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Be A Funeral Market Strategist (and leaveyour competition in the dust)
June 16, 2008I received some great comments and questionsabout my “Competition” article – thank you!First, many of the issues funeral home ownersand managers are unique to your specific marketand situation so I cannot offer a blanket answer that everyone could benefit from. The issue wasfollowed by the questions, “How do I fix this?”or “What should I do?”As I always do in situations to solve problems, Ireflected on the process that I have used manytimes in my home market that is verycompetitive plus is on the forefront of changingtrends. In this type of market – and any market – you need to have a process to deal with issuesand make decisions easily and with confidence.By the nature of how we join funeral service, either as a calling to serve, or following in familyfootsteps, we rarely get taught how to think strategically. Strategy isn’t taught in mortuarycolleges and the issues we face today – like increasing cremation rates, price discounters,memorial societies, and the Internet – were not big issues to the generations before us. Especiallyin our market where no-one had experience in dealing with these issues before – I decided that Ihad to go back to university and learn how professionals solve problems in other industries andthen apply those methods to funeral service.Although formal education was a great experience, what has really stuck with me was what Ilearned as a member of the “Case Competition” team. In a nutshell, a team of four would begiven 3 hours to read and analyze a business case study and present our recommendations. Sinceyou were “on stage” at the end of the 3 hours, I really learned to hone my strategic thinking with“tools” that made up my Business Strategy Toolkit.At this point I could just tell you hire me to tackle your issues in a one-on-one scenario – and of course for those who wish that personal consultation I will make myself available – I also wantto teach all of you “How to Fish” instead of selling you fish.Whatever causes you the most pain – tough competition, price shoppers, losing calls, cremationfamilies, memorial societies, expensive marketing – these tools can give can give you ancompetitive advantage for just a small investment of your time. So here we go – these are someof the tools that I use on a daily basis to solve clients’ problems. The three that I recommend toget started with are the Environmental Scan, Porter’s Five Forces, and the SWOT Analysis.
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