Equalize Price Points to Crystallize Personal Relevance. This is the first recession to show a measurable impact on DeathCare. Most surprising have been the many reports from rural and "rustbelt" funeral directors that cremation has recently spiked, not because people in their markets want cremation but BECAUSE THEY CAN'T AFFORD BURIAL. YIKES!!!! A recent article [...]
to dismount." Archimedes once said, "Give me a lever long enough and I will move the world" For the last 30 years we have been pushing harder and harder on one and only one lever with diminishing results and it's time we stopped. Many of you, dear readers, know that I have been a bible [...]
Here is an excerpt of an interrogation of a witness in a Massachusetts trial court: Lawyer: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse? Doctor: no. Lawyer: did you check for blood pressure? Doctor: no. Lawyer: so, it’s possible the patient was alive when you began the autopsy? Doctor: [...]
Are we rapidly moving toward a "Post-Funeral"culture? I don't think so. After 50 years of steady decline in public attitudes towards funerals the pendulum is swinging back our way. Like Croci in the spring, the signs are poking through the frost if you will just look and this week's post is one excellent example. 30 [...]
Game-changers are those events that intervene in our lives, on athletic fields, and in our businesses that forever change everything. In our personal lives we identify marriages, deaths, and moving to a new city as the easiest examples of game-changers. In baseball, a homerun changes everything. In business, innovation is the most thought-of [...]
How interesting! As I step out to encourage this profession to not give in but take a stand and fight for itself I find more than I expected joining the cause. Apropos of everything my friend, Bruce Buchanan, brought an article to my attention published via The Wall Street Journal that succinctly expresses many of [...]
Olson / Zaltman is an internationally recognized market research firm spawned out of Harvard and Penn State Universities. They developed and patented the groundbreaking research methodology (ZMET) that opens the subconscious metaphors consumers use to make buying decisions. Now widely used by the world's largest institutions and businesses to develop marketing strategies, they are turning [...]
I started my career in business turnarounds in the 1970's when I worked for a company whose business it was to buy and "refurbish" distressed businesses and resell them. DeathCare is in need of a turn around. There are different types of turnaround strategies and turnaround strategists. Many are simply liquidators who cut costs so drastically [...]
Booz & Company, one of the foremost consulting leaders in innovation, has discovered a link between performance and strategy called "Coherence." For a company to be described as coherent, it must be resolutely focused on the interrelationship among three critical elements: its market position (its chosen “way to play” against competitors); its most distinctive capabilities, [...]
I consider Frank Dawson of Dawson Funeral Homes in E. Liverpool, Oh. to be the "Grand Master" of social media. With it he has not only built his business but created a veritable competitive "fortress." He has done this by applying a simple axiomatic human principle. Watch this video to learn more about that principle [...]
