{"id":4134,"date":"2021-03-22T21:47:45","date_gmt":"2021-03-22T21:47:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theforesightcompanies.com\/?p=4134"},"modified":"2022-01-24T22:09:54","modified_gmt":"2022-01-24T22:09:54","slug":"chapter-three-survival","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theforesightcompanies.com\/blog\/chapter-three-survival\/","title":{"rendered":"Chapter Three: Survival"},"content":{"rendered":"

The magnitude of the pandemic means you must reexamine your business from every angle.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The past 12 months have been the longest in the history of mankind as we endured agonizing experiences caused by COVID-19. It was on March 11, 2020, that the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic.<\/p>\n

And funeral service changed.<\/p>\n

Just as those who survived the Great Depression were never the same, everyone in America (and the world) will never be the same. In the world of funeral service, we have seen every dynamic of the business change \u2013 from the behavior of consumers and their support teams to the professionals. As consumer behavior changes, funeral service professionals must adapt. And while funeral service typically does a bad job reacting to change as a profession, the magnitude of the pandemic means you must revisit everything you do.<\/p>\n

From my perch, I watched the profession struggle due to two opposing dynamics: as a provider of services and as a broken business model. From a service provider\u2019s perspective, the pandemic unleashed its fury on many regions of the country, testing the mettle of staff and facilities. Firms that would normally serve 200 families a year were serving 30 or more a week.<\/em><\/p>\n

There were also challenges to space to safely hold bodies, the quantity of staff to perform removals and meet with families, the ability to provide care to grieving families and protecting the caregivers within the business. I saw one small outbreak in Tucson, Arizona, reduce a funeral home staff of 10 to three because seven were infected with the virus at about the same time. The owner of another large business told me in December that 11% of company staff had been infected when, at that time, the U.S. average was about 4%.<\/p>\n

During the past year, we\u2019ve also seen funeral homes make the news \u2013 for good and for bad reasons. The dedication of one funeral home in New York City was featured in an extensive article in The New York Times<\/em>, while several others were featured in articles as locations of \u201csuper-spreader events.\u201d There were hundreds of articles about all aspects of this business, which is not new, but none of them featured content dealing with prices or included comments from Joshua Slocum. In the media, funeral service, by and large, showed its heroism in unwavering service to families. But what was the long-term cost?<\/p>\n

Well, the business model of funeral service prior to 1985 was a merchandise model. A family bought a casket and got all the other services of the funeral home. Then the Federal Trade Commission issued the Funeral Rule in the latter half of 1984 and funeral service went from a merchandise model to a service and merchandise model. As cremation and partial services increased in popularity, that business model evolved into a service fee model, in which businesses rely less on merchandise to recoup their overhead.<\/p>\n

This model, beyond the basic nondeclinable fee, had service fees for:<\/p>\n