Nothing to say, yet
Transcription
Ann is a salesperson who likes to reach out to people and start conversations, even if they don't answer. She uses different campaigns, like the recent one called Pre-Plan with Ann, to connect with potential customers. Ann calls them and leaves a message, then follows up with an email. She believes in warming up leads and understanding each person's needs before offering information about funeral planning. Ann works on leads generated by Keith's advertising, and the process can take three to six months. She believes in personalizing her approach and keeping in touch with leads. Some leads may not turn into customers, but Ann still maintains contact. She is a beta tester for different advertising strategies and appreciates the opportunity to utilize her expertise in pre-planning. The community survey concept is used in most markets, helping agents have a better understanding of potential customers' needs. Overall, Ann believes in building relationships and helping people feel comfortabl Well, I love people and I think a lot of people that do what we do are natural people, people, people persons. And I just like to get the conversation going and whether they answer or not, I will leave a message. I know other sales people may not leave a message, but I want to know, I want people to know that I at least was trying to reach out to them. And I might begin the conversation, and it all depends on what campaign. We'll use this latest one Keith has been running for us, and it was titled Pre-Plan with Ann. It was a Facebook ad, and you could either make an appointment or request information be sent. So I would start the conversation that I got one in today. That's where, and I'm sure other people may approach it in other ways, but here's kind of what I do. I'll have a name, and let's just say her name is Mary Jane Brown, and she responded to our latest campaign, which was, or is, Pre-Plan with Ann. I'll call up and say, hey, Mary Jane, thank you so much for responding to our recent ad that we've had on Facebook that was Pre-Plan with Ann. We'd really love an opportunity just to tell you a little bit more about it and what would be involved with it, and is there a good day and time that we might be able just to spend maybe 15 or 20 minutes together and go over what's going to be important to you. Please call our funeral home, and we can get a convenient day and time on our calendars. Our number is 302-478-THANK-YOU, and then I hang up. And then, right after that, I will send them an email, because Keith has gathered their email address and a phone number, but my first line of attack always is the phone. I want to hear a voice, be able to take the temperature of the person, because there's all different people in the world. Some people just want pricing, some are just kind of putting their big toe in the water to learn all about this. They don't have a clue of what's involved. Maybe they're coming off another experience that they might have had in their life that motivated them to respond to what we're advertising. People respond to the ads for all different reasons, so I like to hear a voice first off so I can take the temperature of what this other person might be really asking and how I could best help them. Then I do the email thing, and we have templates of emails in our little customer relationship management program that I'll then email one that's called the value of a plan, and it just talks about how important it is to have a funeral plan in place. Then I'll let a few days go by, if I haven't heard, either back by phone or email, and go try again with the phone. Then my follow-up email to that is a personal invitation through one that I will write and say, hi Mary Jane, this is Ann again from McCreary and Harrah. I did try to reach out to you the other day, and would love to have the opportunity to speak with you regarding pre-planning for yourself or other family members. Is there a convenient time that we could talk? Here is the funeral home number. And then just depending on how they respond, then they'll just go back into the to-do list on my customer management program. Multiple times, and by multiple, I'm working on email leads that I've had ever since Keith has started doing advertising for us. So I don't know when that was, Keith, but we've had all different types of campaigns. It's been a couple years now. It's a slower lead. It's not as quick as somebody calling up and saying, hey, I got your direct mail piece in, and I really, this has been on my mind. And you get a sense that they're much more motivated to do. You have to work these leads. I think just put their toe in the water. And you know, there's all sorts out there that are just playing on Facebook that you don't know really how serious they might be. Of course, you get a handful of pranksters that, oh, it's a funeral home, I'm going to put somebody else's name and email on there. I've had a couple of those too. You know, you just handle it as they come. That's kind of my approach. I like just to really try and read and make sure that when I'm calling back, I circle back with whatever Facebook ad they might have responded to. Keith, it's really good that you're keeping track of when these leads come in, because when I enter it in on my leads management, I will make reference of which ad they actually responded to. So if it's somebody that, we have one, John, that says, best Christmas present ever. I can remind the person that I'm trying to reach, hey, you responded to this, you know, a couple months back, and we're so grateful and have been trying to get you ever since. And boy, are you hard to get a hold of, but I'm glad I'm at least still doing. And, you know, when we finally do connect, it's a great thing. It's a way for me to be able to have a connect of how this person came into our lead base. Yes, very much so. Very much so. People are welcoming of this, and they're curious about it. They want more information, let alone maybe just jump ahead and book a time to plan the pre-planning for themselves. So, yeah, it is. But we've got to warm up that lead to make them feel comfortable. And I kind of correlated, John, to people that sell real estate. They don't sell as many houses or as many strip malls in a year as I do pre-need contracts. So their turnover is a much slower, slower sales cycle where they got to nurture a whole, I never sold real estate in my life, but I know that that's kind of their cycle. This cycle, because of the nature of the business and what they're doing, you're confronting somebody with the fact that, hey, going to die and we've got to plan for it, let alone part with money to pay for it. It's a tall order that we have to go slowly and be the patience that maybe they don't have about it or the fear. We have to absorb all of that and make it the road very easy for them to jump on and take the scare out of it. I'm going to say there's really hard to put a definition on it and maybe there's people that are more skilled and have more tricks up their sleeves than I do about sending out emails every three days or four days or something. I don't like to be bombarded myself with emails, so I kind of don't do it. To answer your question, it can take anywhere from three months to six months. As I just said, what, five minutes ago, I'm still working on some that Keith generated when we first started this two years ago, but not a once let's through the cracks because they're in that leads management system that maybe I will pursue for every three days for the first three weeks, months, and then the time frame gets spread out a little bit more, but I never lose contact with them. Never. Again, it just depends on my success rate of actually making contact with someone either phone or email, so you just got to keep going. There are exceptions. I had one today. Again, Keith, this is one you just sent in when? This morning maybe. I jumped right on those and the woman picked up and I said, you know, hi, this is Ann. Thank you so much for responding to our pre-planning with Ann ad. I was just checking back to see if you'd like to set up a time to come together. Oh no, I just want that planning guide because I'm going to be donating my body to science and I know I can do that. I said, well sure, that's fine and I said, we can either download it, would you prefer to download it or do you want me to mail a hard copy? Oh, mail a hard copy. Well, now I have a mailing address, so that's good, but the bottom line is I know that probably won't turn into a bona fide pre-made lead because she already has in her brain because she did it. She said, I'm widowed and we did this with my husband and that's what I want to do. I just want to have a book and write and give it to my family. I said, fine. I got her address, mailed it, she's still in there and I'll check back with her. I was very happy that first time out I got her. There's no rule about getting people other than it's a longer lead to pursue than somebody who's hot to trot from a mailer or a call-in person. Well, John, I would say first and foremost, Ann's one of our beta testers when it comes to our ads that we run. We run a variety of different campaigns and strategies throughout the last two years with Ann, but we also love when Ann comes up with new concepts that we can test and develop. Ann was one of our founders, but she really was. When it came to running campaigns on Facebook, she was one of the first of our funeral homes to really raise their hands up and say, hey, I want to try this and see the results behind it. It allowed us to really use her and her expertise to really fill out not only our strategies, beta testing languages, but also beta testing new formats to see how they could work in different markets. I thank you, Ann, first and foremost for being one of those people. Even technology-wise, you may not be an expert at it, but when it comes to your expertise in the pre-planning section of the business, you're amazing, seriously. Thank you. I lean on you for allowing us to continue to utilize your expertise and continue our strategies to be more effective for our clients as well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Saying all that, John, you are very welcome. Saying all that, John, the biggest thing that we lead with most, I'd say 95% of our markets is the community survey concept, which is basically taking that mailer piece that Ann always talks about that, you know, it's a 20-question survey that we narrowed down and simplified and utilized only six to seven questions in Facebook format to really get an idea for it not just being such a coldly, right, it's just not a full-name, email address and phone number and zip code. It at least has answered questions that are leading questions. So when Ann or an agent calls back, they have a formulated concept of what they can lead into with relating to that person from the start, whether it be an age group, whether they had more of an interest on cremations versus burials, or even price pointing that comes down to what their financial means are when it comes to knowing how much a funeral actually costs. But the question that we've actually added on to that format is, have you ever pre-planned a funeral? And that's changed everything. I want to say we started running that across our entire footprint once we released in Wisconsin maybe two months ago. And I want to say first and foremost, probably 90% of the time it's no, which is amazing to us because we think that people know about pre-planning and they really don't. In fact, when we talk about what we do with this strategy, whether it be community survey concepts or the planning guide concepts or pre-plan with Ann, we have to understand that people don't think about pre-planning. That's one thing that we know. We've learned from our three years doing this that people aren't going to Google and typing in pre-planning. That's not how they search this. In fact, that's the at-need side of the business. When people go to Google, they're searching funeral homes near me or funeral home costs or cremation costs and getting information from the funeral homes website for an at-need side. But no one's thinking about pre-planning. And with what we've done with our concepts, it really helps be more relatable out in the community. Not ambush chasing, but more relatable that we're offering a service out there. And on top of that, that branding, we offer a way to get leads generated to our clients that they never had before. And I think that's the twofold that we always have to make sure we're mindful of when we do these strategies. Like with Ann's thing, the pre-plan with Ann was really about branding Ann. Let's just be honest. It's branding her, her photo, her phone number that, hey, you may not need this now, but this is a person that's there for you. On Facebook, we know that that generation at 65 to even 55 have just leaped on the Facebook now more than ever. Even the stats show it. The stats are showing that that market, that generation has not left since COVID. In fact, it's almost tripled since COVID, which is crazy. And even the number now that it's a daily, how many hours people spend on Facebook has gone up tremendously. It's due to this generation. It went from 2.5 to now it's 3.5 hours a day people are on Facebook. And that just shows you that we're in front of the right audience, and that audience is only going to grow even more over time. I think that most of our industry is not aware of, and when we talk to them for the first time about our product and we give them that insight, it blows their mind away. It allows us to be more relatable to how and why we're doing this on their behalf when no one else is. It really is about the different campaign strategies that we launch. And again, I can't say enough. We launch most of the time with the community survey, then we'll leap into doing planning guide concept. But with Ann, we've done so many nuances from an animated nuance. We actually have a which statement. We took one of our GeoPens campaigns and made it into an animated GIF on Facebook, and it produced leaves for Ann. And it was called the which statement would you choose concept. And even what Ann mentioned there about the best present, Christmas present ever, it catches their attention. And it's stuff like that that we continue to revolutionize our strategy to be year-long. I was going to say, it's helped me grow, who is not obviously very tech savvy, to learn how to do some of these things, meaning if somebody says, oh, how do I download this planning guide? Or what materials do I need to get started? No, I already have my cemetery, and I can come back and say to them, well, this is about funeral planning. You may think you've made a great start, which you have, but that's not the end of the story. There's a whole other side to the story that we need to talk about. I just like that we can download any of our handouts, price list, almost anything. It's really important that there be somebody at the helm to coordinate and be the go-to person that can really help them organize a plan. And that's kind of what we're charged with as salespeople. Just another thought, I have on occasion, not with everyone, but texted people too. Texted from my cell phone to the phone number that they provided. And sometimes they're given a landline, which doesn't work too well to be able to text, but that can be maybe a step or two or three into it as well. So some people are comfortable texting, others like emails, others like phone calls. But I like to hear a voice first, and texting will fall later on in the priority list. It really is. Anne's the face and the nameplate of the funeral home, the Queer in the Era. Let's just be honest when it comes to pre-planning. And her years of experience, what goes back almost, what, two decades now, three decades now? I mean, 1982, 40 years. So it comes down to basically making sure that we're being very out there in the community and doing it the right way. We're very cautious with our strategies, very mindful that we're watching over the campaigns like a hawk, just for negative commenting, because there are negative people out there still. And we really watch over our campaigns and delete the negative comments. The audience that we're going after, that 50-plus, are very cautious about what they put too sometimes, because I think they're more mindful of their reputation and in the community. So they're very mindful of what they do put out there. But I tell you what, most of our campaigns, I want to say 90% of our time, our campaigns have positive commenting on them. And they stir up more of a, I don't want to say like a review session, but sometimes it's just once one positive comment happens, we get a funnel effect of more and more positivity about who they are in the community. Hey, Anne's helped me do this already. I mean, Anne even has this on her as one, a lot of them have like a little positive commenting, which helps make that even more of a positive response in the community about what she does. And it helps it be more relatable, because when somebody comments, it goes out to their network now of friends. And all of her friends get that ping that, hey, Anne or John commented on Anne's ad, you know, about Macquarie and Heron, about how good she is. Or, hey, I've already pre-planned with Anne. Thank you, Anne, for helping me through this during a difficult time. You know, it's stuff like that, that it helps generate that voice in the community to help these ads even generate more positiveness for that funeral home. As I say, it's just not that we run these ads. It's what we do behind the scenes to make sure these ads are done tactfully in a way that's positivity in the community itself. When somebody likes, shares, and comments on these ads, John, these ads just bloom and blossom even more so than what we do even by ourselves. And that's Facebook community done right. You know, that's Facebook advertising done right. Even how many ads a person sees, we don't saturate. We're not overbearing with our message. In fact, most of our campaigns, a user will see over that three-day period, maybe two to three ads. That's it. They're not being hit over the head. Like, I can look at my newsfeed or mine, I'm seeing the same darn ads over and over and over again, and that's over saturation. And if we would do that with our message, I guarantee we'd see a negative response. But we do it with an elegant way of, with a great price point. I think you said this before, John, when we first started. It's a price point that most people think can't be effective. It really is. It's a really effective price point that most funeral homes, like, Ann, $150, really? That's it? Yeah, $150. It'll generate so much positiveness and hopefully along the way, grab a lead or two that really helps impact not only Ann's business, but the business of the funeral as a whole. And I'll tell you what, John, this is a secret. We don't want to tell people about this secret too often, but we've now formulated the fact and tested this theory that if you have a successful campaign, and say it's generated 20, 30 leads, instead of rebuilding the campaign for a whole new campaign, we are able to actually add dollars on that existing campaign that's successful and optimized and extended, and it's actually had further success. And it allows us to kind of not even think about rebuild, let's just continue that success. And what we've tried to track there is really if it's having a successful cost per lead metric, we kind of engage in our head, okay, I'm going to, you know, let's get this threshold point. If it gets to this threshold point of, okay, it was that $5 cost per lead, it's staying within that $5 to $10 cost per lead, we're going to stick with it and keep that campaign going as long as possible as far as our strategy. And to that client, they're like, is, well, does that mean more people are going to see it more often? Nope, nope, we're going to hit new people. We're just going to hit new people. It's not about seeing it and being oversaturated. It's going to be pushed out there to more people in the market that have like interest. It's free marketing. It's what it is then. It really is. It's free marketing. I think the big thing too, you guys got to realizing and listening to Anne is something that still is missing is not only the script out there, but also the nurturing process. And Anne, you mastered it. I'll be flat out honest. She mastered a nurturing process because even in our business B2B, it's a nurturing process. Ginger can probably speak to that. It's not an expectation when you're meeting with a funeral home director, you're going to get their business in the first day or first minute or first year. It's a nurturing process to stay connected with that person, that lead. And that's what you do. You have multiple touch points with a person throughout the life of that lead. And that lead only dies when that person dies, in my opinion. And that's where I think a lot of our funeral homes don't take that next step with nurturing the lead process yet. And that's something that we're still building upon with our own system, but you hit it right on the head. It's a nurturing process. Don't take a call to be the last resort, an email after that and email down the road a month from now, two months from now. To stay connected with those touch points are what make the value added of what you service them for. I want to say the big thing too, the one thing that we're doing with Anne and Anne's probably calling from her direct phone, which is perfect. Cause it's probably coming up a van rowing on her cell phone and that's call her ID. But one thing that we are noticing in some markets with some agents success versus non-success is whether or not they're calling from their personal phones or from the funeral home phone. And the reason why we're starting to look at that more and more is the fact that when somebody fills out these surveys or these things on Facebook and all of a sudden they get a call from a John Smith versus the funeral home itself, they kind of not, I wouldn't say they're like likely, less likely to answer the call or may assume it's actually a spam call versus if they actually see identifier and I call her ID coming from the funeral home. And we are testing this theory right now that it's a direct relation of how our community and society is now. Because in general, on my phone, it was in a given day, I'm getting 10 to 15 spam calls now. And I think when you see a nameplate come up of a funeral home, because you just filled out a survey, you may be more likely to answer versus non-answer. So it's something that we are looking at very seriously now and even thinking about how we can usually, there is technology allows you to call through a funeral home and have that nameplate show up even calling through your personal phone. That way you are appearing as if you are representing that funeral home versus calling as yourself and they may not know who you are. And I've actually had this happen to me before too, John, I'll get calls from funeral home owners, agents that are calling me, and it's not even their right name that shows up in my caller ID and I don't answer it. I allow it to go to voicemail because I don't know who you are. So it's something that we're taking very serious as kind of the mindset of the user now and how they perceive, perception is everything. And even in a caller ID on your phone's perception now of trust. So, but with Ants, what we're doing for Ants Perfect, I mean, it's pre-planned with Ants. So when you get a call from Ant Pebble, Ant Rowan on their cell phone, they know who it is. But for a general campaign that they have no idea who the agent is, we're seeing the strategy of calling through the funeral home, either the hard line or having it, the technology to actually, you know, for calling into that funeral nameplate is more value out there as well. Thanks for listening, everybody. This is John Ashworth at Golden Considerations. We are a pre-need broker in the funeral profession. We've been around a long time. We are family owned by a funeral director just like you. If you're interested in learning more about how we can help you sell more pre-need funeral services and give your families more service and more options at the same time and earn more commissions, head over to sell more pre-need.com today for more tips, tools, and resources, and fill out the contact form and I will be in touch. Take care. And thanks for listening. We appreciate you being here.
