Dale-Time

When I go to any funeral service conventions or gatherings I always try to get to as many of the seminars as possible. I like to learn what other folks are doing and see if there are any good ideas that I might apply to my business. I attended 6 different presentations this time in New Orleans. One on web sites and the internet search engines, Alan Creedy’s talk on the future of funeral service, employees and motivation. A great presentation on Pet Funeral Homes and memorialization by Coleen Ellis, a group participation called 60 ideas in 60 minutes where the audience shared good ideas that they were doing, A round table discussion with fellow Selected Independent Funeral Home members and a 2 hour presentation by web site provider FuneralOne, Bill McQueen from Florida and  Lajos Szabo from Schoedinger’s in Ohio. My wife Jodi went to several different presentations and we also got the printed handout from a few that neither of us could make.

When I get back home I go through my notes and try to remember the stuff that I liked. My dad always taught me that all you need to do is bring home a few nuggets from these meeting and it makes it worth the trip. There were many things I already knew and appreciated being reminded about and I did pick up a few good things in each of these meetings.

The one I enjoyed the most was the FuneralOne/McQueen/Schoedinger presentation titled. “Educating Today’s Families on the True Meaning and Value of Funeral Service”. Since I have been giving that very topic a lot of thought over the last year I was curious to see what these folks had to say about it. FuneralOne has really embraced the new “facebook” era of the internet. They have designed some very impressive and progressive web sites for McQueen’s and Schoedinger’s that have the look and feel of facebook and many of the same feature; the ability to upload photos, videos, and communicate with other visitors to the web site in addition to leaving personal messages for the family. And as I expected much of this seminar was a promotion for FuneralOne, which is OK. I try to look past the promotional aspect and focus on the content of what they were saying. But just so you know, the Life Story Network web site has already been doing this very thing for over 7 years now. Anyway…..

These were the major points I wrote down.

1. Funeral Homes need to educate the public before they come in our doors.
2. Things that have changed with the internet revolution
   1. How people get information
   2. How they engage with other people
   3. How they make purchasing decisions
3. Funeral Business used to be 80% logistics and 20% making people feel better and now it needs to be 20% Logistics and 80% making people feel better.
4. Funerals should be a healing experience
5. Websites need to enhance conversations in addition to providing meaningful content and information.
6. Funeral homes need to join in the conversations.

Rather than try to talk about these points in a long blog entry I’m going to take a few of them at a time and expand on them over a couple different posts. I invite you to give these ideas some thought and then join in the conversation with me.

I’m Dale Clock.  Thanks for listening.