Earlier this year Rick Baldwin used a comment by famed hockey player, Wayne Gretzky, in his post: "How To Be Exceptional In The New Normal". Here Bruce Buchanan, CEO of The Buchanan Group adds his perspective to Rick's. Bruce Buchanan As funeral professionals we are torn by two forces when we take on [...]
In the past few weeks I have used strong negative language: Cowardice...Fight... Neglect Please understand: this is not an emotional reaction on my part. Instead, it is an intentional effort to call you out. And it is this "intentionality" that I encourage you to undertake as well. It is time we, as a profession, [...]
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 [...]
Is it possible that in some markets people no longer care? In this series on Funeral Apologetics I have pointed out that our real problem is cowardice and have endeavored to share some techniques that might help the profession fight for itself. Several very thoughtful individuals (whom I also admire) have suggested that, in their [...]
Apologists must be aware of 4 generally accepted fallacies: Consumers think in a well-reasoned rational way In fact, emotions are closely interwoven with the reasoning process. Most often they are dominant. Consumers can readily explain their behavior and thinking 95% of our thinking is unconscious. Our rational mind serves mainly to make sense of behavior [...]
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 [...]
[Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of information.] Much of my career has involved business turnarounds. This experience serves me well as a funeral home consultant. Over the course of more than 30 years I have learned a lot about human nature. [...]
...The problem is cowardice!! There, it's been said. Plain and simple: We have been unwilling to stand up for what we believe and now we are not sure we believe it any more. After all how long can you get beat up and still try to stand? So, instead of taking a stand we assume [...]
Last week, in Part 1 of this series, we explored the idea that funeral Directors, as consummate relationship builders, may be wired to lose in an environment that has changed radically over the past 30 years. Based on non-industry research we posited that the "Challenger" style was 13 times more likely to succeed in the [...]