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What are the best ways to keep your preneed engine running? We’ve tried out a few different versions of our program, but it always ends up being a bust. My advance funeral planner will have one big month followed by one small month because they have to spend so much time prospecting. I honestly think our potential is double what we’re doing, but with all this starting and stopping, it feels like we can never quite get there.” - Full V8 Needed
Dear Full V8 Needed: I’m sorry to hear that. What you describe sounds like a bit of a rollercoaster, and it has to be a letdown to think that as soon as you start building momentum, you’ll wind up back in a rut.
The solution a lot of funeral home owners arrive at is to retool their programs, which it sounds like you’ve tried. This usually equates to reworking a marketing piece or looking for a support person to help shoulder part of the load.
The problem is that the preneed pipeline is a lot more complex than most people realize. There are a lot of intricacies to be aware of, and it takes continuous proactive effort to turn an interested prospect into a prearranged family.
Thankfully, there are several important steps you can start taking to make your program more consistent. These will set you on the right path so you can eventually get the increased volume you’re looking for.
Humor me for a minute and consider this analogy: preneed is a lot like farming. Now, I know you’re probably wondering how on earth that could be the case.
But when you’re developing a preneed marketing plan tailored to your unique community, you have to be intentional. Just as today’s most successful farmers have to select the right seeds and scientifically evaluate the soil, it’s critical to analyze the data and demographics of your market down to the finest detail.
Depending on the size of your community, there are likely hundreds of consumers who are interested in preplanning this year, and just as many if not more who will be interested in preplanning next year and so on.
Then there is the persistence and patience needed to see this all through. You’re not just planting seeds for one season. The highest-performing programs are strategic about which consumers to reach now and which ones you’ll want to reach over the next several years, or even over the next decade.
This kind of long-term thinking is how you’ll begin reaping the benefits of a proactive program. You’ll start attracting more families to your funeral home, including all those families you may not have reached otherwise who are key to growing your brand.
If you really want to keep your preneed engine running, the most important question to ask yourself is this: Who’s in my preneed department?
The answer for some owners is to point to the one person shouldering most of the responsibility for preneed and say, “He’s the department.” Others will say, “We all help out now and then, so we’re all in the preneed department.” And still others will say, “What department?”
You can probably already guess why none of these scenarios work out. Leaving it up to just one person is like expecting a race car driver to also be your pit crew. And the trouble with everyone pitching in is that no one is 100% accountable.
To really win your market, start building out a fully dedicated preneed team. Think of it as a unique department or division of your business. Given the complexity of the preneed pipeline, a robust program could easily have at least one person responsible for each piece: analyzing your market, generating leads, setting appointments, and meeting with families.
But there’s a level above simply delegating tasks, and that is being thoughtful about where everyone’s strengths lie. A lot of people can make a phone call and try to set an appointment. Far fewer have the persistence and drive to continue reaching out after facing rejection after rejection. This is particularly true of advance funeral planners. Their superpower is connecting with families, not playing phone tag.
You can have the greatest preneed strategy in the world, but it will never go anywhere without people. Get the right people doing what they’re best suited for, and you’ll see improvements almost instantly.
On top of having enough people to handle the responsibilities of preneed, the next biggest hurdle is figuring out how everything connects.
This is where most traditional preneed programs fall flat. A marketing campaign will get launched, some leads will come in, and then the marketing valve will get shut off once advance funeral planners start working those leads.
You’ve already described how this has not been a recipe for success. It’d be like if that farmer I mentioned earlier only watered their crops once or twice a season. Come harvest time, will it be any wonder that nothing has grown?
Something we always keep in mind at Precoa is that a lead is a very precious thing. It represents a family who has asked a funeral home for help. It’s up to us to create an effective framework that paves the way for a preneed lead to become a preneed appointment, and then for that preneed appointment to become a prearranged family.
Building this framework starts with managing leads. What kinds of steps, processes, and systems are in place to make sure no one falls through the cracks? Does every lead have a next step? In other words, if a family has expressed interest but is difficult to get back in touch with, it’s critical to keep track of those touchpoints and continue nurturing their interest until they’re ready to take action.
When you create an effective way to help families complete their preneed journeys, the end result is that you increase volume and grow.
The last recommendation I can make is to always keep improving.
Over the past 20 years, we’ve learned a lot at Precoa about what marketing messages and mediums drive interest. We’ve also learned a lot about optimizing the path from lead to appointment, and from appointment to prearranged family.
Believe it or not, the biggest driver behind it all is pretty straightforward - continuous measurement and testing. But it would be a mistake to assume that you should only get started after everything else is in place.
The fact is, measuring your program can’t wait. It’s actually what gives you the most insight into your program’s performance so that you can see what needs immediate improvement.
Get started by looking at three key metrics. The first of these is the appointment set rate, which is the ratio of appointments set over leads generated. Tracking this can help you see how effective your preneed marketing is.
The next is your appointment hold rate, which is the ratio of appointments that do not get canceled over the number of appointments set. Finally, there’s your close rate, which is the percentage of appointments that result in a prearranged funeral.
Having this data at your fingertips will give you validated feedback that you can build on. It allows you to make the large-scale improvements you’ll need in terms of infrastructure and support, as well as the ongoing incremental improvements that will keep your preneed engine running for years to come.
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.