Preneed Pro Tips
2024 Year-End Wrap
Preneed Pro Tips is an ongoing column where Tyler Anderson, Vice President of Business Development at Precoa, answers questions about preneed from funeral professionals.
BY Tyler Anderson
It's hard to believe that we're almost at the end of another year, and what an exciting year it has been as I meet more and more funeral homes who see the benefits of proactive preneed. Not only is it growing their businesses by opening them up to a whole new world of customers, but it's also evolving the conversation about the value of funeral service throughout their communities.
Over the course of the year, I've received a lot of great questions about how to be more proactive and the most effective ways to get started. As more funeral homes adopt this strategy, I'd like to revisit some of the most common challenges that get in the way of building a thriving preneed program.
The first question I'd like to discuss zeroes in on exactly why it's so important to be proactive with preneed: I get that preneed allows me to lock in my market and secure future business, but it sure feels like these are families I probably would have served anyway. Instead of just sustaining call volume, I really want to increase it.
This is a question we at Precoa hear fairly often, and it comes down to a key strategic divide: passive preneed vs. proactive preneed.
One funeral home owner I talked to recently referred to having a proactive program as moving beyond the low-hanging fruit. It's one thing for your preneed sales to rely solely on walk-ins and call-ins. But by proactively reaching out to families in your community, you can tap into new segments of your market and educate more people on the value of funeral service at your funeral home.
Ongoing trends stack the deck against funeral homes that rely solely on walk-ins and call-ins. As many as 6 in 10 people no longer live in their hometown, meaning the families you counted on serving in previous generations may be gone in 5 or 10 years' time. And nearly 30 percent of the U.S. population consider themselves religiously unaffiliated, leading to fewer community and institutional ties between families and funeral homes.
By proactively reaching out to not only the families you know, but to every family in your community who is statistically most likely to preplan, you can solidify the plans of those who know what they want, and educate those who may not be aware of the power of a funeral service at your funeral home. By doing this, you'll start to see sustained growth in both your preneed and at need call volume.
This question from Users Needed reveals that investing in a system is only the first step in creating a workable preneed infrastructure: "I recently invested a lot in a new CRM, but I still can't get my preneed agents to use it. You've built up the value of data in previous columns. How do you successfully encourage adoption so I can actually get data into the system?"
It's true that data is the key to unlocking preneed performance. This is something we've always believed at Precoa, and even though a Customer Relationship Management system is a great way to gain better visibility into your business and your processes, adoption can be tricky.
A Harvard Business Review study found that more than a third of CRM projects fail. And the why comes down to one word: purpose. End-users – the salespeople whom the CRM will benefit – are far less likely to input information if they don't know why they're doing it. The first step is involving them early in the process, using their input to shape the tool and make the process as seamless as possible.
And once the CRM is up and running, communicating that purpose becomes even more important. It's all too easy for an Advance Funeral Planner to stop submitting important data if they don't see any changes. If an AFP meets with a family that showed interest in preplanning but decided that now was not the right time, they're probably not excited to share that information with their team. Learning how to improve is hard when you're afraid of being seen as a failure.
But data allows you to reshape the conversation. And if the appointments that don't result in a prearrangement are entered back into a nurture cycle where they become future opportunities to prearrange, adoption will be a no-brainer for AFPs. By communicating the purpose of your CRM and building out your infrastructure, you can help stem those fears and instead get your team excited about how they can improve their work – and their sales.
Community events are among the best ways to educate and connect with new families, but this question from Next Steps Needed shows that follow-through is important: I found your tip about reaching the right people for community seminars pretty eye-opening, but what about the events themselves? The few seminars we've held have not resulted in more prearrangements. What are we doing wrong?
It can be really difficult to thread the needle on a community education event. To help me answer this question, I asked for some help from Precoa Regional Director Kyle Aler, who has led and helped manage hundreds of Advance Funeral Planners through thousands of community education programs.
"In the daily hustle around your funeral home, RSVPs can easily be set aside and forgotten," Kyle wrote. "Even online confirmations can sit in your email untouched. What your funeral home needs is a seamless process for taking in RSVPs."
Part of ensuring that RSVPs result in attendance – and prearranged funerals – is confirming with possible attendees. "Personally, I encourage my advance funeral planners to send a follow-up text if they call a possible attendee," Kyle said. It's also important to follow up with those who attend and those who don't. It's rare that someone raises their hand to learn more and then misses an event on purpose. Sometimes it just takes kind, persistent nurturing to help them along in the process.
A system for nurturing your no-shows is like a safety net to catch any of the families who otherwise might fall by the wayside. It ensures you're not missing out on anyone, so you can maximize the potential of any event you hold.
A lack of consistency is one of the biggest frustrations funeral homes face when they're trying to be more proactive. Full V8 Needed reached out with a question about this all-too-common problem: What are the best ways to keep your preneed engine running? My advance funeral planner will have one big month followed by one small month because they have to spend so much time prospecting.
One of the biggest reasons this happens is because the preneed pipeline is a lot more complex than most people realize. Thankfully there are a few key steps to take to improve consistency, and it starts by tailoring your marketing plan to your unique community.
There are likely hundreds of consumers in your community interested in preplanning this year, and just as many if not more who will be interested in preplanning next year and so on. The highest-performing programs are strategic about which consumers to reach now and which ones to reach over the next several years, or even over the next decade.
Consistency is best achieved when you have a team solely focused on preneed. Leaving preneed up to just one person is like expecting a race car driver to also be your pit crew. But if everyone is pitching in on preneed and no one is 100% accountable, your program will continue to languish.
Building out successful preneed infrastructure comes down to one word: connection. Connecting a lead from the first hand-raise to a prearranged funeral is the only way to know how successful your preneed program is. 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.
And my final recommendation is to always keep improving. You can get started by looking at three key metrics:
Having this data at your fingertips will give you validated feedback that you can build on so you can keep the preneed engine running for years to come.
Selling sensitively in our profession is a fine line not everybody can walk. Concerned About Closing touched on this when he reached out in March: I want to prearrange and prefund as many families as possible, but I don't want to pressure them or seem too pushy because I worry it will reflect poorly on our funeral home. Is it possible to create a great experience and get great results?
Many funeral home owners share this concern, believing that preneed is a choice between being passive and waiting for people to show up at their doorsteps or being active and potentially upsetting people with pushy tactics. But the best preneed programs and Advance Funeral Planners know sales doesn't need to be pushy, even if it is proactive.
My first recommendation is to make education and building value the foundation of your preneed presentation. When done well, everyone wins. Families have a quality plan, you prearrange more families, and your advance funeral planners go home at the end of each day knowing they've made a difference.
At the time of need, promoting your value can sound self-serving, particularly for families who don't automatically value funeral service and aren't even sure they want a funeral in the first place. By connecting with families earlier in their journey, you have an opportunity to shift their perspective about the value of funeral service at a time when they're clear-headed and ready to listen.
Authentic connection is how you sell sensitively in our profession. And it's difficult to forge true connection while families are in the fog of grief, figuring out what life looks like without their loved one, often only focusing on the next task on a long to-do list. By reaching out to families before they need your services, you can educate them on the importance of ceremony and gathering and start a relationship built on exceptional experiences that they'll never forget.
Finally, I want to revisit a question we received from Inconvenienced. Funeral homes across the nation know this problem all too well: Low-cost providers are able to undercut my offerings, and a lot of families choose options they see as either faster or cheaper. I've heard you talk about active preneed, but how will being more active make any real difference?
When you see family after family choose direct disposition or say they don't want a service, it's an easy leap to think the preneed conversation will be the same. But convenience itself isn't necessarily bad. It simply fulfills a need.
In the early stages of grief, it can be hard to know which way is up. Coordinating a whirlwind of paperwork, appointments, and responding to well-wishes is tough enough on a good day. Add in overwhelming waves of grief, and it is no surprise that they looked for any shortcut they could take.
A quality preneed experience helps change this. So many of our funeral home partners say it's a night-and-day difference between serving a prearranged family and a family who does not have a plan in place. With a quality prearrangement, all the i's are dotted and the t's are crossed. And if the decedent also prefunded, the cost is taken care of as well.
In that respect, preneed is truly convenient. Instead of focusing on all the tasks and logistics, families can focus on what matters most.
An outstanding preneed experience should be outstanding for everyone involved: families, Advance Funeral Planners, funeral directors, and funeral homes. That should be the goal of convenience, and creating an all-around great experience is what drives our vision at Precoa to prearrange all families.
Getting a proactive preneed program up and running takes time and effort, but the results are worthwhile. A sustained increase in preneed volume drives an increase in at-need volume, and it is one of the most effective ways to share your story. Many funeral homes choose to outsource this work to a trusted partner, but no matter what you choose, I hope you find these tips helpful.
As you prepare for the year ahead, consider implementing some of them as you fine-tune your growth strategy and set yourself up for long-term success. Here's to making 2025 your strongest year yet!
Have a preneed question? Please reach out and I'd be happy to answer it.
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.