Preneed is the one growth channel still adding real volume while at-need call volume shrinks
Preneed is the one growth channel still adding real volume while at-need call volume shrinks, and that distinction matters more than the summary numbers suggest.
Independent Preneed Growth Brief for Tuesday, August 11th, 2026
Preneed is the one growth channel still adding real volume while at-need call volume shrinks, and that distinction matters more than the summary numbers suggest.
1. Carriage Services just gave us a real-world proof point, with a wrinkle worth understanding
Carriage Services reported second-quarter 2026 results on August 5. Insurance-funded preneed funeral contracts sold increased 21.1% year over year. Cemetery preneed sales production increased 5.0%. Management called preneed a key driver of long-term growth.
Here’s the wrinkle the topline numbers hide. In the same quarter, consolidated funeral contract volume fell 4.0% to 6.0% depending on the measure, and the actual number of cemetery preneed interment rights sold declined 8.9% to 14.0%. The cemetery preneed dollar growth is coming almost entirely from price — average price per preneed interment right jumped 14.1% to 17.9%. Fewer people are buying cemetery property. They’re just paying more for it.
But the insurance-funded funeral preneed number is a different animal. That 21.1% is contract count, not price. More people are actually signing funeral preneed agreements, in the same stretch where fewer people are calling for at-need service.
My read
This is exactly why independent owners should stop thinking of preneed as something that merely follows at-need market share.
But the honest version of the pitch is narrower than “preneed is booming.” It’s this: funeral preneed relationships are the one part of this business still growing in real volume terms, independent of mortality and independent of pricing tricks. That’s a more defensible claim to bring to an owner, and it survives someone in the room asking a hard question about the numbers.
If calls soften, you don’t sit around hoping mortality rebounds. You build future market share now through:
lead generation → community engagement → appointments → funded contracts → future calls
Carriage’s own CEO noted July call trends were “encouraging” after a soft first half — worth watching, because if mortality genuinely rebounds later this year, preneed contracts written now become at-need calls on a schedule you already know.
2. Hospice may be the next seriously underdeveloped lead channel
CANA runs its first Certified Hospice Relations Specialist training this Wednesday, August 12, in Minneapolis — a pre-convention workshop ahead of CANA’s 108th Annual Convention, led by consultant Lacy Robinson.
The framing is worth noting. This isn’t “network with the hospice nurse.” Attendees are taught to identify hospice organizations strategically, learn to speak the actual language hospice teams use, build outreach and educational partnerships, and move from passive participant to trusted partner in the end-of-life care continuum.
That is channel development, not networking.
CANA’s own numbers: hospice is now involved in roughly half of all deaths in most communities, and most funeral homes have no structured understanding of how that involvement shapes which provider a family ultimately chooses.
Practical implication
I would put Hospice Relationships right beside seminars, Facebook leads, and aftercare in the growth dashboard.
Track:
Organizations identified → relationships established → educational events → referrals/connections → preneed conversations → future families served
And I’d be careful with the word “referrals.” This has to remain genuine community partnership, not bounty hunting for dying people.
Done correctly, though, it could be enormously powerful — and it’s early enough that almost nobody in most local markets has a real program yet. That’s the actual opportunity here, not the certification itself.
3. The market is increasingly selling the entire preneed machine
Connecting Directors featured a managed-preneed offering this week from Treasured Memories that includes counselor recruitment and training, community outreach and Lunch & Learns, aftercare, direct mail, contact-management tools, and continuing family engagement.
Yes, that’s vendor marketing, so I wouldn’t treat its claims as independent evidence.
But I absolutely pay attention to what vendors are choosing to sell.
They’re no longer advertising:
“Here’s our great preneed insurance product.”
They’re advertising:
“We’ll help operate your growth system.”
Recruiting. Training. Seminars. Aftercare. CRM. Outreach.
That competitive shift keeps accelerating.
Independent implication
The person who owns the operating infrastructure increasingly controls the relationship, not the person who owns the best product or the best carrier contract.
That matters enormously, and it’s the exact bet the aiflash build is making. More on the aiflash coming soon, and you’ll be even closer to the inner circle if you get on the main mailing list here: https://sendfox.com/johnashworth
4. Lead generation is quietly moving from “death planning” toward legacy
One of the more interesting recent preneed concepts comes from Jason Troyer’s Preserve Their Voice, which uses recorded storytelling and voice preservation as an entry point for families. FuneralVision highlighted the program in late July specifically as a way funeral homes can engage families beyond conventional preplanning.
I love the strategic idea behind this.
Most consumers don’t wake up thinking:
“Today’s the day I plan my funeral!”
But they absolutely think about:
Mom’s stories. Dad’s voice. Family history. Photos. Legacy. What they’ll leave behind.
That creates a much less threatening doorway into advance planning.
Practical implication
I’d experiment with lead magnets that aren’t explicitly funeral-oriented. I’m actually building-out a framework as we speak for this. I’ll be writing more about it soon:
Record the stories your children will wish they’d asked you about.
The Legacy Planning Checklist.
Five things your family should know about you before they need to know them.
Then the funeral-planning conversation becomes a natural next step. The same pull-not-push logic behind the landline desk here in my office, applied to lead generation instead of follow-up. You can call me here anytime on the old school landline desktop corded phone. The one connected to copper wire and that never goes down even if the power goes out :) 608-845-2252. If i’m here, I always pick-up. If not, you can leave me your contact info, including your email and I’ve got some goodies I can send your way. Leave your full mailing address if you’re interested in the analogue version of the ash flash. I don’t post those articles anywhere else.
All of this, of course, is much larger top-of-funnel stuff, but that doesn’t make it any less important.
5. Technology isn’t the story anymore. Integration is.
Across industry education right now, the recurring categories are technology, sales and marketing, customer experience, management and measurement. ICCFA University’s recently completed 2026 program divided education into exactly those kinds of operating disciplines.
The interesting part isn’t that funeral homes need software. We knew that five years ago.
The change is that the software needs to connect the journey.
A Facebook lead should not live in one database. A seminar attendee in another spreadsheet. An aftercare family somewhere else. A preneed contract in the carrier portal. And an owner’s production report buried in an email attachment.
That fragmentation is where growth disappears. It’s also exactly the gap between what a vendor can sell an owner and what an owner actually needs running underneath the business.
Johnny’s Move of the Week
I’m also adding a new concept to the reporting dashboard I’ve created for my partners.
Future Market Share Created
Instead of showing you only:
“Michelle wrote $110,000 this month.”
Show:
New households entered pipeline: 42 New planning relationships established: 17 Funded families added: 12 Future face amount secured: $110,000 Unfunded relationships retained for nurture: 30
Suddenly we’re talking about a lot more than just agent production.
I’m showing you:
“Here is how much future market share we manufactured this month, and how many of those are real new relationships, not just bigger checks from the same shrinking pool of buyers.”
That last clause matters after this week’s numbers. An owner who’s paying attention will ask whether growth is volume or price. This is an extremely important data point in your funeral business to be aware of now.
Bottom line
Four things jump out this week.
Preneed volume is growing even where at-need volume isn’t cooperating, but only in the funeral preneed contract count, not uniformly across the business, and that distinction is worth knowing.
Hospice relationships are being professionalized as a measurable community-growth channel, and almost nobody local has built one yet.
The competitive battlefield is shifting from insurance product to infrastructure.
And legacy-first lead generation may open a much wider top of funnel than death-planning messaging ever will.
That infrastructure point matters most.
Carriers have products. Marketing firms have leads. Software companies have platforms. Agents have relationships. Funeral homes have community trust.
The real prize belongs to whoever connects all of those things into one measurable growth engine.
And increasingly, that’s what the market itself is telling us. And that’s what I’m working on for you.
-John
608-845-2252 - The old-school landline desk phone…you know, the one connected to copper wire and that never goes down even if the power goes out :)
If i’m here, I always pick-up. If not, you can leave me your contact info, including your email and I’ve got some goodies I can send your way. Leave your full mailing address if you’re interested in the analogue version of the ash flash. I don’t post those articles anywhere else.