All right I’m gonna start with a gripe I have. Every firm I talk to wants to grow but extremely few have a plan in place to do so. When I mean plan I mean escape outta jail, Michael Schofield from Prison Break plan. He had the entire plan tattooed over his whole body. No wonder he was able to break out after the first season.
Nonetheless, everyone has a legitimate reason why they need to grow. You have bills and staff to pay, you need to stave off competition and you have a family to feed. When I hear the expressions of anxiety from firm owners over their future I always follow it up with, “what’s your plan to address it?” Many times it boils down to doing the same thing hoping for the best or little steps they expect to be huge successes. Let’s be clear, if your firm is on the verge of closing you need to channel your inner MacGyver and get yourself out of danger. In such cases getting through by the skin of your teeth is rare. Many firms close at this point. But why? It’s because they didn’t create a strategic plan for growth.
Why You Need Strategy
Having a strategy is crucial in the funeral industry. You can’t combat the rise in cremation, competition and gentrification without it. I wrote an article about a firm on the West Coast that closed after 50 years. Yet, at the same time you have firms that have lasted four generations. How is that? Strategy. Having a growth strategy in place allows you to address three major threats to the future of your firm.
Threat 1: Slow or reversed growth
You need to ask yourself, how will you go from 50 service calls to 150 the next year? If you don’t have a strategy in place you could go from 50 service calls to 35. I’ve seen it happen. One firm suffered such a situation because they didn’t have a strategy to address the lynch pin in their business and it caused reverse growth.
A lynch pin holds everything in place. When pulled the entire thing it was holding together falls apart. Do you have one staff member that’s a super performer? If so then you have a lynch pin. What happens if that staff member leaves? Will business drop if they do because the hole they leave won’t be filled quickly? Will your families jump ship and go with them? One firm I work with had this happen to them and they’re still recovering YEARS later. Another firm had this happen to them when their staffer opened his own firm and nothing changed with the firm he left. In fact, they both coexist well in the same marketplace. The difference is that each firm had a their own strategy.
Threat 2: New players
What are you going to do if one of the local firms sells to Heritage or another conglomerate? They have a strategy and run it like clockwork. What will you do if one of the bigger firms a few towns over decides to open in your area? Identifying areas to grow market share is strategy and you need to conversely have a strategy in place to address new players that move into town. This is crucial when they have greater resources than you or their branding looks bigger and better than yours. People buy based on emotions and perception and branding influences that. Strong branding is a part of a successful growth strategy.
Threat 3: Market changes
How will your firm survive gentrification if it’s happening in your area? It happened to the West Coast firm I mentioned and was a contributor to their closure. Do you have a strategy to reinvent yourself if the need arises? I read a lot of comics (I still do to a degree, don’t judge me) and I remember one issue in Batman where Bruce, Dick Grayson (Robin) and Alfred were talking about a person who could potentially expose their identities. Casually Bruce said he wasn’t worried. He had new identities that everyone could walk into in 10 minutes if needed. To that point, Bruce understood his potential threat was enemies messing with his mind. Because of that he created an alternate version of Batman his subconscious would become when it did happen. If your market changes can your firm successfully transition into a new or expanded version of itself? I’ve had to do it, but couldn’t do so without a well-planned strategy. Besides addressing threats there are many benefits to sitting down and strategizing your growth for the next few years.
Strategy Benefit 1: Foundation of Branding
Many feel that a logo is a brand, but it’s not. It’s part of it. Without a strategy to back up the shiny new logo you’ll be closing your doors in a few months after release. I say that from experience because some of the logos I created in the early part of my career were for businesses that had no real strategy. Many of them failed and I ended up with a portfolio of good work for failed businesses. This is why I changed my strategy to include strategic planning as part of the brands I build. Having a strategy forces you to address the other touch points potential families will come in contact with in the process of doing business with you. This ensures that the experience is one they will want to repeat when another family member passes.
Strategy Benefit 2: Identifies Holes Quicker
What could potentially go wrong if the plan doesn’t work? What if “X” happens, how will we address that? What other marketing channels can we utilize than the ones we normally use? When you have a strategy in place if it’s not working you can quickly identify the breaks and fix them. This is because your strategy will have already taken your current and potential families through the process of working with your firm. If they aren’t hiring you to care for their loved ones you can pinpoint the issue and fix it. As a result you can implement the next benefit.
Strategy Benefit 3: Thinks Outside the Box
Mike Tyson famously said, “everyone has a plan until they’re punched in the face.” Strategy is the plan and life is your punch. Will you punch back or get knocked out and close your firm? I tried implementing the same plan in a new market when I expanded one of my brands. It didn’t work and I was going crazy. Life was throwing haymakers at me. Yet, part of my strategy was a retention plan. When I followed it I received some crucial information and I was able to address the issue in a week. It allowed me to solidify my place in the local market. It also created a new plan that enhanced my brand and continually helps me to grow. As the holes in your strategy get exposed you can narrow in on the issue and come up with creative solutions. This is because you’ll already understand your constraints and be able to use your amazing mind to Gerry rig a solution. Sorry, low or no budget is not an excuse. Your strategy should address how you’ll come up with solutions based on your current budget. That’s what it’s supposed to do. This is because a strategy is supposed to give you the next benefit.
Strategy Benefit 4: Creates a Reasonable Plan
A strategy that doesn’t have a realistic plan of success is just a pipedream. Let’s say your goal is to triple your service calls in a year. I love it. What are you prepared to spend to get there? Let’s break it down to hard numbers after all I written before that you need to know your numbers. So, let’s say you currently do 50 service calls a year. Your average service call brings you $2500. That means your goal is to grow your revenue from $125,000 to $375,000 in one year. Are you prepared to spend at least $37,500 to reach that goal? Why that number? Well, you should be willing to invest at least 10% of your revenue goal to reach it.
You might think that number is too high, but if you had a machine that gave you $10 every time you put a dollar in would you keep feeding it a dollar? Of course you would. This is where rubber meets road. If you don’t have that kind of revenue stashed away then your goal isn’t reasonable. It still takes money to make money, but having a strategy allows you spend less of it to get there. The best benefit of having a strategy is the last one.
Strategy Benefit 5: It’s Measurable
Now that you have a reasonable plan of growth, you’ve identified the holes and created the support materials to enhance your brand you can now implement said strategy. You’ll know it works if you reach your goal and you’ll be able to fix holes in your strategy quicker to keep you on track. Now you can go deeper and examine what didn’t work so you don’t repeat the mistakes of the past. You’ll see clearly what does work and can allocate more of your budget to it and scale quicker. However, you may be wondering how do I create my growth strategy?
Step 1: Set Your Goal(s)
Whether it’s grow market share, create a new revenue stream, double service calls or something else you have to set a goal. Doing so allows you to reverse engineer its success.
Step 2: Conduct a Discovery Session
A discovery session is like the prep work done before painting. No one sees it, but professionals know it greatly affects the outcome. The discovery session is where you examine every aspect of your business to discover all the barriers hindering you from reaching your goal. I do one for each of my brands every year. One thing to note is that in order for a discovery session to work properly you need to be brutally honest with yourself. If you can’t be then it’s best to facilitate such a session with a professional who will be. You need such honesty if you’re going to create the next step.
Step 4: Create An Implementation Plan
Now that you know all the barriers to your success you can create what you need to overcome them. This is where a new logo, website and other marketing collateral comes in. Just like prep work makes painting better strategy makes your brand stronger. This is because you’re laser focused on exactly what you need to get going as well what will appeal to your families. Now no one else can sweet-talk you into spending money on something that may or may not work. Your discovery session has shown you what will. This leads me to the last crucial aspect of creating your strategy.
Step 5: Tracking It
Most fail here, but you need to track the responses you’re getting from your implementation plan so you can quickly address breaks in your marketing chain. Tracking also allows you to enhance the fulfillment program your team is implementing. After all, they are your brand ambassadors.
Equipped with a strong, but flexible strategy gives you a clear roadmap to success and will unite your team to reach your goal. Until next time I wish you much success transforming your funeral home in a funeral service brand.
