Five Things Worth Knowing This Week in Pre-need
Whole life and final expense sales are up. Way up.
Wink’s Q1 data shows whole life sales rose 18.2percent year over year, with final expense driving nearly 70percent of that movement at an average premium of around $100 a month. The demand is real. The question is whether you have anything built to capture it, or whether it drifts past you to someone who does.
Source: https://insurancenewsnet.com/innarticle/life-insurance-sales-rise-across-all-product-lines-in-q2-wink-reports
A funeral home in Maryland built a “Before I Die” wall. Here’s why it matters for preneed.
Candle Light Funeral Home in Catonsville installed a community chalkboard wall adapted from Candy Chang’s2011 art project in New Orleans. Megan Nagy didn’t build it as a sales tool. She built it to create a space where the community could reflect on what matters before death arrives uninvited. That kind of presence is what makes a preneed conversation easier when the time comes. You’re not a stranger asking for money. You’re the name they already know.
Source: https://connectingdirectors.com/74188-funeral-home-before-i-die-wall-community
Not all funeral streaming platforms are built the same, and the difference matters for lead capture.
The funeral streaming buyer’s guide published by Connecting Directors this year points out that some platforms offer only a static pre-plan link, while others let memorial guests request a callback and actually capture contact details. Families who might be ready to start a preneed conversation are already in your orbit at those moments. Whether you act on that interest depends entirely on whether you built the mechanism to ask.
Source: https://connectingdirectors.com/74164-the-funeral-streaming-buyers-guide
Only 7 percent of families holding cremated remains at home say they lack information about their options.
That finding comes from Parting Stone’s research, and it reframes the follow-up problem completely. The other93 percent know what they could do. They just haven’t done it yet. Tom Anderson at Funeral Director Daily has made the case that structured follow-up at six, twelve, and eighteen months after a service is the mechanism that helps families move toward those decisions, and in doing so opens real conversations about pre-need, placement, niches, and monuments. Most follow-up in this industry runs on a feeling. Real infrastructure runs on a calendar.
Source: https://funeraldirectordaily.com/groundbreaking-research-from-parting-stone-may-help-you-get-cremated-remains-permanently-placed/
A plain-language explainer on trust-funded vs. insurance-funded pre-need contracts is doing quiet, important work.
Memorial Funeral Home published a straightforward breakdown covering the difference between the two funding types, what to ask about guaranteed items, what portability looks like, and what happens if a family needs to cancel. A family that already understands the mechanics before they sit down trusts you faster when they do. That trust gets built by being the one who explained it plainly, weeks or months before anyone was trying to close anything.
Source: https://www.memorialfuneral.com/compare-funeral-trusts-and-insurance-before-you-preplan
Five categories worth building out this week: awareness, presence, capture, cadence, trust. The question is which one has nothing running in it right now.
Fix that one first.
-John
P.S. Got a question? Reach me the old-fashioned way.
John Ashworth, aka Johnny Renaissance
Preneed Growth Coach, Speaker, and Podcast Host
Call me at the desk in Madison, WI: (608) 845-2252
No, you can’t send a text to this line. It’s the old-school landline on my desk in Madison. It works even when the power goes down…🤓