You’re at a conference booth, or maybe just sitting at your desk with a browser tab open, and a number lands in front of you. Thirty percent growth. Fifteen million views. Twenty hours saved every month. Your chest tightens a little. Your pen stops over the page. You lean in, because that number sounds like proof of something.
It is not proof. It is a claim. And in this profession, where your margins are tight and your decisions are permanent, there is a real difference between the two.
Start with the growth story. A funeral home reportedly grew 30percent, and the credit goes to social media. Thirty percent of what, exactly? Calls? Cases? Revenue? Profit? Over what time period? Measured by whom? Nobody seems to know, and the story keeps getting repeated as though repetition is the same as verification.
Let’s run it as an example, because the math deserves a look. A home serving 150 families a year adds 45 more families at 30 percent growth. At the $7,000 to $10,000 per family that national consumer surveys report, that is $315,000 to $450,000 in new revenue. That money is either in the books or it is not. A real number that size has a paper trail. Ask for it.
Now the video. Fifteen million views, reportedly. No platform named. No breakdown of how many of those views came from the county the chapel actually serves. Reach is not revenue. A funeral home serves a community, maybe a county or two if the location is right. Fifteen million is a national audience. You do not bury a national audience. You bury neighbors. Local recognition and viral reach are entirely different measurements, and only one of them pays the light bill.
Then the software. A vendor estimates its integration saves more than 20 hours a month per location. Twenty hours a month is 240 hours a year, about 12 percent of one full-time position based on a standard 2,080-hour work year. That is a part-time task cleaned up, and that genuinely has value. But notice the word: estimates. Because this is their estimate, their math, their interest in the outcome.
Three questions you can ask any vendor, any case study, any claim that makes your pen stop over the page.
What was counted? A case, a call, a dollar, a view, an hour? The unit matters enormously. What dates does this cover? A good quarter is not a trend. A bad year dressed up as a good quarter is a liability. Who measured it? The vendor measuring their own results is a starting point, not a conclusion.
You already have the numbers that matter. Case count. Average revenue per case. Preneed conversion rate. Family referral rate. These are your real measurements, built from your actual business, verifiable in your actual books. They do not require a vendor’s case study to exist. They require you to look at them regularly and ask honest questions about what is moving and what is not.
A compelling number at a booth or in an email is designed to make you feel the pull before you stop and ask the important questions. The pull is real. The questions are better and they are vital.
Know your business math. And be skeptical of bold claims that aren’t backed up by real data. Especially today as you walk the floor at NFDA.
-Johnny Renaissance
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