Do you dread reviewing your pricing ever year? Does it feel like a crap-shoot whether to raise prices or not? It doesn’t have to be – with sound fiscal and competitive analysis you can have a winning pricing strategy no matter where you choose to position your funeral home in the market.
What is your current Pricing Strategy?
- Price Based: the discounter or at least holding the position of the least expensive prices
- Value Based: the more expensive provider but one who also provides more value added offerings
- Niche Based: serving a specific community, faith, or other group(s)
- Middle of the Road: trying to be all things to all people by having average prices and average offerings
Out of these four strategies, the forth one may seem to be the one with the opportunity to get the most calls, but in reality it is the hardest one to maintain if your competitors can effectively communicate their benefits.
Defending your Position
No matter which position you choose, if you have a well thought out pricing strategy and can effectively depend your position then you should not have a problem with shoppers and competition. Price Matching is not a Strategy – It’s a cop-out! Sorry if this offends anyone, but it would be more offensive to your customers who pay full price to find out that the next family paid half since they threatened to go to the discounter. If you resort to this lame strategy – STOP! Please download the Competitors Matrix found on the Downloads page and identify the areas that you provide more value, then communicate those differences to your families.
Pricing Service Offerings and Product Offerings
This is a important mix of your over all pricing strategy. And with recent research stating that consumers valuing products a lot lower than service offerings, funeral home operators must ensure that their pricing strategies are aligned with the perceived value of the consumer. For more information, please read the article, It’s Not the Funeral Product Industry, which can be found on the Articles page.
Call Counting and Real Market Share – You could be the Market Leader and not Know it
A lack of focus is evident by funeral homes tracking market share by only focusing on call volume as an indicator. Even though each death represents potential revenue, would it not be more prudent to track market share dollars or even profitability per call versus the other operators? This means that it is not just increasing one’s call volume that is important, but the type of call gained (or lost) that matters. It would be better to lose two calls to a discounter and pick up one from a value-based funeral home even though the funeral home would be net minus one. It is interesting though to see funeral homes fight over direct disposition calls (on price) and not actively strive to get ones on the other end of the scale.
Are you Ready to Beat your Competitors at the Price Game and realize more Profit?
We can help you take control of your market in the following areas:
- Pricing Strategy Audit: this complete overhaul of your pricing includes:
- Competitors Analysis
- Defining Market Position
- Call Counting vs. Real Market Share Analysis
- Aids to equip staff against Price Shoppers and Discounters
- Automated General Price List
- Creation of Funeral Packages: by building value-added packages with our proven formula and together with the necessary presentation materials you will immediately increase your Average Funeral Value by at least $1,000 – guaranteed
- Automate your General Price List: this will enable you to easily produce price lists for your consumers and regulators as well as easily review and raise prices by percentages with minimal calculations
All pricing strategies are guaranteed to double your return on investment with in 12 months!