Checking your mindset. . . self-examination is good for business

May 3, 2022/Business/

Just as you would take an inventory of your physical health at least once a year, I also think it is imperative that you take a look at your business’ health at least that often. And, while we meet with our bankers and accountants to take a deep look in the financial health of our business, I also think we need to be self-reflective to look into the “Mindset” of the business as well.

I was reminded of this point when I viewed a webinar hosted by Chris Gomez, Director of Product Marketing at Passare last week. The title of the offering was “To improve your funeral home, you first need the right mindset”. It was an excellent presentation and you can watch it at your leisure here.

Gomez points out in the seminar that we all can get stuck in our everyday mindset and not venture out into other mindsets that may well bring positive enhancements to our businesses. He indicates that there are three mindsets we operate from and sometimes we need to stretch ourselves into innovative thinking so that we are making sure we offer what our clientele really wants.

Here’s the Mindsets he sees with my small explanation of each:

Innovative Mindset — This is when business owners think ahead in a proactive way and offer things that our clientele doesn’t even know that they want yet. In my opinion this takes into account some death care operations that the consumer public doesn’t even know we offer — I think of post-service “bereavement” care and pre-service preneed advice and counseling as areas you can be proactive about in this regard. Or what about Celebrant services. . . which seem to be picking up steam to the consumer public when offered by funeral homes.

Gomez talks about how Netflix moved into the streaming arena when the vast majority of their customers were still in the CD rental phase. When streaming became popular, Netflix was ready to capitalize and raised their subscription base 25-fold in a 15-year span. Quite frankly, they were ready for the next phase of viewing habits before the average consumer knew it existed.

Be “Innovative” and think about what is coming next in death care that you can prepare for and be ready for which allows your firm to capitalize on market share growth. Again, in my opinion, this is probably a great topic to have a staff brain-storming session with.

Idle Mindset — While it is sometimes hard to have that “Innovative” mindset and be ahead of the curve, most of us, in my opinion, live in the world of the “Idle” mindset. That type of mindset, Gomez describes as being “Reactive” to change. There is, again in my opinion, nothing wrong with being reactive, but being reactive in nature does not let a firm lead through innovation and, in turn, hinders forward movement in your brand.

Tom Anderson
Funeral Director Daily

I was reactive in my business many years ago by not taking credit cards when others were. I didn’t want to lose that 3% of sales that the credit card company would take and I did not have any cash flow issues — because of our strong preneed programs. As our current goals were being satisfied I resisted credit card payments until it started costing me some consumer families. In essence, families wanted this option before I gave it. . . that was being reactive and not a good operator.

Recently most of us in the business were forced to being reactive to the technology families wanted — in arrangements and services — by the pandemic. Having the technology available for Zoom arrangements or live-streaming services would have been seen as “Innovative” before the pandemic but is certainly reactive in today’s world. Just that one example goes to show how fast “innovation” can wear off.

Ignorant Mindset — Gomez describes this as putting the company’s needs before the needs of the clientele family. Here’s what he says, “Funeral homes with an ignorant mindset often don’t put the needs of families first because they believe it requires too much work, is too inconvenient, or would require too much change. Rather than seeing the potential benefits of adapting to better serve families, these funeral homes are content to operate as they always have, whether it’s in the best interest of families or not.”

In my career I would argue that I wasn’t “Ignorant” as much as I rationalized the cost of these potential benefits. It was the cost of “Capital Expenditures” that I rationalized against in thinking they would not be a big difference to the clientele public. Two areas where I was late to the game were in creating a much closer parking area and in building our own in-house crematory.

I was making a profit with limited parking and by sending cremations to a trade service, so why spend heavily while everything was going good? However, once I made the improvements business increased to a higher level and I heard a lot from client families how they appreciated the “up-close” parking and the idea that all cremations were now done “in-house”.

Those comments were not really a surprise to me. However, I had let myself rationalize the delays in the improvements into an “Ignorant Mindset”.

Take a look at this 30-minute webinar from Passare and then take time to reflect on how you can make your business more innovative to bring in more families and build your brand.

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