Thought Leadership

A funeral home must evolve and serve consumers where they are or risk losing calls to the competition and perhaps even a slow demise. Note to Readers: This particular letter was delivered to my office rather than coming via email. Upon examination and based on the imprint on the back of the paper, the letter was typed. And based on the different levels of imprinting, I surmise it was typed using a manual typewriter. I am not conveying this to embarrass the writer, but I do think it tells you something about the answer seeker. Dear Dan, I have read your articles for almost 40 years and have a question that you may or may not be able to answer. My business was a 300-call traditional business when I took it over. Today, we only do about 150 total calls, and […]

The numbers tell the story of how cremation is affecting cemeteries. They also show how learning to appeal to cremation families can help cemeteries extend their active lives, selling post-need as well as at-need and pre-need. The steadily increasing cremation rate has caused a profound shift in the funeral service industry. Much analysis has focused on the funeral home side of the industry as funeral home operators have been struggling with decreasing merchandise sales and reduced usage of their funeral home real estate (and associated revenue) for visitations and funeral services. The other primary component of the funeral service industry is cemeteries. Historically, their business model has been the sale of in-ground burial interment rights or above-ground entombment rights for casketed remains, along with related services and merchandise. If funeral homes have been struggling with rising cremation rates, one would […]

Cemeterians who don’t face up early to rising cremation rates sooner or later will be facing difficult financial choices. Dear Dan, My cemetery is in the heart of an 80 percent cremation area. Over the past decade, my sales have gone from 800 graves a year to about 100 graves a year (at-need and advance sale). My fixed costs of operation have continued to rise, due to increased water and labor costs. My sales team is down to one person from three a decade ago. My cash position is half of what it was a decade ago. I have run negative cash flow for each of the past four years. What options do I have for the near and long term? Along the I-5 to Bankruptcy   Dear I-5, Your situation is not a desperate one now. It was desperate […]

Running your business is like going on a long-distance drive. Long-distance, multiple-day driving trips take planning. Today we have mapping via GPS, rather than a paper map that requires refolding at 70 mph. Planning for daily hotels and where to stop for food can be done easily now. Forty-five years ago, I did a cross-country drive – from Philly to L.A. – with some high school friends. To plan, three weeks prior we went to a nationwide auto club, and they put together a TripTik. The problem was, within three hours of departure, we discovered that the highway we were to travel upon was under extreme construction. We had to deviate to the south for six hours. Our entire plan outlining our seven-day, 2,200-mile-trip was now obsolete. We had a paper map of the U.S. but no hotel reservations, no […]