Preneed Pro Tips
Avoiding Preneed Overload
BY Tyler Anderson
My Advance Funeral Planner is amazing. She loves helping families prearrange with our funeral home, but lately she's getting burnt out by all the other parts of the job. Prospecting, generating leads, following up with families, and trying to get them on the phone—I'd love to help out, but preneed is always such a juggling act, and I don't know where to start. —Keeping Burnout at Bay
Dear Burnout at Bay: First off, I know how frustrating that can be. A lot of owners I've talked to over the years have expressed similar concerns. They see their people struggling and making trade-offs, whether that's letting leads slip through the cracks or setting appointments after hours because there isn't enough time in the day.
Part of the challenge is simply the traditional approach to preneed. A lot of responsibility falls on just one person's shoulders, but managing each stage of the preneed pipeline takes a special skill set. The good news is that there are proven ways to support your Advance Funeral Planner, keep them happy, and prearrange even more families at your funeral home.
More than 70 percent of Americans believe preplanning is a good idea. Yet only 33 percent of Americans say they plan to prefund their funeral. Add to this the number of people who no longer live in their hometown, the rise of Americans with no religious affiliation, and the increase in gray divorce – the rate of couples who separate after the age of 50 has grown to nearly 40 percent. As a result, many of the institutional ties that funeral homes traditionally relied on for continued business have dwindled.
The best Advance Funeral Planners (AFPs) are skilled at many things, and they've tailored their presentation approach to address these trends. They help shift the perspective about funeral service, helping families see how important it is for their loved ones to experience ritual, gathering, and ceremony after a loss. But not everyone is ready to take the plunge and preplan right away.
One of our AFPs tells a story of a woman who scheduled an appointment to preplan. She had raised her hand to learn more and seemed eager to take the next step, but when the day of the appointment came, she was nowhere to be found. After a third no-show, the AFP figured she had lost interest.
Some time later, the woman entered the funeral home in tears. She explained to the AFP that she actually had driven to each of those appointments but couldn't find the strength to get out of her car. Her husband had recently passed away, and she said she wasn't yet ready to face talking about her own funeral.
The thing is, the AFP likely would have never seen her again without follow-up support after every no-show and a nurture path in place. That sensitive persistence, combined with the woman's interest in preplanning, eventually resulted in her creating a prearrangement for her memorial.
Unfortunately, most AFPs struggle to handle so many preneed follow-ups on their own. Preneed salespeople can spend as much as 70 percent of their week making phone calls and setting appointments, leaving a small sliver to do the actual work of meeting with families and helping them to put an intentional plan in place, which is typically the most rewarding part of the job.
If you look at any of the nation's thriving preneed programs, you'll find that not only do they take a proactive approach to preneed, but they also have people in addition to the AFP managing follow-ups.
At Precoa, this is the role of our Funeral Planning Center. They keep our funeral home partners top of mind and connect with every individual who has expressed interest in preplanning. With their support, the ratio of planning to selling switches places, and AFPs can focus on doing what they do best: connecting with families face-to-face and educating them on the power of a funeral at your funeral home.
Part of the reason we created the Funeral Planning Center in the first place is that it takes a different skill set to nurture a relationship for the long haul than it does to close a sale. Salespeople are used to a fair bit of rejection, but as I mentioned, not every lead is ready to preplan right away, even if they've raised their hand to learn more. Educating these preneed prospects for weeks or months takes time, and for an AFP whose talent lies at the final stage of the preneed pipeline, the back-and-forth can start to feel demoralizing and exhausting.
Many funeral homes already employ team members who possess traits of sensitivity, patience, and—most importantly—truly caring connection. As a result, these team members are often asked to nurture and follow-up with preneed prospects. But the longer-term relationship building needed to see families through to a prearrangement is most effective when it isn't combined with a slew of other responsibilities.
That's why so many leading funeral homes choose to outsource lead nurturing to a trusted partner. Our Funeral Planning Center is full of scheduling specialists who connect on a deep level from the moment you first talk with them. They can tell you about families they set appointments with 5, 10 and even 15 years ago. The relationships they build are real and lasting, and taking this approach leads to more prearrangements and brand advocates for your business.
The relationships built by your AFP and your lead nurturing team are the core of what makes a preneed program successful. But how do you know which family is at which stage of the preneed pipeline?
Even if your preneed program is good at creating awareness for your funeral home, without a system that can track each and every family, it's hard to see just how effective your program is.
The best approach is to have a robust Customer Relationship Management system that can manage leads from the moment they're generated to the point of sale and everything in between. Setting it up can be a challenge, though. In fact, a Harvard Business Review report recently estimated that close to 90 percent of CRM projects aren't helpful to the growth of a business.
When we created our own CRM 20 years ago, we knew it needed to be capable of being continuously refined and improved. And today, we've integrated the latest technology into our system so that it is streamlined and helpful for our partners and their AFPs. That should be the ultimate goal of preneed tech—to help you keep track of every connection and touchpoint you have with a family and integrate seamlessly with day-to-day operations.
And while technology plays a huge part in that process, there's also a human touch that keeps your AFPs, your funeral home, and the families you serve at the center. The tech needs to work hand-in-hand with the people who manage your preneed logistics—the folks setting up marketing campaigns, monitoring your performance, and optimizing your program. The result is an easier and even more fulfilling experience for your AFPs.
Once you've built a solid system and found the right person to support it, the next step is to focus on quality. As I've already mentioned, it takes a unique skill set to connect with families and get them excited about setting an appointment.
Yet like any skill set, this can be refined and improved over time. Over the years at Precoa, we have revised our scripting and added countless tweaks to our training and coaching processes. And that's not to mention data and metrics, which is the secret to becoming more effective and prearranging more families.
The point is that a solid nurturing system is key to sustained preneed success. By providing your Advance Funeral Planner the tools they need to work smarter, not harder, they can focus on what matters most—supporting families through one of the most meaningful decisions they'll make for the loved ones they'll leave behind.
Be sure to check in next month, where we'll dive deeper into the best ways to measure your lead nurturing and appointment-setting processes so that you can optimize every stage of the preneed pipeline and provide even more support to your Advance Funeral Planner.
Have a preneed question? Please reach out and I'd be happy to answer it. tanderson@precoa.com
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.