Quality vs. Quantity: How to Make Sure Your Customers are Satisfied

2/18/2026

There are many different types of customers in the market. If you've been in the game for a while now, you might have encountered a customer who wants to build a long-term partnership with you or a customer who can never be satisfied with your products and services. It can be challenging to encounter customers like that. It can damage you and your team's confidence in being able to satisfy your customers. It can also force you to reevaluate how you think your company should be operating even though the reality might very well be that you're just not serving the right customer based on your products and services. Fortunately, there are things that you can do avoid being in this situation.

In order to build long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationships with your customers, you first need to find the right customer for you. This involves research that might be overwhelming at first glance, but you've come to the right place if you're looking for some help. We've done the research for you, and this article serves as a summary of what you can do to serve quality products and services to the right customer. Of course, if you want to know the details, then you might want to check out our course.

But for now, here are five things you can do to find the right customer and give quality service every single time:

Understand the needs of your market.

First and foremost, your products and services can only fulfill the needs of a customer from the right target market. As such, you need to understand what they're looking for and what you can do to match those needs.

Spend some time in forums or wherever your potential customers hang out to get insight into the common features they're looking for in the products or services you plan to offer.

You may also want to engage them in conversation to get a more in-depth perspective on what you can do to effectively infiltrate the market as well as the quality they're looking for.

Check your capabilities.

Another thing you can do to ensure that you're always serving quality to the right customer is to check your capabilities. While taking more orders might be tempting as it means more profit and revenue, you have a reputation to build and protect.

Take the time to check your inventory, financials, and team status.

Can you fulfill the orders on time?
Can you do it in such a way that you won't be sacrificing quality for quantity?
Can you handle potential customer questions on your product and services?

These are some of the questions you might want to keep in mind to prevent aggravating your customers and turning what could have been the "right customer" into a "customer from hell."

Always prioritize customer satisfaction.

If you've done your research and you're confident in your ability to deliver, then chances are that all your current customers are satisfied. However, you need to remember that someone will always come along who might demand a little more from you.

These customers may be encountering your company for the first time and thus may have a few more questions than normal. Answering questions promptly and engaging them respectfully and politely helps build customer satisfaction, which you can use to make sure to not only build your reputation but also integrate giving quality service within your company culture.

Build long-term customer relationships.

A satisfied customer is one who will more than likely return to subscribe to your products or services. As such, prioritizing quality over quantity gets you a one-way ticket to long-term customer relationships that drives regular profit. These are the customers you want to serve, but keep in mind that requires the effort that's detailed above. While you can never make sure that everyone is satisfied, doing your best means that if you still encounter someone who might be disgruntled with what you've given them, then chances are that they aren't the right customer for you. Focus on the ones you can serve and trigger business growth.

Monitor your growth.

Speaking of growth, another thing you can do to keep up the quality of your products and services is to keep an eye on your company performance. If you think you're in a position to offer more and to grow your repertoire, then by all means, do so. Do your research on who else might benefit from what you offer and adjust accordingly.

Always keep in mind that growing your business means that you need to reach the customers who can support your company all the while ensuring that the quality of your products and services aren't compromised.

By the end of this article, you should have a more comprehensive idea of what you should look for and what you can do in balancing quality and customer satisfaction. It's a hard balance to achieve but it’s not impossible. Check out CANA’s Deathcare Business Administrator course if you want to make sure that you're achieving that balance every single time.

As you plan for the year ahead, it’s the perfect time to invest in your team’s growth! Enrollment is now open for the Deathcare Business Administration Certification - a 10-week learning and networking program designed for current and emerging leaders who want practical tools, peer collaboration, and measurable results.

Don’t wait, the program kicks off on Wednesday, April 1, and runs through June 10!

Explore The Deathcare Business Administration Certification

What You’ll Gain:

Leadership Alignment: Unite your team with a shared vision and clear goals.
People Management Mastery: Hire smarter, coach better, and foster accountability.
Secure Families: Create an operations process to serve your good clients.
Financial Confidence: Demystify financial statements and ratios to make smarter decisions every day.

Jeremy Wall is lead facilitator for the CANA Deathcare Business Administration Program. He has a passion for simplifying the complex. As you will see in both the self-paced learning, he will help support your learning journey to bring these learning concepts from theory to practical implementation within your business. Jeremy has founded, grown, and exited businesses before and will work with you and your team as you look to create a lasting impact on building a better culture, healthier balance sheets, and a stronger bottom line.

How We Stay Vital and Profitable

1/21/2026

In the 1970s, my childhood was spent in an apartment above my parents’ funeral home. Because my parents drove the ambulance and operated the funeral home, we were the go-to in any emergency. This was a pretty typical experience for many funeral directors during this time. I fell in love with being needed and being the source of comfort for our small town. The ability to be there for those in need is what attracted me and countless others to the funeral profession.

Another staple of my childhood was the ability of our small, locally owned funeral home to have the financial working capital we needed to successfully operate our business. I believe that these two situations go hand in hand: being relevant in our communities and being financially stable. I grew up, became a CPA and a licensed funeral director and embalmer. I was our CFO, an active funeral director, and owner of our funeral home.

Since 1991, I have also been providing accounting services to funeral homes and cemeteries across the United States. In the last 10 years, I have witnessed several clients who are beginning to have serious financial struggles. Why would a profession that is vital to their communities be struggling? The answer is very complex, and I look forward to digging into each of our points of service as well as our pricing for those services at CANA’s 2026 Symposium this February. Here’s a preview of what we’ll discuss.

The First Call

Many times, having the appropriate information when attending the first call is invaluable in establishing a connection with the survivors. This is the time when the family will be most uncertain and in shock. You want to establish your role and your relevance to them. Do you have your best people on the first call in which they encounter family members? I believe adequate training and availability of vital information at the time of the first call are two items that are essential to serving the family in the best way possible.

Ask yourself these questions:

What procedures and phrases do our staff or removal service use with a family?
Do we have a checklist of vital steps for every first call?
Do we have information available on prearrangements on file or recent interactions with a family to use during the first call?
Do we provide adequate information on the next steps? Do we adequately fill the gap between the first call and the first meeting with our funeral home?

The Arrangement Conference

The arrangement conference is your opportunity to be of most help to the family. Training your staff is the best way to make successful arrangements. Employing checklists and communicating different ways you can provide lasting healing over the coming days, weeks, or months is essential. This critical time can make or break the relevance of your services.

Ask yourself these questions:

Do we adequately train and periodically review arrangement staff for the best ways to conduct an arrangement conference?
Do we focus on personalized services and non-traditional gatherings if these would be most helpful to the family in beginning their healing process?
Are we flexible to the varied needs of families, and are we proficient in having fresh ideas regarding different ways survivors can express their grief?

Aftercare

I believe that providing guidance once the service is over and the family has returned to their lives is the most important chance we as a profession have to generate goodwill, significance, and relevance. I also believe that in our own funeral home and in many funeral homes across this nation, we fail to provide much in the way of services for “aftercare.”

The lack of working capital and adequate staffing is directly related to the reasons we don’t do a better job of providing care for the family after the service is completed. I believe we are missing a big opportunity to help the family. I also believe that we are the best source for providing aftercare services. Our staff has a relationship with the survivors and is in a wonderful position to continue our care after the funeral or memorial. We need to design and implement aftercare services just like we do cemetery, crematory, transportation, or other services we coordinate. We need to find a way to create training and grief services and find a way to fund these extra services.

Pricing of our Services

We need to get creative. Every day, I see funeral home financials from across the country, and I am reminded of two critical challenges:

Funeral home pricing has not kept up with inflation. Because we don’t adequately raise revenues, our costs are pushing our net income into the negative.
Once the Federal Trade Commission funeral rule came into effect in 1983, we decided as an industry that the cost of providing funerals was much higher than the cost of providing cremation.

Let’s examine each of these in detail:

Inflation. Funeral home pricing has not kept up with inflation. My paternal grandfather died in 1966. Reviewing our funeral home Red Book for 1966, I noticed the median funeral revenue per case was $1,250. When I apply that average to the average inflation rate according to the U.S. historical Inflation rates for each year since, we are losing against inflation by more than 10%. We should price our services in a way that allows us to serve our communities.

Pricing cremation services. According to the NFDA, the median price for cremation services is less than the median for traditional burial revenue in the United States. From the funeral home revenues I see, many funeral homes are experiencing a much larger gap between the average revenue from burial and cremation.

Most funeral homes have very large, fixed costs. Therefore, every case you handle should be assigned a portion of that fixed cost. You should do the same with all expenses: electricity, advertising, insurance, employees, employee benefits, property taxes, building maintenance, and auto expenses. These expenses are the same whether you have a burial or cremation.

We have some work to do on our pricing, for sure. As a profession, we need to be sure that we understand the costs of each type of service we provide. Appropriate pricing is the key to having the financial working capital to meet the needs of our communities.

What to Do Next?

The funeral profession needs a reset. How do we reset in a way that is most beneficial for our employees, investors, and customers?

I will offer a practical roadmap to restore profitability and sustainability through strategies to improve cash flow, build wealth, and adapt to future demographic and economic shifts this February at CANA’s 2026 Cremation Symposium. I hope you join me to learn actionable methods to manage inflation, leverage financing options, strengthen preneed programs, and move beyond burnout toward long-term financial health and business resilience.

There are few professions that have as long a history of providing vital services to people in need.

We need to take stock of our vast resources and employ our talents to continue providing these vital services long into the future.

We would do anything for the families and the communities we serve. So, what do we do to make sure we’ll be there for them in the future? Drawing on decades of personal and professional expertise, Kara Ludlum heads to CANA’s 2026 Cremation Symposium to explore how many funeral homes and cemeteries— once financially strong—are now struggling amid changing industry dynamics and persistent self-sacrificing culture. Get your action plan in Las Vegas this February 25-27, 2026: register now!

This article excerpted with permission from Kara Ludlum and Osiris Software.

She is also the co-founder of Osiris Software, a leading management software solution serving funeral homes and cemeteries in both the United States and Canada. In 2023, Osiris Software expanded its family of companies to include Insight Books and Certified Celebrants, where Kara continues to play a key role in supporting professionals who serve grieving families.

Kara Ludlum has dedicated her career to the funeral profession. A second-generation funeral director and former funeral home owner, she brings both personal experience and professional expertise to the industry. Kara is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and senior partner at Ludlum & Mannen CPAs, a firm that works exclusively with funeral homes and cemeteries across the United States.

With her unique combination of hands-on funeral service experience, financial expertise, and software innovation, Kara is recognized as a trusted leader and advocate for funeral professionals across North America.

Fatal Assumptions that are Killing the Customer Experience

7/23/2025

Last evening I had dinner with a good friend. We proceeded through our typical topics of family and travels after which she conveyed her disastrous treatment by store personnel after her purse was taken from her cart. Completing her saga of the poor customer interactions she suffered, she added, “Foxy (solely ideated from my last name), I immediately thought of you. You've dedicated your career to improving customer experiences. Why are they still so terrible?”

Splendid question, and one I continually ask myself.

At first glance, it appears that we have failed. All the noise: books, seminars, training exercises and cheerleading about the customer experience have not produced significantly better customer experiences on a consistent basis. However, an important evolution of thought has taken place over the last couple of decades. We’ve transitioned from focusing on front line personnel as the provider of customer experiences to understanding that the entirety of the organization provides customer experiences. AND, most importantly, we’ve come to understand that company culture is the milieu from which all customer experiences spring.

Hope is Not a Strategy but a Perfect Mindset to Begin

Despite or perhaps because of stories of insolent cashiers, phone calls not being returned, car repair hell, endless waits in a physician’s office, frustrating phone systems without human access, indifference, there is a huge opportunity. McKinsey & Company states that declining customer satisfaction rates across a range of companies suggest that many companies have lost their focus on the customer. There are certainly exceptions to these bright spots. You can name a few. However, many other organizations are still operating under potentially fatal assumptions.

Potentially Fatal Assumptions

Assumption #1—Our Service is Good

Just a dollar, that is all I want for every time I’ve been told by an organization that they are “known for great service.” When asked to defend that statement, anecdotal evidence prevails. A random call from a customer, a five star google review or the fact that they have received few or no complaints, are the answers given most often. Many companies assume that if there are just a few or no complaints their service is at an acceptable level. After all, why would an organization put resources into improving service if they believe it’s fine?

Assumption #2—Service Matters but not That Much

Another reason companies choose not to allocate resources to improve the customer experience is a failure to understand that experience quality actually impacts the bottom line. Multiple surveys of CEOs present data where the CEOs state that the customer experience is a top priority, yet, few put actual resources, either human or financial, into improving it.

There is a tendency to sense that service matters but to believe that it does not matter that much, at least not enough to impact real growth and profitability.

Let’s be candid. Resource allocation, that part where expenditures are made to improve the customer experience, is a harder dollar to spend than expanding marketing efforts or upgrading your physical environment, or your website.

Without a commitment of resources, a service initiative is merely “lip service,” like saying your health is a priority, while puffing on a cigarette.

Let’s get to the Heart of the Matter

Imagine you wake up in a different country, especially one that differs from North American culture, you are likely to notice indicators of the local culture right away. Language, dress, road rules, values, menu items, behavior, and definitions of crime all vary across cultures. In Singapore, for instance, selling or importing chewing gum is banned to maintain public cleanliness. Cultures reveal themselves clearly.

In parallel, when an organization intentionally embeds values, speaks a language of customer focus, has engaged employees, creates policies and processes with the customer in mind, generates performance standards at each and every touchpoint, AND hires to standards with the customer in mind, the customer will notice a positive difference. They will ‘feel served.’ Yes, I used that term intentionally. There is a difference between ‘getting served,’ and ‘feeling served.’ People remember how we make them ‘feel.’ When a customer ‘feels served,’ they are more likely to recommend you, buy more, casually talk about you. They’ve become loyal, and loyalty is a matter of the heart.

The most significant concern any organization can have today, is whether their customers “feel served.” In the behavior sequence, feelings precede action. Said another way: How people behave is critically affected by how they feel. Customer retention depends on this fact. Customer acquisition, through promoters and referrals is an outcome.

Getting Started

Each employee inside an organization owns a part of whether the customer feels served. The customer will only feel served however when all the impressions from all the touchpoints scream loudly with one voice.

If you are wondering how to begin to create the culture described here, start with a few questions and get your entire staff involved. Good starter questions are:

What systems, processes and policies need to be in place for our customers to feel served? Which ones need to be changed?
How would you rate the customer experience we provide on a scale of 1-10? What can we improve upon?
How would you rate the internal customer experience on a scale of 1-10? What can we improve?
What tools and resources do you need to do your job better?
What does the leadership do well? What can leaders improve upon?
When our customers feel served, what have they experienced?
What touchpoints is each staff member responsible for and how can they be improved?

Please note that a culture which automatically cultivates loyal customers does not happen overnight, without struggle and without a strategy. It is only possible when leaders are on board, committed to change and relentless in their drive to bring their aspiration to reality. The leader’s heart is really the heart of the matter.

Are you creating or killing customer loyalty? Joan Fox takes the stage at CANA's 107th Annual Cremation Innovation Convention to present what it really takes to succeed with customers and grow your business.

There's still time to register! Join Joan and CANA in Phoenix on August 6-8, 2025, register here. Teams of 2 and more save $200!

The author, Joan Fox, has provided speaking, training and consulting solutions for some of the world’s best organizations for more than 30 years. She has noted expertise in improving the customer experience, organizational culture and leadership teams. Joan is the author of the critically acclaimed book, The Chronicles of Sir Vival: Customer Service Under Siege, endorsed by Ken Blanchard. Her clients include AT&T, IBM, Xerox, Novartis, Johnson & Johnson, Wells Fargo, Safran Landing Systems, Johns Hopkins, Mitsui Sumitomo and numerous others.

Successful Succession Planning

7/9/2025

When discussing succession planning, I always like to start by asking: How many of you are actively engaged in succession planning? If the answer is anything less than “everyone,” it’s a missed opportunity. Succession planning isn’t just for business owners; it’s critical for managers, employees, and everyone in between. It’s about fostering redundancy, nurturing talent, and preparing both individuals and organizations for a seamless future. Done effectively, succession planning allows you to focus on the most critical tasks as an owner, manager, or employee.

Starting with the End in Mind

A successful succession plan begins with a clear vision of the future. Ask yourself:

What’s your path forward?
As an owner, when do you envision retiring? Will you step back partially or fully? Will you remain involved in the business in any capacity?
What’s the future health of your business? What does it look like one year, five years, or ten years from now?

Assessing Your Business as a Living Entity

Think of your business as a significant relationship. Is the future bright, or are there issues brewing? Here are some key questions to consider:

Are you the sole keeper of your business’s critical knowledge and processes?
Are family dynamics, such as involvement of children, creating complexities?
Do key employees play a central role in your succession plan?
Are you reinvesting in your business, or are you depleting its resources?

The answers to these questions can significantly shape your succession plan. Ultimately, your goal is to build equity in your business and ensure its longevity, even if you step away. To assess your progress, consider having a business valuation done along with a business assessment to assist in crafting annual strategic plans. These tools can help you determine whether your business can thrive without you.

Four Pillars of Business Success

When evaluating businesses, I focus on four key areas:

Customer Service
- Measuring satisfaction through meaningful surveys.
- Fostering a culture of customer experience (CX) by implementing training. programs. A recommended resource is The Customer Service Revolution by John DiJulius.
Workplace Culture
- Utilizing effective onboarding and employee development tools to strengthen your organizational culture which will enhance productivity and employee satisfaction.
- Holding regular meetings, including daily huddles, to boost morale and align goals.
- Conducting employee satisfaction surveys.
Marketplace Position
- Having an effective pre-need and aftercare follow-up program.
- Hosting lunch-and-learns and other events.
- Engaging with key influencers to amplify your business’s story.
Financial Health
- Maintaining robust accounting and budgeting practices to ensure financial stability.
- Ensuring the correct balance sheet metrics of cash, receivables, and debt load.

Maximizing Business Value

A well-planned succession strategy aligns with periods of high opportunity and low risk, translating to high value. Businesses with strong life expectancy typically attract the best offers during a transfer. Here are two critical metrics that highlight the importance of effective succession planning:

Case Count Trends
Consider three funeral homes, each with a 500-call volume:

One sees an upward trend.
Another is stable.
The third is experiencing a decline.

Even with identical call volumes, their values differ significantly based on the trend direction. Positive trends generally enhance value, while declines diminish it. The mere notion of trending indicates that you need to start now to impact the future positively as it takes time!

Average Sale
Rising cremation rates and low-cost competitors can impact average sale prices, affecting a business’s overall value. For example, a $100 decrease in average sale at a 500-call firm can equate to a value loss of $300,000 or more. Conversely, increasing average sales can yield substantial gains.

Analyzing performance within your team can reveal disparities in how individual employees contribute to or detract from the business value through their own individual average sale. Aligning compensation with these contributions is essential. (i.e. Incentive Compensation Plans).

The Challenge

In conclusion, ignorance may feel blissful, but it’s far from strategic. Knowing your business’s value today, yesterday, and tomorrow is crucial. By proactively creating a vision and tenaciously pursuing it, you can dictate your success. Succession planning isn’t just about transferring ownership; it’s about ensuring that your business thrives long after you’ve stepped away.

For additional guidance or questions, reach out to Johnson Consulting.

A funeral home is more than a business—it’s a legacy. But what happens when it’s time to pass the torch? This August 6-8, at CANA's 107th Annual Cremation Innovation Convention, Jake Johnson leads a motivating session. Exit with Success: Succession Planning and Your Business is designed to help funeral professionals take charge of their future, their value, and their exit strategy.

Success isn’t just about luck; it’s about preparation and perseverance. By working hard, you can create your own “luck” and ensure a thriving future for your business. Join Jake Johnson at CANA’s 107th Annual Convention this August 6-8, 2025. Special rates are available for teams to learn, grow, and implement strategies together. Plus, the schedule is redesigned to ensure you can explore the Valley of the Sun in the cool mornings and evenings and fully savor the networking and learning in the air-conditioned Convention hall during the heat of the day. Visit cremationassociation.org/CANA25 to learn more and register today!

President & CEO at Johnson Consulting, Jake Johnson began his career at Keystone Group Holdings (now Dignity Memorial Network) as Associate Director, Corporate Development. This job included financial analysis, bank and equity partner presentations, along with accounting and system setup with acquired funeral homes. Jake then went on to work at Palm Mortuaries and Cemeteries in Las Vegas, NV, which at the time handled 6,500 funeral home families and over 2,200 cemetery cases out of 6 locations. Here Jake conducted funeral directing, funeral arranging, funeral home management, cemetery operations management, and sat on the executive board. Jake’s ability to problem solve business issues contributes to his success in currently owning a funeral home and cremation center in Sun City, AZ, along with a small-town funeral home in Batesville, IN.

Cremation Trends and Staff Retention: A CANA-Inspired Approach (Part 1)

6/18/2025

Do you feel like cremation came out of nowhere? Meaning: has consumers’ preference for cremation has taken you by surprise? Or that the cremation rate in your business has grown unexpectedly?

The truth is that, in the US, cremation has ranged between 1 to 2% growth each year over the past 50 years. In Canada, after a period of accelerated growth, cremation rates are slowing to below 1% ̶ which may be the US pattern in a decade.

And yet we hear that cremation came out of nowhere: not just from members, but also reporters. They are looking for causes of cremation growth like economic recessions or the pandemic – big disruptors to the status quo. But when you look at the entire timeline of cremation, you see that it took nearly a century for the national rate to hit 5% and then less than 50 years to exceed 50%.

However, just because CANA research shows that the growth rate is constant, the population is not. During the first 100 years of cremation’s history, from 1876 to 1976, there were 3 million cremations total. During the last 50 years, since 1977, there were 33 million cremations in the United States as of 2024. Within many of our lifetimes and careers that population growth means that cremation has increased quickly and, yes, almost seemed to come out of nowhere.

Time for a Mindset Shift

This means that attitudes about cremation – consumers’ preference for it, profitability for your business and services to offer – need to be adjusted at this point in your career. Case in point: when CANA says cremation, we mean the legal form of disposition and not “direct cremation” and all of the biases that go along with that construct.

If you have ever said or heard someone say, “I don’t believe in cremation” or “I hate cremation,” then you have succumbed to the bias that has developed in our profession against cremation, reducing it to misguided preference, decreased profitability, and no service. We challenge you to consider your reaction.

Trend 1 – Reasons to Cremate

Over and over, CANA’s research confirms that cremation is the new tradition and personal preference for a majority of the US and Canada. In a 2022 consumer survey, price was the second reason cremation was chosen, but that’s as much about value and being a savvy spender.

For the consumer, the cremation experience is often more about focusing on the life lived than the body and related merchandise. Consumers’ opening question may be price to determine if you are the provider they can trust, or it may be the one differentiator they have to determine what makes one cremation provider different from another. But, as an experienced funeral professional, you know they have more questions beyond that one and a story to tell about their person and their memory. Do you give them a chance to do that?

CANA has been one of the few “cremation positive” voices in the profession, considering cremation to be preparation for memorialization and one of many forms of disposition. But too often funeral professionals’ assumptions about cremation often come through the questions asked, the ones that go unasked, and the language they use about cremation.

So, ask yourself this question: “When experiencing first contact with a consumer, what’s the first question I ask?” After offering condolences, do you get contact information, demographics of the deceased, or determine burial or cremation?

If you answered yes to any or all of the choices above, those choices do make good business sense. Their response tells you your next business action: refrigeration or embalming? Which veterans benefits or discounts may be applicable? With whom do I follow-up?

What if the first question assumed service? Assumed a celebration of life? That the family wants the body at the service? What if the last question you asked was about disposition?

What impression would that give families?

Change Your Assumptions

If funeral professionals are going to make assumptions, they should assume service. Assume that the person making cremation arrangements loved their person. Assume that their questions are more than about price, and that they’re willing to craft a personal experience. Assume that cremation is the new tradition in their family – and you have been selected to help them.

Trend 2 – Preference for Service

There are myths, biases, assumptions on both sides of the arrangement table. The best solution to overcome them is curiosity: ask questions and listen to the answers. Then, answer their questions with openness and honesty.

While preparing for focus group research in 2019, CANA made some wrong assumptions. We tasked the research company to gather two groups of focus group participants. We defined them as the

Direct Cremation Group – chose cremation and did nothing, and
Cremation with Service Group

The research company soon called us back to alert us to a problem: They had no difficulty finding families who had held a service, but they couldn’t find a single person who chose cremation then did nothing.

You see the mistake we made, right? We forgot to specify that they “did nothing with their provider.” So, even if you assume service, you can’t assume they’ll choose your firm – they’re doing it themselves.

By assuming that every cremation family will do something for their person, your job becomes persuading them to choose you.

Meeting a Family Where They Are

Too often, “Burial or Cremation?” becomes “Funeral vs. Cremation” on both sides of the arrangement table. Instead, research shows again and again that language matters. So, consider swapping it to “funeral or celebration of life,” expanding the timeframe from the traditional three days to all of the options that cremation offers, including the locations in your community that would host a gathering.

By now we have described the disconnect and challenged you to question your assumptions. Are you ready to meet cremation families where they are?

If you are training employees on demographic information or disposition before all else, are you implying that these are the most important pieces of the arrangement? If you are compensating employees on commission and merchandise sales, are they starting off the conversation about service to drive sales arrangements? How can you set an expectation that families can talk about their new traditions or be creative in their service planning?

Now that you have a better sense of consumer expectation, are you and your employees and colleagues equipped to meet them?

Check back for part 2 of this post where we focus on how you can rise to meet these trends with some of our own!

Want a hint about what's to come in part 2? CANA's Certified Cremation Specialist training targets power skills – communication, problem-solving, emotional intelligence, and adaptability – to raise the level of care, service, and compassion for every family. How? See for yourself!

Don't miss your chance to become a CANA-Certified Cremation Specialist in 2025! Registration closes July 1, but coursework is online and on-demand to earn your certification on your schedule.

Level Up Your Power Skills

Barbara Kemmis is Executive Director of the Cremation Association of North America where she promotes all things cremation through member programs, education and strategic partnerships. After more than 25 years of experience in association leadership, Barbara knows that bringing people together to advance common goals is not only fun, but the most effective strategy to get things done.

Brie Bingham joined the CANA staff in 2015 as Membership Coordinator with little experience in associations of funeral service. Now, she is a proud Certified Funeral Celebrant, CANA Certified Crematory Operator, and continues to grow her knowledge of the profession and her role in CANA. Brie coordinates CANA's blog, The Cremation Logs, manages member benefits, and that things keep working behind the scenes so CANA Members can stay focused on their business and their communities.

Death Becomes Her: The Changing Demographics of Funeral Service Practitioners

4/22/2025

The history of funeral service practice is male dominated. Most of our initial undertakers were owners and operators, purveyors, proprietors. They were livery stable owners and operators. They were financiers. When we think about history, though, it’s important for us to understand that is the recorded history in our history textbooks, which might not have been penned by a woman.

The lack of female perspective in some of our history texts—and in general—is well documented. We do have individuals who are putting out new history books from a different lens that doesn’t necessarily end up being a White male-dominated view of the past. As we begin to look at how things were well before the 1900s, I hope we can recall that women were the primary caretakers. They were the ones that were as familiar with the cradle as the grave. They were there as midwives and nurses, helping with the birthing of our next generation. And they were there in sickness and in death to take care of the remains. Of course, the gentlemen were also there to provide the caskets and the transportation or the coffins at the time. But it’s important for us to understand “her story” in history.

My Story

I was a teenager fresh out of high school when I began working at a mortuary-cemetery-crematory-flower shop combination. It was owned by a family that had it for three generations. My typical daily schedule began in the afternoon, because I went to school during the day. You were registered as an apprentice or an intern or a trainee, and it took us about 12 months to get through a program.

This was back in the late eighties, early nineties, and it was not uncommon that we would be in class from 7 to 3 and at work from 3 to midnight. Weekends, holidays, evenings. We were on call. That was the way we were groomed for professional practice, understanding that our lives took second stage to what was the main show—and the main show was caring for the grieving families.

I was one of four women in class at the time and most of them were legacies. You recognized their last names because they were on the side of buildings. You saw that they had this perspective—that it was a grooming, if you will, and they didn’t have a choice. They were going to take over the family business. Some of them were rather reluctant to ascend to that type of position, yet it was an expectation from their family. Now my classroom is 90%+ women—and the men who identify as such were not assigned male at birth.

Why Now?

So—why are we just recognizing the influence or impact or influx of women now? It might be because the number of women find it—post-pandemic—now viable to balance work and life and not have to pack up and move away to go to school. They can do it from their living room on their laptop. Now is the opportunity for so many individuals who were transitioned away from their primary job because of the pandemic and are now looking for something that is rewarding and stable as a second career.

These might be our former nurses who were frontline during the pandemic and have decided now is the time for them to migrate somewhere away from hospitals. It’s our social workers. It’s our police officers. It’s our firefighters. All of those that may have been in a caregiving role that have been called to funeral service.

I think the pandemic was the best thing to illuminate what deathcare professionals do in our communities, because it put us on the evening news every night as to what was being done to help those families that had suffered so much loss in such a short period of time. But at the same time, there’s a host of gender politics that go right in line with that gender gap.

We found that the burden of a second shift, working all day and then caring for family members, fell primarily to women. That has been historical. As they’ve taken on roles outside of the home, women are still expected to maintain the home. Hopefully, as we begin to see more diversity and equity and inclusion in our workforce, the responsibility for both home and family and work becomes more equally distributed and equitable.

The Student Population

We are an intersection of everything that we have done, that we have been exposed to and that we continue to do. So how is this going to impact the way you treat your applicants and your employees?

I hope that you are looking for an employee that wants and has a significant desire to make an impact. And then I hope that you see within yourself a need to mentor the next generation.

No longer are we at the point where 5% of our population of practitioners is women. We’re now more than 40% — and we have a strong desire to comfort the grieving families that come to us. We recognize that there’s an increase in cremation, but it comes with additional celebration and an opportunity for innovation, because we are no longer tied as individuals to being a second generation, a third generation, or the succession plan that our family had.

We women don’t have the same level of expectation for ourselves. We don’t have the same level of burden thrust upon our shoulders from our fathers, our grandfathers, our mothers, our grandmothers. We do things differently. And this is why women are such a natural for funeral service practice. We are innovators, we are revolutionaries, we are here, and we’re so glad that we have the opportunity.

What Graduates Want vs. What Employers Offer

There is a gap between expectations of our graduates and what our providers are willing to give. Here are some of the things that our graduates want. Flexibility. They do not want that schedule that I had: three to midnight, weekends, holidays, after hours. They want a work-life balance.

They want someone that is as interested in the graduate’s own learning and development as they are with the development of their business. They want financial well-being. They want benefits to be offered, but not the benefits that the traditional employee may have wanted. They’re not looking for a retirement per se, but they do want a cafeteria plan.

They want to make sure that the mission of the funeral home and the owners and the managers match the mission and values that they bring. But more than anything, graduates want to be recognized for the skills that they bring to us that might be earned outside of a classroom environment: for what they’ve experienced, for the innovation that is within them, and being willing to collaborate with them in that regard.

They’re not just looking at their paycheck. They’re looking at everything that embodies the work-life experience. They want an owner or a manager that understands that balance and walks it themselves. They want an owner and manager that communicates the importance of unplugging from digital technologies. They don’t want to be bothered on their days off. They don’t want to answer texts at 6 o’clock in the morning. They want individuals that are held in high regard, and they do think of you as their mentors. Whether or not you have opted for that title, they have superimposed it on you. They want to see their manager taking time away from work and enjoying that work-life balance.

They are diverse. They expect equity. They want to be included and they do not take “It’s the way we’ve always done it” as an answer—and they certainly want to overcome the biases that we may have on them being younger and possibly not knowing how we do things because they have found a way to do it better. Our next generation wants to make sure that the mission of the funeral establishment aligns with their values.

Focus on volunteerism, philanthropy, and service above self, because that’s where they’re coming from. And then of course, on the compensation package, because that’s the one area we commonly hear that funeral service is lacking in. They’re not compensating appropriately for the level of engagement and education and experience requirements.

Full time to them is not 40 hours a week. Full time to them is engagement of the brain. They will constantly be engaged, yet they might not be at work. So what are we doing to offer them a benefit package that not only has the appropriate wage but also includes fringe benefits, like student loan repayment programs or flexible spending accounts?

Our students and applicants are compassionate individuals that believe that they should be judged not on their appearance, but on their conduct and demeanor. And they are professionals in that regard. They want to be recognized and respected for their contributions and applauded for what they give.

Thanking them at the end of the day for the work that they’ve done might seem so superficial and yet, they need to hear “You did a good job. I appreciate that you were here and I really hope you’ll come back tomorrow.” When they are in an environment where they do not feel that level of support and appreciation, they’ll be the first ones to ghost you. Gone. They found another position and they do not feel beholden to a two-week notice.

Historically, we expected individuals to have family ties to funeral service. That’s not true today. In such an amazing way, you have people that are coming into funeral service because they have a fire within them, compassion at their core, and they want to make a difference. They don’t feel obligated to hold the family tradition. They want into our ranks, but they’re women who haven’t historically been in our space.

“Where are our applicants? I can’t seem to find any applicants.” Trust me, they’re there. The problem is—are you ready to meet them where they are? Because they are willing to change the world and they are ripe for what funeral service brings next.

This article was excerpted from an article of the same title, published in Vol. 60, Issue 4 of The Cremationist. Members can log in to read the full article, including the data on current graduation rates and more suggestions for supporting new hires. Not a member yet? Join now for just $539 for your company and see all that CANA has to offer!

Jolena Grande, CFSP, has more than 30 years of professional practice as a California-licensed funeral director, embalmer, cemetery manager, and crematory manager. Beginning her funeral service career in 1989 working for a large mortuary/cemetery combination operation in Southern California, she is also a longtime faculty member in the Mortuary Science Department at Cypress College where she has served as an instructor since 1995. She serves on various committees with the California Funeral Directors Association, is the current secretary of the National Associated Colleges of Mortuary Science, and immediate past president of the American Board of Funeral Service Education. She is also involved with the California Department of Consumer Affairs Cemetery and Funeral Bureau Advisory Committee and is an item writer for the International Conference of Funeral Service Examining Boards.

Why Your Company Needs Management Training

3/4/2025

A quick search on Google about horror stories in the office yields results that are often related to the work environment, company culture, and, worse, their manager. The workforce has had much to say about how managers and leaders handle their teams.

They have every right to – after all, your employees are the backbone of your company. Without them, business owners, especially those who have only just entered their respective industries, can face insurmountable challenges in operations, service delivery, and customer relationships, among others.

As such, it is essential for startup and well-established companies to invest in management training that matters. Regardless of experience, managers are expected to refresh their skillset and knowledge base in order to adapt to the new demands of the workforce.

Management education and training provides you with the tools you need to not only hire the best people for your team but also take advantage of every new talent you add to your company. If you need more reasons as to why you should be getting management training, then this article is for you. It will show you what proper management can do in hopes of emphasizing that learning is an essential part of being an effective leader.

Bringing out your team's potential

Over the past few years, the workforce has become increasingly diverse as technology has made it possible for people all over the world to connect with each other.

For managers, this trend can mean one of two things. For one, the increased diversity could pose unexpected challenges due to differences in culture, perspective, and work ethic.

However, with the proper management skills, company leaders can maximize this diversity to bring out your team's potential for innovation, which is an invaluable asset in an era of knowledge and technology.

You can motivate them to grab the opportunities instead of waiting for it to happen, become more assertive, and hone themselves into becoming future leaders. A good manager can also empower their team, which not only increases their productivity but also their reliability and sense of responsibility.

Inspiring employee loyalty

An incompetent manager can be detrimental to your team's productivity and creativity. Your employees may find themselves bogged down by inefficient processes, fatigue, and job dissatisfaction – factors that can increase your attrition and causing your company to lose the money you've invested for their hiring, training, and onboarding.

Management training helps you identify the signs and prevent the problem before it can happen. It can teach you what to do during coaching and one-on-one sessions as well as any other employee interaction you may have.

As a result, it can ensure that you're inspiring employee loyalty instead of inviting resignation letters to land on your desk.

Devising better business strategies

Once you have a workforce that you can rely on, the next thing you may want as a manager is to ensure that you're doing things right on the business side of things.

Proper management training teaches you how to devise better business strategies that can benefit you in the short- and long-term. Such strategies may have something to do with your workforce, like what, when, and why you should implement an effective rewards system.

It may also teach you how to identify the market you want, reach the customers you need, and keep them coming back to your company for your products and services. The best training modules out there might also include how to handle finances, which is a key responsibility of leaders.

Growing your business

Imagine if you had a workforce that you have to replace every once in a while because people don't want to keep working for you. As a leader, this scenario means that you have to keep hiring people, investing in training over and over again. It also means that you have no one to rely on but yourself.

If you want to start focusing on growing your business, then consider getting management training for the simple fact that it ensures that you're hiring and training a team that will be with you throughout your growth as a company.

It also enables you to delegate tasks, which is something you'll find yourself grateful for when growing inevitably means more paperwork, tasks, and decisions. Having the knowledge and skills necessary to achieve this is essential for startups, especially if you want to hit the ground running.

As a general rule of thumb, remember this: happy workforce, happy leader. If your team spends their time trying to come up with efficient strategies and thinking up solutions to your problems, it's more than likely that you, as a manager, are leading an empowered team that can support the growth of your company. Invest in management training because your workforce is as much an asset as it is your capital.

Learn more

Want to elevate your team’s success in 2025? The CANA Deathcare Business Administration Certification is a streamlined 10-week learning and networking program designed for current and future leaders in the deathcare industry. Learn critical skills in people and financial management that will drive real results. Launching on Tuesday, April 1st, our program offers a blend of executive MBA-level education and practical, real-world application. Connect with fellow CANA members and industry experts to share insights, strategies, and success stories.

Ready to lead, inspire, and succeed? Enroll now and secure your spot in the Deathcare Business Administration Certification program! To learn more and register today, visit www.goalmakers.com/cana. Your path to leadership excellence starts here.

Special discounts are available for teams! This learning experience will create a ripple effect of positive change, arming your team with a common leadership language and actionable insights. This is more than just a training program; it's an investment in the future leaders of your business. Teams of 3 or more qualify for bulk discounts!

This post republished with permission from the Goalmakers blog. For more, read on here.

Jeremy Wall is co-founder and CEO of GoalMakers. Understanding that most managers have never been taught the fundamentals of people management or business finance, Wall has a passion for simplifying these concepts into practical and applicable lessons to help businesses define & achieve their goals. After building his previous business, an IoT safety company, Wall did private consulting before joining esteemed coach and author John Cioffi to expand this knowledge to a global audience through the GoalMakers ‘mini-MBA’ programs, including the CANA Deathcare Business Administration Certification.

Cremation School is in Session

9/4/2024

For tens of millions of kids around the world, the new school year has begun. But why should students have all the fun? CANA’s here with the 3Rs to start the (school) year off right for your business!

Reading: Data Tells a Story

I had the opportunity recently to present to a small classroom of savvy cemetery and funeral home managers. They hailed from nine states and represented a mix of nonprofits, for-profits, and combo business models. It was a remarkably diverse group that had one common struggle – getting good data out of their businesses.

And why is good data important? Our business data tells us our past, sets expectations for our present and, if we’re lucky, can help predict the future. For instance, CANA’s research has taught us that so-called “direct cremation” consumers opting for no service are actually just choosing not to plan an event with the cremation provider and are conducting services on their own. CANA’s statistics data has helped us plan for a future in which cremation is the preference for a majority of consumers. Time and again, data from CANA and others has proven that the #1 reason consumers choose cremation is no longer price but personal preference.

Cremation is the new tradition. It’s here to stay. What does your business data say about that? By now, you should know exactly what it costs to cremate a body along with all of the attendant administrative expenses. If cremation is a cheaper option you offer, it validates the public’s decision to keep up their tradition. Hence, the question I put before the class: Will you make it financially sustainable?

‘Riting: Disruption and Profitability / dis·rup·tion and prof·it·a·bil·i·ty

Business models change. We live in a world where disruption is a business model and a widespread career goal. Think about how frustrated you are with new employees constantly asking “Why?” They aren’t disrespecting you. They are genuinely interested in understanding and also finding efficiencies and new ways to serve.

CANA members have figured out how to make cremation profitable – and it can require disrupting some long-held processes. It comes down to a few simple rules:

Change your business model.
Offer services that people want.
Practice personalization in those services.
Present merchandise options that support the services and personalization that your families share with you.

This is easier to write about than it is to actually do. This kind of change is hard and time consuming. But, since urn sales will never replace casket sales, it means you must focus on services. Cremation families definitely memorialize their loved ones. The question is whether they will choose to do so with or without your help: your planning skills, your chapel space, or your cemetery placement.

There is a continuum of cremation providers serving families, and you may own businesses at every point of that continuum, from online arrangements and storefront branches to brick-and-mortar full-service funeral homes on cemetery property. Or perhaps you only own one or two along those lines and are considering opening more. Or you could be in the uncomfortable position where your business offers cremation subsidized by casketed burial. That is the worst-case scenario, but it’s not irreversible.

In order to sustain your business and serve your community, you need to seek sustainability and one element of that is profitability. Regardless of the size and scope of your current business, profitability pays your employees, feeds your family, and seeds future growth.

‘Rithmatic: Get Out Your Calculators

Now we’re back to our company data and your homework assignment. Fortunately, it’s open book and you can turn to your neighbor for help. In fact, I encourage you to talk about your data, your challenges, and your success with the colleagues you trust. Our classroom was a great spot for discussion and so is the upcoming CANA Convention – anywhere you can network with professionals with experience in what you’re working to achieve.

The remainder of this post is a series of questions for you to ask your accountants or attempt to find among your spreadsheets and software. I propose this process:

Benchmark – what are your state/provincial, county, regional or market numbers? CANA can help with some of those statistics, but so can local resources like your library.
What are your cremation numbers? At a minimum, measure cremation calls – direct and with services or merchandise sold. Bonus points for calculating average revenue per cremation contract and discussing these numbers with your team.
How do these numbers align with your strategic plan? Are you valuating your business for a generational transfer or sale? Or maybe you’re a new owner servicing a lot of debt? The solution to all is maximizing revenue and lowering expenses.
How can you maximize revenue, keep expenses down, and maintain your high level of service to your communities? I don’t have an answer to this one, but you will find the right solutions. Note the plural – solutions – it may take some trial and error.
Tell your story – you will not sell what you do not market. Are you spending more on marketing your low-cost options, and are you surprised that is what you are selling?

Below is the worksheet I created for class discussion. Challenge yourself to answer as many of these questions that apply to your business as possible. Think about and discuss the questions with your advisors and staff you trust. Attend a CANA meeting and network with attendees to learn new strategies. Then repeat in future years.

Homework for Funeral Home and Cemetery Owners and Managers

Complete the following worksheet to the best of your ability. Prepare to discuss with your leadership team, accountants, etc.

Complete as much as you can based on your business operations. If you can’t complete a question, ask yourself why. If you aren’t currently tracking that information, consider starting to do so.

NOTE: All questions are related to cremation cases only.

Funeral Home

Number of cremation calls to date in 2024:
1. _______ cases
2. _______% of total cases (cremation + burial)
Total cremation revenue to date in 2024: $_________

Now, gather the same information for the past three years.

What trends emerge?
1. How many cases were embalmed?
2. What was your service revenue?
3. Merchandise revenue?
4. Cremation profit?
5. What was your average cremation contract?
List the most popular things sold beyond cremation disposition. (i.e. urn type, keepsake, etc.)
1. .
2. .
3. .
4. .
5. .

Cemetery

# of Cremation interments or inurnments to date in 2024: _________
Inurnment rate of cremations performed by your cemetery to date in 2024: %_______ #________
Inurnment rate from other cemeteries/crematories? %________ $ ________
Cremation Profit: Show your work!
How much have you spent on marketing cremation and/or cremation memorialization to date in 2024? $__________
Now, gather the same information for the past three years.
What trends emerge?

Questions for further discussion:

What do these numbers tell you? Were you surprised? Validated?
When looking at cremation contracts, were there differences among staff members? Why?
What is your embalming/cremation ratio?
How is technology creating efficiencies and lowering costs?
Cremation Marketing efforts – what works for you?
What are your bestsellers regarding merchandise?
Who are your competitors and what do they offer?

Coach Kemmis Closing Remarks

In my family’s experience, cremation was a form of disposition that initially solved a dilemma and quickly became a family tradition. We didn’t “believe in it” or think about it much at all, but when my family made the switch 30 years ago, we did spend money, time and other resources on the services surrounding the cremation… just not with the assistance of death care professionals. I think this dynamic is more common than ever but does not support business sustainability.

The key to sustainability is changing that DIY dynamic and remaining relevant to cremation customers. Many of you are working in funeral homes and cemeteries with generations of experience and it must be maddening to provide the same services you have traditionally offered but with different results. Cremation has changed the equation for many death care businesses. Now that you know your numbers, break it down further to understand how cremation has specifically impacted you so that you may effectively respond.

Demonstrate your cremation expertise and the value that accompanies the disposition services you provide. Our profession is not easy, but that isn’t the goal. The goal is to make the hard things – like, serving an ever-changing customer base while sustaining a business – possible. You make the hard things bearable for your families every day, and you deserve the same experience.

Remember that you don’t have to face this change and these hard things alone. You can turn to your neighbor for support there, too. Looking for a bit of community? You can find it in a Convention, a peer support meeting, or on the other end of the phone. Looking for some inspiration on handling the hard things better? Duke University head coach Kara Lawson provides some words of encouragement.

We can handle hard better together.

With special thanks to my class at ICCFA U for being open-minded, asking questions that challenged, and engaging in thought-provoking discussion.

Barbara Kemmis is Executive Director of the Cremation Association of North America. After more than 20 years of experience in association leadership, Barbara knows that bringing people together to advance common goals is not only fun, but the most effective strategy to get things done. A Certified Association Executive (CAE), Barbara previously served as Director of Member Services at the American Theological Library Association and Vice President of Library & Nonprofit Services at the Donors Forum (now Forefront).

State Cremation Rate Milestones

6/6/2024

The national cremation rate has grown steadily and predictably for the last 50 years. Nothing has interrupted this pattern, neither recessions nor a pandemic, at least on the national level. CANA has tracked this national data for more than a century but has collected state level data just for the past 25 years. As we first reported in 2017, cremation growth rates follow a similar pattern that varies by region of the country and some demographic factors. These patterns emerge as S-curves, a common framework in statistics, representing growth in cremation over time. CANA’s consultant, Arvind Singhal, took this research further and created a model that projects cremation rate growth by state through the end of the century.

Cremation and death numbers will vary and that's important to track for business planning: case volume influences staffing and capital investments. However, these projected cremation rates – percentages of the total – describe long-term trends. Besides being an interesting intellectual exercise, these predictions can also be useful in business planning. Though, if it seems like science fiction, you would be right. Projecting out further than 5-20 years introduces many demographic and other variables that make the projections less reliable, but still fascinating. CANA's Milestone Report, originally published in 2021, suggests a picture of continued cremation growth in a predictable shape.

The Cremation S-Curve

S-curves are a line on a graph that starts off rising pretty slowly and then ramps up quickly before eventually leveling off. This shape appears everywhere, often representing an innovation or adoption of new technology. Picture the invention of cars, televisions, or smart phones: just a few early adopters, it catches on and everyone starts using it, then the population that will adopt it does and there’s nowhere to grow. The S-curve looks more like a lazy, stretched S, but is distinct from other growth shapes such as straight-line or stair step. There are five phases to a trend that is depicted as an S-curve:

Early period or long tail. For cremation, that was the 96 years between 1876 and 1971 until the cremation rate reached 5% nationally.
Early adoption or the beginning of the end. This is the turning point phase that will determine if something is likely to succeed in the long run (take S shape) or see its demise (head downward toward lower values). When cremation rates started rising faster than a linear graph could predict, it signaled the S-curve and has become a defined trend. For products like Betamax and BlackBerry, their curve continued back down and failed to catch on, ultimately representing a blip.
Rapid growth, which is the period we are currently experiencing in the US. The cremation rate has grown from 5% in 1972 to 60.6% in 2023. Here, too, new products or services can fail if they don’t continue to innovate to be more useful or more available to the population that would choose it.
Deceleration is the next stage. Growth slows and begins to form the upper curve of the S. States with cremation rates approaching or exceeding 70% are in this phase. CANA’s 2023 Annual Report suggests that the US nationally and individual states could be approaching this phase but does not have actual data that proves deceleration or plateau. These are represented in the image as speculative projections.
A persistent plateau occurs after a slow down. The rapid rise of the S-curve is complete and growth has leveled off. We know that the cremation rate will never reach 100% as a straight-line analysis would predict. But that upper boundary can vary and is largely dependent on the growth trajectory—or middle part—of the S. A few states have already begun to slow down, though none have quite plateaued yet.

State Cremation Rate Growth

S-curves describe adoption of a trend or technology. When did cremation stop being a curiosity and start becoming a trend? In 1972. When did cremation become the majority of consumers’ preference? Nationally, the rate topped 50% in 2016—but, of course, it varies state by state. Some states hit the mark even earlier, before 2000, when CANA wasn’t yet collecting state-level data.

Our first chart shows when individual states reach 50% cremation rate – reporting existing data or projecting forward. Since this report was first published in 2021, the cremation rate in Arkansas, Virginia and West Virginia have each surpassed 50% as predicted by the chart. By 2033, cremation is predicted to be the preferred form of disposition in every state.

For 2023, CANA added a new color to the national heat maps to highlight the six states where the cremation rate is now above 80% – these states also predicted in the chart from 2021. The farther out a projection is, the more room error there is – we can’t account for world events, demographic change, culture shifts, etc. However, CANA statistics predict that more than half of the country will join these early-adopter states and surpass 80% before 2040 – less than 20 years from now.

This CANA research shows each state’s projected cremation growth patterns as they reach two milestones: 50% (top) and 80% (bottom) cremation rates.

Disposition Disruption

As we conducted research for this article, we learned that trends are borne from trends. For example, the adoption of personal computers led naturally to smart phones as the next improvement of the technology. Personal computers plateaued when they were integrated into nearly all types of business, personal, and education use. Then smart phones somewhat leapfrogged over computer use in some areas of the world and in some professions.

Turning to death care, it will be interesting to observe how new and existing forms of disposition may grow out of the adoption of cremation. Is alkaline hydrolysis an S-curve building on top of cremation? What about natural organic reduction? Only time will tell. For now, these new forms of disposition are difficult to track. That’s because half of the states offering alkaline hydrolysis do not differentiate between AH and flame cremation. If the legalization trend continues to redefine cremation to include AH and NOR, it will continue to be difficult to track these dispositions separately from flame cremation.

Are You Ready?

Are you persuaded? Now’s the time to embrace cremation. CANA has the tools to support your own growth as the cremation rate grows around you.

Education

Ready to get to work? CANA’s Online Education Courses are on-demand and filled with practical takeaways you can put to work right away. Here are a few to consider.

Cremation Arrangement Conference Best Practices – $30, 2.0 CEUs
Learn how you can communicate with cremation families during the arrangement conference to ensure they walk away with peace of mind, knowing their loved one will be memorialized in a way that best represents the life that person lived.

Cremation Phone Shoppers: Your Best First Impression – $15, 1.0 CEUs
When you answer the next cremation phone shopper call, do you know what to say to convert them to a customer? Or will you turn them away by not giving them the right information? This course will teach you how to effectively answer and handle the next phone shopper call.

The Cremation Choice – $30, 2.0 CEUs
Cremation is a form of disposition—but also so much more in the minds of funeral professionals and consumers. This course explores the latest research from CANA to better understand consumer and professional attitudes toward cremation. Taking this class will help you understand the cremation customer, challenge your biases, and find new ways to serve your community's needs.

CANA-Certified Cremation Specialist – $465 for CANA Members, $615 for all other funeral professionals, 11.0 CEUs – Registration closes July 1, 2024
Anyone can claim they are a cremation specialist. What sets a CANA-Certified Cremation Specialist apart is the training they receive to ensure everyone is treated with the same level of care, service, and compassion.

106th Annual Cremation Innovation Convention – $860 for CANA Members, $1060 for Nonmembers, 7.0 CEUs – Chicago: September 11-13, 2024
CANA’s 106th Convention is your opportunity to get to know your peers from funeral homes, crematories, and cemeteries and explore all Chicago has to offer. Industry experts will take the stage to share practical ways that you can address today's challenges to meet tomorrow's demand with sessions on cybersecurity, memorialization, leadership, the role of women in funeral service, and much more!

This original research from CANA was first published in 2021 in Volume 57, Issue 4 of The Cremationist. Access to CANA research and magazine and archives are resources available exclusively to members. Not a member yet? Your firm can join for just $495 and gain the benefit of more than a century of cremation expertise.

CANA Research takes the stage at the 106th Annual Cremation Innovation Convention this September 11-13, 2024 in Chicago. CANA President Robert Hunsaker will share how The Answer is in the Numbers and identify strategies to remain profitable in today's market. See what else we have planned and register to attend the CANA Convention!

Like the CANA's Annual Cremation Statistics Report, the statistical analysis and projections in this post were conducted by Arvind Singhal of Singhal LLC. Arvind earned his Bachelor of Engineering from IIT, Roorkee, Master of Science in Engineering from Western Michigan University, and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University.

Who is the Enemy?

5/22/2024

In February, I attended CANA’s 2024 Symposium focusing on green practices. There were several presenters and vendors who provided information and products covering embalming, green burial, alkaline hydrolysis, and natural organic reduction. Everyone brought their best attitudes and willingness to learn about new ways to consider how we serve our families.

As the presentations continued, it was clear that many people in the room had strong preferences and could argue clearly on behalf of the methods they preferred. It occurred to me while listening to these discussions that we have to have something to be against in order to have something that we support.

Now, isn’t that the truth for humanity throughout our collective experience? In every story there is a bad guy and a good guy. A right way and a wrong way. This is how countries, political parties, religious denominations, cults, and, even, sports teams gain their followers. We’re number one and everyone else is a loser.

Enemies in Funeral Service

In the 60’s Jessica Mitford was the objective of our collective anger. In her book The American Way of Death, she pulled the curtain back on the practices of the day. Some of her assumptions and accusations were inflated and unfair. Some of her statements were correct and on point. This exposé that outlined many problematic business practices drew the attention of the FTC and funeral service was put on notice that someone was watching. So, then we had a second point of pain and an enemy that we could all agree on. That meddling FTC that makes our lives so difficult.

And then, along came cremation. Now this was something threatening that we could all rally against. What do you mean that you do not want to embalm the body, buy a casket and a vault and a burial plot? This is what we do. This is our entire business model. This is how we survive.

So, for another two decades (and, for some much longer) many funeral professionals were less than engaged with the cremation family. The famous professional shrug and eye roll as we referred to the request as “just a cremation.” We hid the urns in a closet and only brought them out when we had to. As cremation continued to increase and it became clear that it was going nowhere, many funeral professionals learned to embrace and adapt and have successful businesses serving the cremation customer. But, if you listen closely when a group of funeral directors get together, there is still that collective sigh as they remember the good ol’ days.

Just as we thought that we had figured out how to sleep with that enemy, along came green burial. “What? What kind of hippy dippy, tree hugging stuff is this? ”And, of course, Jewish and Islamic families all over the country gently reminded us that they have been honoring their dead in this manner for 2000 years.

And this is when the enemies became divided. For those who were promoting and encouraging the natural disposition choices, formaldehyde and caskets and fuel-based cremation became the enemy. Bad for the environment. Bad for practitioners. Bad for the land.

For those whose business practices relied on embalming or cremation, green burial became a threat to their established models and frustrating in the limitations of offering options. “Sure, I am happy to support a family’s wishes, but how do I find a cemetery that accepts natural burial? Or dealing with green-identified cemeteries that won’t allow burial of an embalmed body which means that families cannot be buried together? And what does green burial mean? A wicker casket? A shroud? Formaldehyde-free embalming? So confusing. Perhaps we can just ignore it and hope it goes away.”

In the last decade, the landscape has gotten even more crowded with the introduction of alkaline hydrolysis focusing on the enemy: flame-based cremation. So much better to utilize water and sodium hydroxide and not pollute the air or use large quantities of fuel. At this writing, twenty states have legalized it, indicating a lag in professional support and urgency for making this available for families who would like to have that choice. Why create yet something else that we must deal with?

And then, in 2019, natural organic reduction came on the scene. You could feel the collective gasp all over the country. “What? Another option? Turning bodies into soil? A truck load of remains? Are you kidding me?" At this writing, nine states have legalized this process and much of the pushback has come from religious and funeral professionals. “We’ve never done it this way before and it just doesn’t feel right. ”The best way to bring folks together is to give them a really good enemy.

Are we the enemy?

Personally, I am a fan of all of the above. I have had the privilege of working with such talented and dedicated professionals in all of these fields – embalming, cremation, green/natural, alkaline hydrolysis, and natural organic reduction.

I am completely convinced that their life’s work has been focused on serving families in dignified and honoring ways and of supporting a funeral practice that serves the community.

My question is – Why does anything have to be the enemy? Why have we been so resistant to accepting and enthusiastically embracing ALL of the options? Why must one thing be bad in order for our preference to be good? Clearly each method has pros and cons that must be considered, but there is no one method that owns all the pros nor one that is inherently bad.

Why can’t we open up those doors and become proficient and conversant in every option that is allowed in our states? Why are we not having full and informative conversations with professionals, law makers, religious and lay communities as we consider what it means to take care of a person’s final disposition and honoring those wishes? What message are we sending to families who are seeking the best alternative that fits them and their lifestyles and convictions when we refuse to be the professional experts in all the ways we take care of bodies?

Perhaps it is time to put down our We’re Number One foam finger and consider ourselves part of the death care team with everyone pulling in the same direction. Perhaps the best way to bring everyone together is not to create an enemy but to create a vision of progressive inclusion and expansive imagination. In that scenario, no one has to be the enemy. Everyone can be the good guy.

Glenda Stansbury takes the stage at CANA's 106th Annual Cremation Innovation Convention this September 11-13, 2024. She'll talk about the value of listening and being open to all perspectives and responding to the needs of our communities. See what else we have planned and register to attend: cremationassociation.org/CANA24

This post excerpted from an article of the same name, originally appearing in Dodge Magazine Spring 2024 Volume 116 No. 2.

Glenda Stansbury, CFSP, MALS is the Dean of the InSight Institute of Funeral Celebrants, VP of InSight Books, adjunct professor for UCO Funeral Service Department and a practicing Certified Funeral Celebrant. You can contact her at [email protected].

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