Five years ago we buried my grandmother, a deliciously bold woman who lived life on her own terms. I was her favorite, or so she said. I’m pretty sure it’s true. Everything that makes me weird (which I consider a blessing, by the way) came from my grandmother. I miss her smile, her warm hands that smelled of buttermilk biscuits, and her green beans that would leave a sheen of lard gloss on your lips for weeks.

I had the honor of delivering her eulogy being the only professional speaker in the family. (Yes, Aunt Myrtle, it is a real job.) As I stood at the podium, trying to sum up this woman’s 88 years on earth in 25 minutes, I looked around and realized that this was all wrong. None of this was what she would have wanted. The setting wasn’t right. The music was all wrong. People were bored. I’m pretty sure even Granny had stopped listening hours ago.

A stuffy room with plastic mauve flowers, green shag carpeting, and faded watercolor prints – well, it wasn’t my grandmother. She deserved something more than that. Something more to honor the fact that she was here. Something as unique as she was, to close out her chapter on earth. I found it ironic that we had spent a year planning my cousin Nadine’s wedding and a day planning my grandmother’s funeral. I had loved my grandmother for 47 years. Nadine’s marriage didn’t last six months.

After Granny’s service, a group of us sat around the fire in the lobby of the hotel sharing stories that made us laugh and cry, stories about the woman we knew and the woman we would miss. I’m pretty sure Granny was there the entire time, laughing harder than any of us. At some point we stumbled into a conversation about how we wanted our own funerals to be. The typical kind of conversation that happens when death stops your normal routine and makes you face your own mortality.
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We all described our most important last wishes ranging from “nothing fancy,” to “please put me in this dress,” to “sprinkle me across the lake behind the mountain cabin and make sure it’s not windy that day so my ashes don’t go flying back into your face.” I made it quite clear that I wanted a big turnout, with lots of music (a roaming harpist would be nice) and some professional wailers, just to make sure everybody is certain of how much I will be missed. I want high drama. Standing room only, heavy hors d’oeuvres, and please show clips from my best speeches. Make sure they give me a standing ovation, and you can probably sell some of my books in the back. Hey, what can I say? I’m a motivational speaker. It’s what we do.

As I sat there listening to the stories, I saw how passionate people were about how they wanted to be ushered out of this world – how they wanted their story to end. Each story was as unique as its author.

The funeral home did everything they said they would do for my granny. It was a perfectly nice service. They did all the right things. And yet, I’m pretty sure that not one person in that room will seek them out in the future. Why? Because the funeral home told the wrong story.

Hello CANA. Kelly Swanson here. I’m a motivational speaker and a comedian, which means I tell you that you can do anything and then I tell you I’m just kidding. I’m delighted and honored to be spending time with you at your 2018 Symposium as your keynote speaker and strategic storytelling expert. I’m even more delighted that I get this opportunity today to say a few words about a subject I have been studying my whole life – storytelling.

There’s no question about it, no matter what our industry, we are all fighting for business in a crowded market – to get customers and keep them, to get our employees to do more with less and be happier doing it, to convince our buyer of a need they don’t realize they have, to be stronger leaders crafting a lasting legacy, and to keep our business relevant in the face of constant change and uncertainty. And, in your case, trying to make a lasting impression when often you are the last thing on their mind.
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Wow. No wonder we’re stressed. I’ve faced these issues in my own business and so have hundreds of other audiences I’ve visited over the years. All of these issues have one thing in common – influencing people. Yep. Getting people to do what we want them to do. No matter how much the playground changes, the game hasn’t. Our business success is in direct correlation to how well we influence people.

The way I see it, we are all sales people. Like it or not, we are trying to influence people all day long – whether it’s to get someone to date us, hire us, do business with us, trust us, give money to us, or simply getting our kid to clean up his room. We’re all in the business of persuasion. Every person who works in your company has the ability and opportunity to influence someone else – to affect the brand, the mood, and the culture of the business. Many of us already understand that. But where some of us miss the boat, is the next step…understanding that influence is emotional.

I’ll explain the science behind all of this to you when I get there, so let’s skip right to the thing you need to know most: If influence is like sales, then the cardinal rule of sales applies – that people buy from people they like, trust, believe, and feel like they know.

Like. Trust. Believe. Know. Take a look at those words. Those words have nothing to do with what you make people think and everything to do with how you make people feel – about you, your brand, and themselves. People buy based on emotion but many of us don’t get there. We stay on the surface. We miss that deeper opportunity to go beyond communicating to connecting.

Authentic connection is the key strategy in business today. No matter what you’re selling, where you’re selling it, or how you’re getting the message out – giving them the facts alone doesn’t work. It’s the reason why some win and some lose without ever understanding why.

I’ve been polling people in every audience where I speak. I just spoke for a college admissions group so I polled parents and students who’ve been on recent college tours. My goal? To find out why they chose the one they chose.

I’ve polled buyers of healthcare, insurance, beauty products, financial planners, attorneys – you name it – and while they were all looking for something different, their reason for choosing who they did were consistently the same. They chose the one they connected with emotionally.

As soon as I found out I would be speaking for you, I conducted another survey with my social media groups about you: your businesses and the services they’d experienced there. I gathered their stories and studied the reasons some were happy and some weren’t. Again – it was all about connection.
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That’s what we’re going to talk about when I come visit. I’m going to share with you the best (and perhaps only) tool that will connect with anybody you want to influence – STORY.

Many businesses have already figured out the value of strategic storytelling, or at least they think they do. But they are still not connecting with their buyer. Why? First, because they don’t really know what a story is – how to craft it and how to use the tool to get a desired effect. They’re basically just telling stories because someone told them they should. Many people talk about storytelling, but few can really teach it. Second, many businesses are telling the wrong story or, at the very least, an unfinished story. You may think it’s just about telling the world your story. But it’s not. There are actually three stories you should be telling.

That’s enough for you to chew on today. If you understand why connection matters over communication, you’ve got enough to think about. The next step is how to use story to do it. We’ll go deeper into it later – my six secrets to connecting and my story formula to help you craft stories that convince and persuade – at CANA’s 2018 Cremation Symposium. Just remember this: No matter how technologically advanced we get, or how much the playground changes and shifts quickly under our feet, the truth still remains the same – this is a people business. It’s about relationships. It’s about creating authentic connections. Focus on that, and the rest will fall into place.
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Want to read some more articles or continue the conversation? Find me on LinkedIn.
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I can’t wait to meet you at convention and swap stories. Buckle up, because it’s going to be an exciting ride!

Join Kelly and CANA at the 2018 Cremation Symposium to learn how you can set your business and yourself apart with the power of storytelling. Register soon for your chance to be in the “hot seat” and develop your story live, onstage with Kelly Swanson! Sponsored by Batesville.

Connect the Dots with us, February 6-8 at Paris Las Vegas at the 2018 Cremation Symposium.

Kelly Swanson is an award-winning storyteller, motivational speaker, comedian, expert guest on The Fashion Hero TV show, author of Who Hijacked My Fairy Tale and The Story Formula, and a strategic storytelling expert. In addition to making people laugh, motivating them, and helping them tap into the passion and purpose for what they do and why it matters, she teaches them how to use story to raise their level of influence. She is a keynote speaker and workshop presenter at the 2018 CANA Symposium. www.MotivationalSpeakerKellySwanson.com

The impact of rising cremation rates began for Canada in the 1980s and 90s. Since then, we’ve learned to live with the high rate. Because we’ve been experiencing high cremation rates since the 90s, it’s not a big deal for us. It’s just our day-to-day operation. We are living with it. Back then, it changed everything we did.

Celebrating the life of a loved one is the same. Cremation doesn’t mean people don’t want to make an investment. It’s not just disposal of the body and it doesn’t mean they don’t want to get together. There is the same need to celebrate the life of a loved one. Today, cremation and burial in Canada are the same. Visitation in Quebec is the same. Celebration and services, people meeting and talking together to celebrate the life of a loved one.
The cremation rate in the U.S. is going through what we went through 20-25 years ago. I work with an international company that serves the U.S. and Canada. The company only began adding catering services a few years ago in the U.S., but we started catering in Canada 20 years ago. It’s a big, big piece of the service we provide and adds a lot to our revenue. People sharing a glass of wine, being all together, having a eulogy at the same time as the reception.

We need to adapt ourselves to what people want, because we have to create all kinds of ways to have a life celebration. We need to have an open mind. If each life is unique, each celebration is unique. If you have an open mind, you can do everything, listening closely and carefully and working with the family to celebrate a unique life. You cannot be trained for that—you have to be a person who is creative, working with families and listening attentively to build that honor.

People want to celebrate life. The funeral home is not where they live, where they meet with their families, where they have fun. They want to celebrate a life where they are comfortable.

With cremation we can do whatever we want. Not so much with a burial.

Cremation has become a choice for many families, religious or not. It really is not a cost issue: people truly just want to choose cremation as part of the service instead of choosing traditional burial. With an onsite cemetery, we offer many options for memorialization for cremation burial. Some families do choose to keep the urn or scatter the cremated remains, but we also have a lot of heritage at Pinecrest, so many families do have the option of placing urns with family members who already rest at Pinecrest. That being said, even if there is no room in a family plot, families may still choose to purchase land for the urn burial based on the heritage affiliation as well.

With cremation, families can also focus on more details and options for the service. They have more time to plan the event with us rather than with the more “traditional” type of service. They can turn their attention to items such as linen color, personalization of the photos, stationery, food and alcohol selections, and creating their own floral arrangements or music playlists and the like. A cremation family may choose a simple container or casket, but they tend to focus on the urn and possibly an urn vault. They don’t see the value in an ornate casket, but may find value with the urn, jewelry, an urn vault for mementos, the memorial cards, or the land/monument or niche.

When a family says, “We just want cremation,” as service providers, we should not assume this means direct cremation. It oftentimes means that they want cremation and not traditional burial, but they still want some sort of gathering with food and beverages, a service, and a viewing to honor their loved one. Yes, 80% of our families choose cremation. But of that 80%, only 10% request a true direct cremation—and I always share that fact with colleagues in the industry.
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My advice is to communicate all the choices to a family, regardless if they say, “We just want cremation.” We are doing a disservice to our families if we do not show them all the options available, for some simply may not be aware of their choices and may see value in them once they know about them.

I have been witnessing requests for direct cremation for 20 years now in British Columbia. I don’t think this is a U.S. phenomenon in any way. This direct cremation concept begins with an active increase in cremation requests as a whole.

The cremation rate has been considerable for a long time now in British Columbia. Over the years, many people have discussed the reasons for this and agreed that a number of important factors come into play. The most common suggestion is the nature of our transient society in British Columbia. We have had a very high rate of immigration over the years, as well as a very high mobility rate among people retiring to British Columbia from other parts of Canada. This leads to fewer people in their social network and less family around them. When a death occurs, cremation is viewed as a way to ensure that end of life is “not so complicated” or a way to “keep it simple.”

Funeral directors can never assume that they know what the family is thinking. The most difficult thing to overcome is the perception that the family wants nothing but a direct cremation. So many times the family doesn’t even know what they are asking for. Many request cremation and nothing else. But what does “nothing else” actually mean to them? How can the funeral director be more involved? Families want to keep it simple. But what is your definition of simple?

I see a difference in the need for explanation to what is available to almost every cremation consumer. Many people who select cremation are not aware that they can still have a visitation, or still have a service and still have a cemetery plot. Once you start to explore the options with a family, they will want to create a personal service for their loved one. Many times this is independent of any mainstream religion, and oftentimes families have no affiliation with the local church.

Over the years, it has been evident that the cremation consumer is looking for value. That does not mean that the consumer is cheap but rather that they are focused on purchasing items or services that are meaningful to them. Personalization is very important, as well as efficiency. As time goes on, requests for embalming have been replaced with requests for catering. We’ve also had to adapt and create new traditions for the families that are not affiliated with organized religion and who want chapel services with or without viewings.
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Funeral directors have to educate families. The cremation concept is not a new concept but people just don’t know realize all the options they can have for arrangements. Families need to make educated decisions with a funeral director. As traditions evolve, we as funeral professionals need to take the lead to educate and to continue to help create meaningful events for families to say goodbye to their loved ones.

Louis Savard, Service Corporation International’s Market Director for Quebec and Vice President of SCI Canada, entered funeral service in 1985. He was the National Sales Director for Atlas Casket and worked for three years at Lepine Cloutier Funeral Home as a sales manager in preneed before moving on to SCI in 1992, where he was involved in corporate development.

Laurie Cole, President and Owner of Cole Funeral Services and Secretary-Treasurer/Director of Operations for Pinecrest Remembrance Services, is a fourth-generation descendant of John Cole, founder of the original Pinecrest Remembrance Services, established in 1924. In addition to her tireless service to Ottawa through the Rotary Club of Ottawa Kanata Sunrise, a supporter of the Live/Work/Play program, she has also served on the Board of Directors of the Cremation Association of North America. A mother of two, Laurie is a country girl at heart and has even earned a college diploma as a veterinary technologist.
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Ryan McLane is the current Market Manager for Vancouver Island with Service Corporation International. He has worked both in Vancouver and on Vancouver Island for over 20 years. He is also a Past President of the British Columbia Funeral Association.