Hepp to Speak at New Jersey State (NJSFDA) Convention

MEDIA RELEASE: NJSFDA Convention and Expo. Robin Heppell addresses Funeral Directors on Reaching Your Community Via

Offering the same quality programming and networking you have come to expect from the New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association (NJSFDA), Robin Heppell has been requested to speak at the NJSFDA Convention and Expo held in Atlantic City, NJ. Heppell addresses funeral directors on the crucial focus of using the power of the Internet to reach their community.

Victoria, BC — Funeral Futurist, Robin Heppell has been secured by the NJSFDA to speak as one of the internationally recognized funeral experts offering funeral directors proven techniques and innovative strategies during the NJSFDA Convention and Expo.

The objective of Heppell’s presentation, “Reaching Your Community Via The Internet” is to empower Funeral Directors to take their past and current relationship building mindset and incorporate powerful online social media strategies to build their “virtual” community.

Robin Heppell, funeral speaker and funeral web strategist, added,“Internet usage is increasing faster than the cremation rate. If your funeral home has not yet established a web presence or begun marketing through electronic communications, you’re falling behind the curve. It is time to catch up now.”

With the difficulty of finding practical and relevant technologies for electronic communications for funeral homes, this presentation provides insight into the use of online articles with blogs, online radio shows with podcasts, online videos and social networks. The ultimate goal of focusing on these topics is to assist funeral directors in building relationships in the online community and dominating search engine rankings. A familiarity with valuable online services such as WordPress, YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn will also be shared.

Over 150 delegates attended the Funeral Futurist’s presentation on the topic of Marketing to Your Community through the Internet at ICCFA, 2007. Mr. Daniel Osorio from ICCFA Administration commented, “Excellent info on how we can effectively use the Internet to market our business.”

(NOTE: For excerpts from previous events visit http://www.funeralfuturist.com/keynotes-workshops/speaker-video-clips)

“I have heard a lot of great things about the NJSFDA and its Convention and I am honored to be a part of its line up of presenters. It will also be great to meet face to face with the New Jersey funeral professionals who I have become “virtually” acquainted with through Facebook and my Funeral Futurist Newsletter!” remarked Heppell. “Plus I will recording more interviews for the FuneralGurus.com website so make sure you jot down what specific service or offering that your firms provides that makes you different and unique.”

About Robin Heppell
Robin Heppell, CFSP, combines his expertise in technology and pre-need, his formal business knowledge and his deep-rooted legacy in the funeral profession so that he can help funeral homes and cemeteries be more competitive, more profitable, and provide the best possible service for the families they serve. Through his consulting firm, FuneralFuturist.com in Victoria, British Columbia, he assists funeral directors and cemeterians throughout North America embrace and incorporate innovative strategies and technologies. His own websites include FuneralGurus.com and FuneralFuturist.com.

About NJSFDA
The New Jersey State Funeral Directors Association (NJSFDA) is nationally recognized. Founded in 1902, the NJSFDA is a not-for-profit trade organization that is committed to ensuring that communities receive professional and ethical funeral care. The organization provides resources to funeral directors, funeral homes, funeral consumers and the funeral profession as a whole.

The Convention will be held starting on Tuesday September 29, 2009 until Thursday October 1, 2009 located at the New Taj Mahal, Atlantic City, NJ. Registration will begin this summer and is open to all licensed funeral directors. All other registrations are subject to management discretion. For convention questions please contact Emily A. Moscetti, convention manager, via email to convention@njsfda.org or by calling 732.974.9444 or visit NJSFDA.com.

For media inquiries, please visit www.FuneralFuturist.com/media-room

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Preneed Dog Pound: Pit Bulls and Golden Retrievers

In my time of the world of preneed, I have observed two types of sales reps:

• Pit Bulls
• Golden Retrievers

Pit Bulls are reps who work more leads (to the bone) and get more sales. These are usually professional sales people that have come into the funeral industry from other sales positions.

Golden Retrievers though are more nurturing and from what I have witnessed, have a higher average funeral value.  I think it is because these people have a deeper belief in funeral service – but they usually don’t “close” as many sales. Usually “Funeral Director to Preneed” converts are Golden Retrievers.

Instead of just dividing up your leads – “one for you and one for you” – you can start to segment the lead sources. Those leads that are from direct mail or from a direct response inquiry – where we have had to change their way of thinking – you can sic the ‘Pit Bull’ on them.

The people who have already made the decision that prearranging is a good idea will most likely be a phone inquiry or a walk in. These leads just need to be nurtured,  not sold, so they should be directed to the Golden Retriever.

I have noticed that the walk-ins and the inquiries were more people in that near need situation where they are in that category of twenty four to six months to live. Maybe they have just got the word from the doctor. You want to look after them and nurture them along the way. They don’t need to be sold on the idea of having a funeral pre-arranged because they know it is going to happen in short term. These people need that ‘Golden Retriever’ to take care of them.

Reflect on your preneed business. Check your stats. Do your preneeds that come from direct mail have a longer “shelf-life” than inquiries or walk-ins?

So Why Is This Distinction Important?

The other thing to be aware of is that more people are going to the Internet for information.  You have probably seen over the last year that you are getting more inquiries about pre-arrangements over the Internet – right?

Those people are not coming in because they received some “message” (via direct mail persuasion) to enter or change their mind about the importance of pre-arranging a funeral. I believe that they are in that near-need area.

I call these leads Virtual Walk-Ins. Either they have decided that they want to pre-arrange because they are planners and they want to get this looked after OR they have gotten the word from the doctor and they need to get this done.

As those inquiries come in through your website, who are you doing to give them to?

Are you going to give them to the Pit Bull so that you make sure that that sale is made or are you going to give them to the Golden Retriever who will look after that person when they need to be looked after the most (and hopefully have a higher funeral value)?

Who will be looking after your virtual walk-ins?

…Hepp

What are your thoughts? Do you think that leads via the Internet will need to be handled differently than a direct mail lead?  Please share your comments below.

Funeral Industry Stimulus Package by Johnson Consulting

Jake Johnson of the Johnson Consulting Group just told me about a great package of tools and resources that they are giving away to the funeral industry.

Jake said the reason why they are doing this is to make sure funeral firms like yours are equipped with some of the latest tools and information about the financial side of the business – especially during these economic times.

The Johnson Consulting Stimulus Package consists of:

• Funeral Industry Specific Chart of Accounts
• Johnson’s Client Satisfaction Survey
• Best Practices for Funeral Home Payment Policies – Interview
• Funeral Home Financing – Video
• Case Study Interview – Funeral Home Gets Financing Against the Odds

All that you have to do is enroll in Johnson Consulting’s Stimulus Package to get instant access to these valuable and timely resources.

Death of Preneed?

In Victoria, BC for a ten years period from 1996 to 2006, I was the manager and sales person of a large pre-need program.

There are some benefits and some disadvantages from being in a retirement area such as Victoria. There is a high cremation as I have mentioned before and part of the reason Victoria does is because they are always getting new, transient people coming here to retire. They don’t have that plot history here so cremation seems to be more of an option. Although Victoria has higher cremation rates and lower averages, it does have an influx of new people.

I had to work hard on pre-need. A pre-need rep had to make 200 to 300 pre-arrangements per year but those contracts were below national averages due to a very high cremation rate.

The reason why I resigned from that position was that part of my role was to provide advice to the ownership on what is happening in the future. If I was to provide proper advice it would be directly counter intuitive to how I was compensated.

What was happening?

There was a bit of a flaw that I could see happening in this equation in pre-need:

Funeral service + Casket + Disbursements = Pre-need Contract

As I have mentioned previously, merchandise is declining and receptions and catering are increasing. The problem is that when you are making pre-arrangements with that 75 year old widow that thinks she is going to live to 100 and thinks she is going to outlive all her friends. She says,

“There is not going to be anyone there to have a service anyway!” It is a tough enough challenge to just convince here and suggest that she have a service for her family let alone set aside $1000 or $2000 for a reception.

That is a real problem and it is probably not affecting your market, not yet anyway. By keeping with that old equation of service plus merchandise plus disbursements equals the total of the contract, you may be shooting yourselves in the foot because you are not allowing for that increase in receptions and in the catering revenues.

It might be time to look at other funding opportunities and almost taking your pre-need to a final expense approach, and going from the insurance approach and to saying the overall “End-Of-Life” costs are in $10,000 to $15,000 range, not just focusing on the $6,500 funeral value.  The final expense lump sum can include a lot of things and have flexibility in assigning where those dollars go.

What is also going to come out of that is that you are probably also going to let go of the guarantee. This is especially in the rates that you are getting from our trust companies or insurance providers. Letting go of the guarantee may not be so much of a bad thing.   In my ten years of experience, what really got people to prearrange was not the locking in of the prices. That might have been secondary. More importantly it was the peace of mind knowing that they had everything looked after for their families.

Pre-need is changing and to survive we are going to have to adjust that pre-need equation.

Watch what happens out here so that you aren’t blind-sided when it happens to you.

My Challenge to Pre-need Companies: Provide a new funding vehicle that isn’t based on the old “Equation” plus, of course it also has to have good growth, good commissions, and most importantly – secure.

Pre-need as we know it may not be dead yet, but it looks like it could be terminal.

Pre-need definitely lived life in the fast lane and it was one wild ride!

Hepp with Debbie and Dave McCall in Tuscon, AZ for the Monumental Life Annual Sales Awards

Do you think that pre-need is going in this direction? I would love to hear your thoughts – please leave a comment below…