 Arguing. Fighting. Physical violence. Destruction of property. Extreme denial. When I ask funeral professionals about their most difficult challenges, I frequently hear about extreme behaviors in the arrangement room. Not only are the stories jaw-dropping, but they seem to be getting worse and more common over the years. In the face of anger and rudeness, it can be difficult to generate empathy for the bereaved. That’s why I think it is valuable to do our best to understand the source of these extreme behaviors. We may be able to be more patient and gracious if we understand what is causing these behaviors. Defense MechanismsOne way to make sense of these behaviors is through the lens of “defense mechanisms” – a concept originally developed by Freud. When you hear the name “Sigmund Freud,” you might immediately dismiss anything developed by a pipe-smoking, sex-obsessed, Viennese physician from the early 1900s. Even as a psychologist myself, Freud isn’t my favorite guy; I believe many of his perspectives are outdated, misogynistic, and outright wrong. However, some of his theories and perspectives have stood the test of time and can provide valuable insights into human motivation and behavior. I hope you will continue reading to discover if these 3 examples of defense mechanisms match your experiences in the arrangement room. I suspect you will discover that you actually agree with Freud on several of these concepts. While I love giving a good lecture on Freud (seriously, just give this former college professor half a chance…), we don’t have the time or space for a full exploration of defense mechanisms. In a nutshell, Freud said all people use defense mechanisms to reduce anxiety or mental discomfort. Most of the time, these defense mechanisms are relatively normal and healthy; they only become problematic when they are used in extreme ways. For example, “denial” is one of the most commonly used defense mechanisms. A common experience of denial related to bereavement is when you reach for your phone to call a loved one, only to quickly remember they are deceased. There’s absolutely nothing abnormal or pathological about this – our brains are simply used to them being alive and it takes a moment for that reality to reappear. On the other end of the continuum of denial is an extreme reaction. For example, when the police find that a family still has grandpa sitting at the dining room table – eight months after he died. All defense mechanisms can be viewed on a continuum; mild and common uses of reducing anxiety and pain or extreme situations when the individual’s reaction is much more dramatic and often pathological. It is important to note that defense mechanisms are largely unconscious responses. Or put another way, these are not deliberate or premeditated strategies. They still hurt if you are on the receiving end, but I don’t want you to think these are intentional efforts designed to attack others. They are the unconscious reactions of someone trying to deal with painful thoughts and emotions. Although Freud and his daughter, Anna, described several dozen defense mechanisms, we are going to focus on three that you may see in the arrangement room: displacement, projection, and reaction formation. DisplacementLike denial, displacement is a very commonly used defense mechanism. Displacement is when we take the angry or aggressive impulses toward one person and “displace” them on another, usually safer, target. For example, let’s say your boss yells at you and it makes you angry. You realize that it isn’t smart to strike back at your boss, so you go home and yell at your spouse, yell at your kids, or kick the dog as a way to displace your anger onto a ‘safer’ target. (I fully realize that getting angry at your spouse may not be a “safer” target – this is just an example. Also, don’t kick dogs.) A common example of displacement in funeral service is when the bereaved are angry at the deceased. Perhaps the deceased wasn’t a kind person. Perhaps the bereaved are angry that the deceased didn’t take better care of themselves or go to get a check-up when they suggested it. But even though they are angry, Western culture states that it is not acceptable to “speak ill of the dead.” So where does that anger and frustration go? Sometimes it goes to a “safe target” like the funeral professional. They may assume they won’t see you after the services conclude and therefore you are a safe target for their anger – even if you haven’t done a thing to deserve it. Have you had situations where the bereaved are angry at you for no apparent reason? ProjectionHave you ever had someone accuse you of only caring about money? A second defense mechanism, projection, might be a part of their response. Projection is the process of taking our own feelings and thoughts that make us uncomfortable and then dealing with them by projecting them onto someone else. A common example of projection is when we deal with our own self-hate by projecting that view onto others. Projection takes “I don’t like myself” and turns it into, “He/She hates me for no reason” or “Everybody hates me.” It reduces our anxiety and negative self-worth to suggest it is coming from others, not from oneself. Here are some examples of what a person might be feeling and how they may project that onto the funeral professional: Bereaved individual’s thought: “I’m curious about death and death-related procedures, but am worried about how others will judge my curiosity.” Projected onto funeral professional: “Why are you so obsessed with death!” Bereaved individual’s thought: “I’m so angry at my mother for not taking better care of my father and look what happened.” Projected onto funeral professional: “Why are you treating my mother so badly!” Bereaved individual’s thought: “I wonder how much this is going to cost. I could desperately use some extra money right now.” Projected onto funeral professional: “You’re only obsessed with money!” Reaction FormationA third defense mechanism that may arise in funeral situations is the use of reaction formation. Reaction formation is when a person takes a thought or feeling that is uncomfortable and attempts to convince themselves (and others) that they don’t really have that view by making an extravagant display that is the opposite of their true feelings. For example, if a man found himself sexually attracted to his best friend’s wife, he might deal with the anxiety caused by those feelings by suggesting that he doesn’t like her at all. (We see an example of this exact scenario in the movie Love Actually: It’s a self-preservation thing, you see.). In funeral scenarios, reaction formations arise when the bereaved hates the deceased yet acts as if they were perfect. The bereaved reacts by choosing extravagant funeral products and having an elaborate funeral. Freud would suggest this individual is attempting to convince themselves that their feelings of hate don’t exist. Of course, later the bereaved individual may resolve those feelings of hate and wonder why they spent so much on an elaborate funeral. I suspect this is when they unfairly turn the blame on the funeral professional and say things like, “You tricked me into spending a fortune on the funeral!” In the Arrangement RoomWhile many other defense mechanisms come into play, these are three that appear frequently. After learning about these defense mechanisms a natural question is, “How does a funeral professional respond in these situations?” That is the focus of my presentation: “Defusing Conflict in the Arrangement Room: Strategies from Family Therapists” at the CANA’s 101st Annual Cremation Innovation Convention. I will be reviewing how funeral professionals can better understand the conflict that sometimes arises in the arrangement process as well as strategies funeral professionals can use to defuse these situations. I hope to see you there! With a wide range of valuable networking and educational opportunities, the CANA Convention features sessions from presenters carefully chosen to make the most of your time away from the office and ensure you leave with practical takeaways.
We can’t wait to welcome Dr. Troyer to the CANA stage in Louisville this August. See what else CANA has planned for our 101st Cremation Innovation Convention: goCANA.org/CANA19. Can’t join us? We’ll have recordings available so you don’t miss out on this amazing content.
 At CANA’s 100th Cremation Innovation, Rick Baldwin and John McQueen took the stage to share their strategies for selling across multiple brands in a high cremation market. Their presentation discussed decades of changes in the marketplace, a history of trials and successes, and business strategies crafted in the trenches of Florida’s dramatically expanding cremation rate. This post features highlights from John McQueen’s presentation that specifically address market domination via brand segmentation. Anderson-McQueen Funeral HomeI want to give you a little bit of perspective about where we came from. Our father started our funeral home in 1952. It was a typical traditional family funeral home. He passed away when I was 22. I was very blessed to have a very intelligent brother who was in the business with me. We were two young guys, we were able to figure out “What are we going to do in the future going forward?” We continued to grow our traditional business. Around 1997, we realized that our consumer was starting to change. The consumer of yesterday was mostly happy with an average product or average service. I even remember when I started in the business, the training program that Batesville used to instruct us for our casket presentation was “This is our average bronze casket” or “our average wood.” Everybody wanted to be average. It was a more product-focused industry in the past. We wanted to sell the casket, we wanted to do all that. Nowadays the products have become less and less important to the consumer. By 1999, when we were getting ready to open our low cost alternative, we had figured out that the consumers had migrated to the two ends of the spectrum. So it kind of made that middle collapse. Basically, you have the price-seeking consumer on one end and the solution-seeking consumer on the other end. One of the problems with this, in our opinion, is that’s where the traditional funeral home lies—in the middle. The Profit ZoneThere’s a book out there called The Profit Zone, and they talk about how, over the last 15 years, the winners in the marketplace have been the price discounters. Those with the low-cost position. Walmart is the example. The next is the superstores. Those that have a particular focus, along with a low cost combination. The best example of that would probably be Best Buy. If you want electronics, go to Best Buy. They have everything and anything you could possibly think of, and they have it at a really great price. The third winner in the marketplace is the high-end specialists, those that differentiate themselves from everybody else in the market. They charge a premium price to do so. The best examples of those would be L.L. Bean, Ritz-Carlton, Harley-Davidson, Starbucks. You could throw Zappos in there. Think about how scientific jargon and bureaucratic language could have killed the inspiration of the moment if they’d crept in. As a Harley owner myself, you can own any motorcycle out there. I can buy a motorcycle that’s a lot cheaper than that Harley-Davidson—but it’s not a Harley. You gotta be part of that class, part of that family. So they’re able to command that bigger price to do so. To give you a couple other examples of firms that have used this, you have the Marriott International Corporation. They actually are the largest hotel corporation in the world from a profit standpoint, with the exception of MGM. But then again, MGM has casinos associated with them, so that revenue helps them out a little bit there. At the top, Marriott has their Ritz Carlton, in the middle they have their Courtyards, and at the bottom they have their Fairfield Inns. At every one of their locations, you get a quality night’s sleep. They’re going to assure you of that. But the amenities that go along with each of those tiers vary greatly. To give you an idea, they have 5,400 properties around the world with about 1.1 million room nights. Their revenues on an annual basis are about $15 billion as of 2017. Another business is Swatch Watch Group. They started out as the firewall brand for Blancpain and Harry Winston, as the top Swiss watch company out there in the marketplace. Those are still their top Swiss watches, but they saw that they were losing market share because these other companies were coming in at a much cheaper price because they were able to undersell them. So they started Swatch. Swatch has grown so big now thought that they actually changed the name of the parent company. Now they’re the Swatch Watch Group, and they’ve rolled out a new low cost brand, which is their Flik Flak, for the younger children, to pull them into the loop. Their revenues last year were greater than $7.5 billion in watch sales. This model works in many industries. Multiple Brands, One MarketWe ended up adopting a similar business model, but we wanted to avoid cannibalization. We have multiple firms in the same marketplace. We don’t want to cannibalize that existing firm at the top because that’s where we maximize most of our profits. How do we avoid doing that? We need to differentiate ourselves – with location, hours of operation, pricing method, marketing and branding, but never staff. It’s just as important that the staff at your low-cost brand is as on-the-game as at the top end of the brand. I will tell you on my final note for you here that as you move forward into this world, if that’s what you want to do, there’s some roadwork ahead for you. You need to forget some of those things that made you great at your high-end brand because things operate differently in that low-end spectrum. But you do want to borrow from your high-end brand. So you can use your back-end operations, share some of those commodities together. It’s a black limousine going on a funeral. Who cares where it came from, right? You can share that, you can share the crematory, you can share the preparation room. Those kind of things you borrow from one another. But most importantly, I’ve found over the years, with the low-end brands especially, you have to be able to adapt. You’ve got to be nimble, you’ve got to be able to move quickly. If the market starts to shift or something you’re doing’s not quite working right, then you need to tweak it and move forward. Don’t just stay stuck in the road. The Kia EffectI’m going to finish with the biggest failure in funeral service today. It’s what I call the Kia Effect. I read more and more articles and hear more and more new consultants that have come into our industry. They all want to tell us that nobody values a funeral any more nowadays. Everybody wants cheap, cheap, cheap. If you’re not the cheap guy in the market, then you’re not going to be successful. I’m here to tell you that I don’t believe that. Our high-end brand grew more market share over the last two years than our low-cost brands did. We ended up generating about another additional million dollars out of that high-end brand over those last few years than we were doing with our low-end brand. So, it is growing. But, the difference is, you need to be on your game if you’re going to have that high-end brand. You’ve got to be able to show the value to the customer, explain to them what we do, explain why we do it, how we do it, and really educate the consumer on that. If we do that, we’ll continue to have the business at the top end as well as picking up the business at the bottom end. This post excerpted from Rick Baldwin and John McQueen’s presentation at CANA’s 100th Cremation Innovation Convention. The full presentation, including Rick’s contrasting strategy of “Simple and Easy,” is available on demand from CANA’s online learning platform. Members can also read a version of the full presentation in The Cremationist, Vol. 54 Iss. 3 titled “Local Innovation: Selling Across Multiple Brands in a High Cremation Market.”
The CANA Convention is known for highlighting local innovation each year. At the 101st Cremation Innovation Convention this summer in Louisville, Kentucky, Gwen Mooney and Michael Higgs of the historic Cave Hill Cemetery will discuss how the cemetery and its foundation work strategically to actively sell cemetery property and build community engagement – all through the "Art of Story.” Learn more about this session and what else CANA has planned and register now: GoCANA.org/CANA19
John sold his company to Foundation Partners Group in August 2017 and is excited about being a part of the FPG family. John and Nikki just released their book, Lessons from the Dead: Breathing Life into Customer Service which shares many of the customer service techniques they use, as well as some from other well known companies, to deliver exceptional service.
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