Once in a while something comes along that deserves to be viral. Something that speaks to the common good and addresses issues deep enough to be shared by everyone.
Intelligence indicates knowledge not wisdom. A wise man knows how to use his knowledge to make a good decision. A person may have a lot of knowledge but be unable to use it properly.
There is no sensible businessman today that isn’t concerned about how they are going to cope with the future. Never in the history of DeathCare has the pace and complexity of change been increasing as fast as it is today. What is needed is perspective. And in a recent article by Todd Van Beck in the Canadian Funeral Director Magazine I was almost startled to find an old perspective…a piece of genuine wisdom… that all of us desperately need today.
I know that several of my readers are trade journalists. Todd has given me permission to reproduce this. I appeal to you to help me bring a new / old perspective back from the dead. Let’s help our readership find new ways to think about the competitive challenges of this day.
Click here for Todd’s article entitled Walmart
I appreciate Todd’s article and think that it certainly has some merit. Obviously, this concept does require that the service charges of the funeral home carry the full burden of both overhead and profit margin.
In our local market, the “new” funeral consumer is already opting out of more expensive merchandise and purchasing more value priced items. In fact, many of these financially hampered buyers wouldn’t even be able to pay wholesale what an average 18 gauge casket might price out at cost. I have no problem with marketing to accomodate that type of purchasing mentality. However, our issue is increasingly fewer and fewer “traditional” services, on which all of our other service charges are based. To align with the wholesale merchandise process, then the service charges must rise drastically. So, has the consumer really gained anything? Buy a casket at a wholesale or near wholsesale price from the funeral home and pay a much higher service charge fee, or buy merchandise that is reasonably marked up and pay a median priced service charge fee?