The Cemetery Guy

What part of its life cycle is your cemetery in? We all know there’s a sales period and a dormant period…but what about that period of time between active sales and going fully dormant? I call this the semi-active sales period. This period begins around the time the cemetery begins losing income due to a lack of the right kind of inventory remaining in the cemetery. You probably have sections in your cemetery that you would say are closed. Even though there may be residual sp

More families are arriving the day of the committal service with an urn in the back seat of their car these days. With no funeral director and sometimes no pastor to direct the service…how can you provide them with the service they need in order to make things easier for both them and their guests? Take charge!! Invite the family to meet 30 minutes prior to the published start time of the service. This time can be used to take care of last minute paperwork, answer any questio

How many of you have spoken on a panel about estate planning? Alongside a financial planner and funeral director, you stand and speak about cemetery expenses and the need to prepay your fees to lock in today’s prices to a medium sized crowd of donut and coffee filled attendees only to hear that because they are being cremated they don’t need your services anyway. Fast forward 20 years, now in addition to the financial planner and cremationist, stands the curator of memorializ

We all know Mercedes stands for elite quality. Aside from price, how would you know that and what message is your cemetery sending to your potential customers? Mercedes conveys their message the same way most companies do, their ads tell you who they are, who their customers are and why you want to be one. They do this so well with their "The best or nothing" campaign that even if you never bought a Mercedes you can make some assumptions about their company: they invented the