data points: set rate, hold rate and close rate.
Your set rate – the amount of appointments you set in a certain time – is a great indicator of how well your marketing is working. If your set rate is low, it’s worth taking a look at your marketing for any areas of improvement. Your hold rate is how many of the appointments set lead to an actual meeting with a family. A good hold rate means your follow-up system is working well. And if your close rate – how many appointments result in a prefunded funeral – is lacking, then your problems may lie toward the end of the preneed pipeline.
Ask any great guitarist how to get better at playing guitar, and the answer will always be the same - practice. There are no shortcuts to expertise; the same can be said for preneed.
The good news is that expertise is all but guaranteed if you follow the steps already mentioned. When you create a system of accountability and build the infrastructure to support your people, you learn more about the preneed pipeline than ever before.
You also discover where to improve. When you can break down whether a dip in preneed volume is because of an underperforming campaign or an advance funeral planner struggling to close appointments, you know where to focus your attention. You can devote your time to getting that part of your program back on track instead of wasting resources or spinning your wheels.
This is one of the reasons Precoa focuses so much attention on reporting. Because we manage the entire preneed pipeline for our partners, we want them to have complete insight into performance every step of the way. Even when the improvements you make are small or incremental, they add up over time.
The end result you’ll see is a sustained upward swing—one that reflects the growing number of families prearranging with your funeral home.
There are some firms who choose a less active preneed strategy and simply want to preplan the families who walk in or call in to their funeral homes. But for those who would like to grow through preneed, developing a proactive system for consistency is key.
It takes time and effort to get up and running, but it will improve the overall experience for everyone. Funeral homes will gain the competitive edge by growing their brands and getting more funerals, and advance funeral planners will get to spend more of their time doing what they do best - meeting with families.
Even more importantly, families will enjoy a seamless experience while at the same time learning more about the remarkable value of a meaningful funeral at your funeral home.
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.