ICCFA Magazine July 2015

July 2015
MAGAZINE
CEMETERY
ICCFA 2015
Convention
& Expo
Coverage
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Scenes from the 2015 ICCFA Convention

& Expo in San Antonio, Texas: 1. Judy
Faabergs boots for the Closing Dinner
(p. 13), (2-8) First time attendees:
2. Stephanie & DeWayne Hughes (p. 22),
3. David Penzell (p. 15), 4. Kenneth Ross
(p. 32), 5. Fairy Weeks (p. 15), 6. Pedro
Vargas (p. 32); 7. Lynn Cappon (p. 32);
and 8. David Long (p. 28). 9. Networking
in the ICCFA booth; 10. Keynote speaker
Cindy Gallup; 11. ICCFA 2014-15 President Fred Lappin, CCE, with Mae West
at the Closing Reception; 12. First-timer
Christia Bobb and friends take a group
selfie at the First Timers Reception (p.
15); 13. Attendees at a breakout session.
14. ICCFA 2015 Hall of Fame Award winner Fred Miller, CCE; 15. ICCFA Cremation Counsel Poul Lemasters presentation during PLPA College; 16. Glenda
Stansbury, Lauren Blevins, Jodi Clock
and Lacy Robinson during the Hospice
Panel; 17. Taking a photo with the living
statue at the Aurora Casket Co. booth
in the Expo Hall; 18. At the Solo Setter
booth in the Expo Hall 19. Networking
in the Expo Hall; 20. Dave Wharmby,
CCE, with the Lasting Impact Award he
received from the ICCFA Educational
Foundation.
10 Presidents Letter
ICCFA University: Just do it
by Darin Drabing
12 Washington Report
NLRB: Calling the boss a jerk on
Facebook can be protected speech
by Robert M. Fells, Esq.
66 Supply Line
68 Convention Speaker Information
69 Ad Index
69 Calendar
70 Classifieds
6
ICCFA Magazine
International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association

Promoting consumer choices, prearrangement and open competition
Providing exceptional education, networking and legislative guidance and support
to progressive cemetery, funeral and cremation professionals worldwide
13
Convention overview
13 Its San Antonio: Hats & boots for the Closing Dinner
14 Photos from the 2015 Convention & Expo (more Expo photos pp. 51-60, 68)
15 First-timers (more first-timers on pp. 22, 28 and 32)
Comments from people attending their first ICCFA Annual Convention

16
22
26
30
AwArds & reCognitions
Hall of Fame Award recognizes Fred Millers service to ICCFA

16 New members elected, appointed to ICCFA board
18 Foundation honors Wharmby
Cypress Lawn donates $50,000 to foundation for scholarships
Foundation awards scholarships to ICCFAU
20 ICCFA members earn professional certifications
Quarter-Century Club, Half-Century Club
50 Certified Pet Loss Professional certifications awarded
50 Coleen Ellis and Bill Remkus receive Pet Loss Pioneer Award
KeYnote speAKers
22 Keep in mind the message you convey in your help-wanted ads

22 Change the language of death
22 Listen to your youngest workers
24 Embrace the idea of co-opetition, that were all in this together
24 Read books, not just blogs
24 Network. Dont prospect; do real networking and introduce people
24 Use laughter to control stress
CremAtion
26 Beware of the newest thing: Family suing over being excluded

26 Dont let people leave without information about final disposition
26 Dont assume the person paying the bill can authorize the cremation
26 Properly document changes in who can pick up cremated remains
28 Learn how to properly respond to phone calls asking about cremation
28 Tell people why youre unique
28 Add a fourth package to offer families a viewing the cremation
mAnAgement
30 Hospice: How, why to engage with hospice

31 Grief: Treat grief as a transitional process, not a pathology
31 Grief: Realize that expressions of grief are affected by developmental age
32 Think about whether what you want is to sell or to step down
32 Make your business more attractive to buyers
32 If you leave your business to family, make an equitable division
32 Plan your exit strategy years ahead of when you want to get out
34 Make more efficient use of your funeral homes chapel
34 Put in place a board that realizes a cemtery has to be a business
34 Create director positions that will be attractive to potential hires
34 Create jobs that are attractive because of aspects other than pay
36 Women in leadership: Change how you start your day
36 Use your flat-screen TVs to market to your non-grieving guests
37 Stop data-dumping if you want to connect with people and lead them
37 Tell a story to write a eulogy
37 Market to female baby boomers
37 JFDA: Look for Elijah moments
42 Dont make directors mow lawns
Like the ICCFA on Facebook & friend ICCFA Staff
Grow with Us!
Partners in business growth

L-R: Doug Hoog of IFPA; Loose Funeral
Homes President Rob Loose; Homesteaders
Account Executive Debi Fledderman
O
Our pre-nneed program is paramount to our future.
Partnering with Homesteaders Life Company and
IFPA
P has helped our funeral home be successful.
PA
R Loose has high expectations for his pre-need

Rob
program and for its role in the future of his Anderson,
Indiana funeral homes business. To help ensure
success, he partnered with Independent Funeral
Planning Alliance (IFPA), a Homesteaders-affiliated
marketing organization.
The business has changed so much, so we have to be proactive,
Loose said. With the partnership we have with IFPA
P and
PA
Homesteaders, weve been very successful in doing that.
IFPA
P s approach is tailored to meet the needs of
PA
each funeral home owner. Firms that work with the
marketing organization benefit from their signature
relationship marketing program.
Our unique relationship marketing database helps firms build a

strong foundation for any prospects theyve touched over the years,
said Doug Hoog, IFPA
P Regional Partner. Were able to help keep
PA
the funeral homes name in front of these contacts, and it pays off.
Loose described the partnership between his firm, IFPA
P and
PA
Homesteaders as a perfect marriage that helps them keep their
pre-need program moving forward.
We have worked with other companies in the past, but I think
Homesteaders is the very best, he added. They have programs and
partnerships that help us secure future business.
Contact your Homesteaders account
executive to learn more about our
resources to help your firm grow.
homesteaderslife.com/growmybiz
tAbLe oF Contents
ICCFA news
61 Full-day workshop on creating
markets and eliminating competition on
Fall Management Conference agenda
62 ICCFA trains 2,072 in cremation over the
past two years
62 Still time to register for ICCFAU,
the experience of a lifetime
42 Stock up on cash, not inventory

42 Run the numbers when considering refinancing
46 Dealing with an Ebola case
38
teCHnoLogY
40
CemeterY mAnAgement
42
sALes & mArKeting
44
green serviCes
42
embALming
48
pet serviCes
62 2016 ICCFA Annual Convention session

proposals due August 3
63 Travel, office supply discounts added for
ICCFA members
63 2016 Wide World of Sales Conference call
for presentations
www.iccfa.com
Directories
www.iccfa.com/directories
Web Expo directory of suppliers and

professionals
Association directory
Industry event calendar
Cremation Coaching Center
www.iccfa.com/cremation
ICCFA Caf
Links to news and feature stories from all over
the world
Model guidelines
ICCFA Government and Legal Affairs

Committees model guidelines for state
laws and regulations
ICCFA calendar
2015 iCCFA University
July 17-22 Fogelman Conference Center,
University of Memphis, Memphis,
Tennessee Chancellor: Jeff Kidwiler, CCE
Cremation Arranger and Crematory
operator Certification Course
September 9-10 Dallas Institute of
Funeral Service, Dallas, Texas
2015 Fall management Conference
September 30-October 2
Loews Ventana Canyon, Tucson, Arizona
Co-Chairs:Stacy Adams and John Gouch
2016 wide world of sales
Conference
January 13-15 Monte Carlo Resort
& Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada
2016 Annual Convention
& exposition
April 13-16 Ernest N. Morial Convention
Center & Hilton New Orleans Riverside, New
Orleans, Louisiana Co-Chairs: Jay Dodds,
CFSP, and Lee Longino
8
ICCFA Magazine
38 Make the best use of the Internet by making videos people will watch
38 Ensure that you show up in the top results of a Google search
38 Engage people on Facebook to get more people to see your posts
40 Think about how to save fuel
40 Picture the experience you want families to have in your garden
40 Develop your cremation garden in phases, and dont overcrowd it
40 Use this app to document graves
40 Create relationships with local groups involved in genealogy
41 Consider using community service volunteers on projects
41 Look into offering space for yoga or other exercise classes
42 Get directors and preneed counselors to respect each other
43 Understand what branding is and is not, and manage your brand
43 When you plan your ads, realize that emotions outlast memories
43 Add packages to your website
44 Create a space for the living
44 Think about how much maintenance is really needed
44 Create a trail, hold an open house and make people love the land
46 Listen to what families want the results of embalming to be
46 Reconsider minimum prep
46 Prep bodies before refrigeration
46 Work with other funeral directors to let coronors know what you need
48 Step back and think about why you went into this business to begin with
48 Innovate or accept that someone will put you out of business someday
48 Write the job title last, after youve written the job description
48 Dont rely on spellcheck
48 Learn and then meet veterinarians expectations
49 Update safety policies regularly and make employees read them
49 Have the right extinguisher for dealing with electrical fires
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At a time when the entire death care industry is talking about less, MKJ is offering MORE.
Contrary to what many believe, the funeral business has never offered greater opportunity; it may not
be business as usual, but there are proven opportunities for growing every aspect of your business.
WHY? Because most of your competitors are satisfied watching their businesses decline year after year.
They dont want to do whats necessary to GROW their business.
Presidents Letter
by iCCFA
2015-2016
president darin
b. drabing
ddrabing@forestlawn.com
Drabing is president
and CEO of Forest Lawn

Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries, Glendale, California.
www.forestlawn.com
n To apply for ICCFA

membership:
Download an application
at www.iccfa.com, or
Call 1.800.645.7700
Check us out on
Facebook!
Like us
and friend
ICCFA Staff.
ICCFA University: Just do it
s the parent of 18-year-old twins, I have

survived the final days of high school,
including senioritis, prom drama, award
banquets, late night parties and the pomp and
circumstance that come with graduation.
With that behind me, I am now focused on
college orientations, registrations and dorm room
assignments. Im excited to see my children advance
in their educational pursuits. I want nothing more
than for them to be happy and fulfilled, and to find
success in their chosen fields.
Continuing to learn and grow is vital at all stages
of life, no matter if you are beginning college,
starting a new job, planning for your next promotion
or changing careers. But these milestones dont
happen without some personal sacrifice and financial
investment.
Although in most investment prospectuses, there
is the recurring message that past performance is no
guarantee of future results, investment in education,
more often than not, pays dividends.
For me, the most prudent investment in continued
education is found at the ICCFA University. Experiencing the program personally and seeing the
professional growth of those whom I have encouraged to participate over the years have convinced me
that the return is well worth the investment.
If its been more than a few years since youve
walked the quad, had an engaging conversation
over morning coffee or a had spirited debate over
late night pizza and beer, please consider joining me
at the University of Memphis Fogelman Executive
Center July 17-22 for our professions premier
educational event.
ICCFA University is a five-day program designed
to offer intensive instruction and networking
opportunities in a college-campus setting. You can
iCCFA officers
July 2015
VOLUME 75/NUMBER 6
Darin B. Drabing, president
Michael Uselton, CCFE, president-elect

Jay D. Dodds, CFSP, vice president
Paul Goldstein, vice president
Christine Toson Hentges, CCE,
vice president
Scott R. Sells, CCFE, vice president
Gary M. Freytag, CCFE, treasurer
Daniel L. Villa, CCE, secretary
Robert M. Fells, Esq., executive director &
general counsel
magazine staff
Susan Loving, managing editor

sloving@iccfa.com,
slovingiccfa@yahoo.com
10
ICCFA Magazine
attend for just one or two years, or you may go on

to complete four years and become an ICCFAU
graduate. Either way, I promise that this will be one
of the best investments you can make in your career.
The university has seven different colleges, or
educational tracks, from which to select. Each one
is led by our professions best and brightest minds.
Serving at the direction of Chancellor Jeff Kidwiler,
the deans of instruction create meaningful and
provocative curricula to expand your horizons and
enhance your skills.
You choose! Learn more about cremation
services from Jim Starks; refine your talents in
funeral home management with Todd Van Beck;
sharpen your focus in leadership, administration and
management with Spring Groves Gary Freytag;
study land management and grounds operations with
Gino Merendino; discover the future at our College
of 21st Century Services, led by Glenda Stansbury;
capture the wisdom of Gary OSullivan in the fields
of sales and marketing; or broaden your cultural
horizons at our new College of International Studies
with Jim Hammond.
We also have developed masters and CEO
programs for those who meet the qualifications.
As you can see, the ICCFA University offers
something for everyone.
Stop with the excuses. Look at your schedule for
July 17-22. I know you have existing commitments
penciled in. Change them. You always have the time
to do whats important. Take the time to invest in
yourself. Make the commitment to invest in your
employees.
Experience the personal growth, the renewed
perspectives and the energy that is the U! Enroll in
ICCFA University 2015 today. Just do it! You wont
regret it. I promise.
r
Rick Platter, supplier relations manager

rplatter@iccfa.com; 1.800.645.7700, ext. 1213
Robert Treadway, director of
communications & member services
robt@iccfa.com; 1.800.645.7700, ext. 1224
Robert M. Fells, Esq., executive director &
publisher
rfells@iccfa.com ; 1.800.645.7700, ext. 1212
Brenda Clough, office administrator
& association liaison
bclough@iccfa.com; 1.800.645.7700,
ext. 1214
Daniel Osorio, subscription coordinator

(habla espaol)
danielo@iccfa.com; 1.800.645.7700, ext. 1215
ICCFA Magazine (ISSN 1936-2099) is published by the International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association, 107 Carpenter
Drive, Suite 100, Sterling, VA 20164-4468;
703.391.8400; FAX 703.391.8416;
www.iccfa.com. Published 10 times per year,
with combined issues in March-April and
August-September. Periodicals postage paid
at Sterling, VA, and other offices. Copyright
2015 by the International Cemetery, Cremation

and Funeral Association. Subscription rates: In
the United States, $39.95; in Canada, $45.95;
overseas: $75.95. One subscription is included
in annual membership dues. POSTMASTER:
Send address changes to ICCFA Magazine,
107 Carpenter Drive, Suite 100, Sterling, VA
20164-4468. Individual written contributions,
commentary and advertisements appearing in
ICCFA Magazine do not necessarily reflect
either the opinion or the endorsement of the
International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral
Association.
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Washington Report
by iCCFA general Counsel
NLRB: Calling the boss a jerk on
robert m. Fells, esq.
Facebook can be protected speech
rfells@iccfa.com
1.800.645.7700,
ext. 1212
direct line:
703.391.8401
Fells is ICCFA
executive director and general
counsel, responsible for maintaining and improving relationships
with federal and state government
agencies, the news media, consumer organizations and related
trade associations.
MORE RESOuRCES
Wireless. ICCFA members,
send us your email address and
well send you our bi-weekly electronic newsletter full of breaking
news.
www.iccfa.com
Model guidelines
ICCFA Government and Legal

Affairs Committees model
guidelines for state laws and
regulations
Washington Report
Recent columns are available

online
Authors note: Some time ago we
ran a column on how employees
use of social media on the job can
be considered protected free speech
even where it is critical of the boss
or the company. Due to numerous
inquiries we are publishing this
important information again.
12
ICCFA Magazine
he communications revolution has

caused a certain amount of turmoil in the
workplace. Supervisors are concerned
about employees socializing on cyberspace when
they should be working. A more serious problem
is when an employee uses Facebook, Twitter or
other social media sites to badmouth the boss or
the company.
A bosss kneejerk reaction is to discipline
the offending worker, but the National Labor
Relations Board (NLRB), an agency of the U.S.
Department of Labor, says, Not so fast. In
many circumstances, an employee may criticize
the boss and the company over the Internet and
it will be considered protected speech by the
NLRB.
Under section 7 of the National Labor
Relations Act, such employee comments and
criticisms are protected, and employers who
attempt to discipline the worker have been found
to engage in illegal conduct. NLRB General
Counsel Opinions published in August 2011 and
in January and May 2012 have identified four
points in determining that a social media posting
is protected speech. Such posts are protected if
they:
a. Involve terms and conditions of
employment;
b. Are a logical outgrowth of some earlier
discussion among coworkers about those terms
and conditions;
c. Are directed to or involve other coworkers;
and
d. Intend to invite or encourage further action
from those co-workers.
However, comments that are merely gripes or
complaints, especially if not directed to coworkers, are not protected under Sec. 7.
The following are actual examples cited by
the NLRB of an employers unlawful policies/
practices against a worker:
a. Terminating an employee who made and
received comments about her supervisor, whom
she called a scumbag on her Facebook page.
b. Terminating an employee who commented
on a coworkers Facebook page that their
manager was such an asshole for improperly
deducting taxes from their pay.
c. Terminating an employee who posted
pictures of, and sarcastic comments about, food
and beverages that were served by his company
as part of a sales promotion event.
The NLRB also identified examples of lawful
employer policies/practices:
a. Terminating an employee who posted
inappropriate comments about mentally disabled
patients she cared for during a Facebook
conversation with two friends who were not
coworkers.
b. Terminating a bartender who commented
on Facebook about his employers tipping policy,
and called customers red necks and hoped they
choked on glass as they drove home drunk.
c. Maintaining a policy that requires
employees to respond to all media questions by
replying that they are not authorized to comment
for the employer, to take the name and number of
the media organization and to call the companys
public affairs office.
Basically, social media policies are usually
found unlawful by the NLRB if they are vague
or overly broad. For example, prohibiting
inappropriate or improper language will be
found unlawful, but prohibiting profanity, threats
or intimidation has been found lawful. In other
words, it helps to be specific when advising
workers about conduct on social media sites that
could subject them to disciplinary actions.
To date, there has been at least one important
published court ruling affecting funeral
professionals. The Minnesota state court in
2012 held, in the case of Tatro v. University
of Minnesota, that a junior year student in
the mortuary science program was properly
disciplined by the school for violating the code of
professional conduct in online postings.
The student posted comments about a cadaver
that she named Bernie, and expressed her
wanting to attack certain people whom she
disliked with a trocar. The decision was cited
as the first social media litigation involving a
students right of free speech.
In addition, employers may want to review
their own use of social media and email involving
sensitive or confidential information. Under
revised rules of discovery in many jurisdictions,
individuals have been required in the course of
investigations or litigation to provide their user
names, passwords and PINs to allow other parties
to access their email and posts.
Finally, all employee handbooks should
be updated to contain a social media policy
advising workers of conditions in their use of
the Internet. The NLRB model social media
policy can be accessed at www.iccfa.com/files/
SocialMediaPolicy.pdf.
r
I C C FA C O N V E N T I O N
WELCOME TO SAN AN TO N I O : H O L D O N T O YO U R H AT S & B O OT S !
1. John Gouch, Gethsemane Cemetery & Memorial Gardens, Charlotte, North Carolina; 2. Margaret Hambrick, Service
Corporation International, San Jose, California; 3. Stephen Burrill, CCE, CCrE, Mount Hope Cemetery Corp. & Crematory,
Bangor, Maine; 4. Janice Stetz, CCE, Forest Hills Cemetery, Boston, Massachusetts; 5. Scott Sells, CCFE, Service Corporation
International, San Jose, California.
6. Gail Rubin, CC, A Good Goodbye, Albuquerque, New Mexico; 7. Bob Wallinger, Service
Corporation International, San Jose, California 8. Kimberley Weis, Service Corporation
International, Pompano Beach, Florida 9. & 15. Tim Hoff, CFSP, Hoff Celebraton of Life,
St. Charles, Minnesota.
12
13
14
15
12. Peggy Rouzzo & Kim Graham, Nomis Publications, Youngstown, Ohio;
13. Janis Diamond, Dignity Memorial, St. Augustine, Florida; 14. Keith Gruendl,
Service Corporation International, Clearwater, Florida. (15. Still Tim Hoff.)
18
16
17
16. Kandy Shackelford, Shackelford

Funeral Directors, Bolivar, Tennessee;
17. Nancy Lohman, CCFE, StoneMor
Partners, Ormond Beach, Florida.
Start every day at the ICCFA Caf at www.iccfa.com
19
18. Sherri
Gerland
& Carla
Layne,
Floral
Marketing
International;
Houston,
Texas;
19. David
Michael
Coilell,
Service
Corporation International.
10
10. Judy Faaberg, Washington
Cemetery, Cremation & Funeral
Association, Mill Creek, Washington, with a cowboy; 11. Tom Daly,
CCE, Cemetery Helpful Solutions,
Westwood, Massachusetts.
11
July 2015
13
I N T ER NATIONAL
C E M E T E R Y,
CREM ATION
AND
Breaking
Boundaries
April 8-11, 2015, San Antonio, Texas
1
1 Cutting the ribbon to open the Expo, from
left, ICCFA 2014-15 President Fred Lappin,
CCE; IMSA President Fred
Miller, CCE, CSE; and
3
ICCFA 2015-16 President
Darin Drabing. 2 In the
Expo Hall (note Carl from
Orbis Robotics wheeling
his way across the floor).
3 & 4 Keynote speakers
Cindy Gallup and Tim
Sanders. 5 Convention
Co-chairs Caressa Hughes
and Daniel Villa, CCE.
Convention numbers
Total cemetery, funeral home,
crematory and allied business
representatives: 1,072
136 international attendees
representing 17 countries
outside of the United States
14
ICCFA Magazine
Attendee percentages
24 percent representing
combination cemeteryfuneral home operations
stand-alone cemeteries
stand-alone funeral homes
stand-alone pet loss providers
15 percent other, including
insurance agents, mortuary
school faculty, representatives
of industry associations
Attendee satisfaction
Attendees rated the event highly,
with 84 percent indicating their
overall convention experience
was excellent or very good
and 81 percent indicating they
definitely or probably will
attend next years convention,
April 13-16, in New Orleans,
Louisiana.
6 At the annual State Association Leadership Lunch discussing what is going

on in different states with regard to funeral homes, cemeteries and crematories.
7
7 Networking continued after hours in the Grand Hyatts Bar Roja, adjacent to the convention center.
F UN E R A L
A S S O C I AT I ON
CONVENTION
&
EXPO
8
8 Incoming President
Darin Drabing gives Fred
Lappin, CCE, his past
presidents pin and gavel.
2015
10
11
9 Speaker Doug
Gober (p. 36).
10 Young attendees eschew
seats and enjoy
an indoor picnic
in the Expo Hall,
which features
continuous food
and beverage
service.
What did you

think of your
first ICCFA
convention?
Christia Bobb
Paradise Funeral
Home, Houston,
Texas
Ive enjoyed it.
Ive met new
people to build
new relationships. Its been
great so far.
12
11 Donald and Stella Taft, Community Cemeteries, Beaumont, Texas,

at the Closing Reception. 12 ICCFA Board Member Scott Sells, CCFE,
(standing) talks to attendees at the First Timers Reception.
13
13 Attendees listen and take notes during one of the educational sessions.
David Penzell
Waldheim
Cemetery Co.,
Forest Park,
llinois
Its been very enjoyable. My brain
is exploding with
more knowledge
and ideas; its
been great.
Fairy Weeks
Kansas Coach &
Livery, Cremation
Service, Sublette,
Kansas
I have enjoyed it
a lot. Its much
bigger than I
expected, and I
love the forward
ideas. We have
gathered a lot
of information;
I wish I could
attend every
session.
July 2015
15
AWAR D S & R E C O G N I T I O N S
Hall of Fame Award recognizes

Fred Millers service to ICCFA
rederick Miller, CCE, CSE, received

the ICCFA Hall of Fame Award
during the ICCFA 2015 Convention &
Exposition.
Obviously, this is a mountaintop moment
in my professional life, Miller said after
receiving an introduction from Past President
Arlie Davenport Jr.. I came into this industry
as a DuPont research executive and research
team leader. I knew nothing about cemeteries,
but I was immediately embraced by some
of the most creative entrepreneurs that the
industry had to offer.
Miller is president of Memorial Business Systems, Brentwood, Tennessee. He
joined the American Cemetery Association
in 1982 and served as president in 1994-95.
As president, he helped manage the project
that would enable the incoming Board of
Directors and the general membership to vote
on the resolution to open the membership to
a wide range of death care professionals. On
the last day of his term, a vote was taken and,

by a near unanimous vote of the membership,
the ICFA was born.
Working with Dan Majestic, Miller
helped create the International Memorialization Supply Association to coordinate
the activities, goals and objectives of the
suppliers and the ICFA. He is the only past
president of both associations.
Miller, Majestic and Fernando Aguilar
developed a relationship with ALPAR, the
Latin American equivalent to the ICCFA.
He also assisted with outreach efforts to the
AARP, hospice and organ donor groups.
Miller served as chairman of the ICCFA
Memorialization Committee, which morphed
into the Personalization Committee, creators
of the Keeping It Personal (KIP) Awards.
In 1982-83, Miller developed software
products for his cemetery and began making
them broadly available to other cemeteries,
forming MBS to do so.
Past Presidents Fred Miller, CCE, CSE,

and Arlie Davenport Jr. display Millers
Hall of Fame Award.
The Hall of Fame award is the ICCFAs

highest honor. Since its creation in 1965, it
has been awarded to 34 individuals.
r
New members elected, appointed to ICCFA board
he ICCFAs Board of Directors for

2015-2016 includes the following
new members, elected during this
years convention to serve three-year
terms:
Richard O. Baldwin Jr., CCE, Celebris
Memorial Services, Quebec, Canada;
Christine Hunsaker, Hunsaker
Partners, Atlanta, Georgia;
Christopher J. Keller, French
Funerals-Cremations, Albuquerque, New
Mexico;
Tim Lancaster, CCFE, Eternal Hills
Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home,
Klamath Falls, Oregon;
Lee Longino, Service Corporation
International, Palm Harbor, Florida;
Dyanne M. Matzkevich, Gethsemane
Memorial Gardens, Wake Forest, North
Carolina;
George H. Milley III, CCE, Forest
Hills Cemetery, Boston, Massachusetts;
Mitch Rose, CCFE, CCrE, Woodlawn
Cemetery, Bronx, New York.
Past presidents elected to serve a oneyear term on the board:
Robert A. Gordon Sr., CCE, CCFE,
CSE, Eternal Hills Memorial Gardens &
16
ICCFA Magazine
Funeral Home in Klamath Falls, Oregon;

Frederick W. Miller, CCE, Memorial
Business Systems, Brentwood, Tennessee;
Richard T. Sells, CCE, Johnson
Consulting Group, San Diego, California.
Miller also serves as the International
Memorialization Supply Association
representative on the board.
ICCFA officers for 2015-2016:
PresidentDarin B. Drabing, Forest
Lawn Memorial-Parks & Mortuaries,
Glendale, California;
President-Elect Michael R. Uselton,
CCFE, Gibraltar Remembrance Services,
Palmetto, Florida;
Vice President, EducationPaul
Goldstein, Hillside Memorial Park and
Mortuary, Los Angeles, California;
Vice President, Membership &
MarketingJay Dodds, CFSP, Signature
Group, Houston, Texas;
Vice President, Internal AffairsScott
R. Sells, CCFE, Service Corporation
International, San Jose, California;
Vice President, External Affairs
Christine Toson Hentges, CCE, The
Tribute Companies Inc., Hartland,
Wisconsin;
TreasurerGary M. Freytag CCFE,

Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum,
Cincinnati, Ohio;
SecretaryDaniel L. Villa, CCE,
Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood,
California.
Members of the 2015-2016 Executive
Committee are as follows:
Drabing;
Uselton;
Immediate Past President I. Frederick
Lappin, CCE, Knollwood Cemetery
Corp. and Sharon Memorial Park, Sharon,
Massachusetts;
Past President Paul Elvig, Everett,
Washington (presidents appointment);
David Shipper, Futura Group, Ewing,
New Jersey (past presidents appointment);
Freytag (ex-officio).
The presidential appointments to
represent the ICCFA on the Cemetery
Consumer Service Council:
Thomas P. Daly, CCE, CHS
Consulting Group, Westwood,
Massachusetts; and
Stephen Burrill, CCE, CCrE, Mount
Hope Cemetery, Bangor, Maine.
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July 2015
17
Foundation honors Wharmby
he ICCFA Educational Foundation

presented David Wharmby, CCE, with
the Lasting Impact Award during the
ICCFA 2015 Convention & Exposition.
The award recognizes individuals who
have made significant contributions to
furthering professional development and
lifelong learning in the funeral, cemetery and
cremation profession.
Daves outstanding leadership, spanning
several decades in our industry, has provided
hundreds of millions of dollarsbillions
of dollars, I just learned this afternoonin
revenue for cemeteries and funeral operations
around the country, said ICCFA Past
President Rich Sells, CCE. In doing that,
hes launched the careers of individuals
who probably never, ever would have done
what they did but through his organization.
It enriched their lives, and enriched their
families lives.
The award was presented at the annual

Educational Foundation Reception. The
room was filled with people on hand
to congratulate Wharmby and help the
foundation in its mission to raise additional
money for scholarships.
Wharmby began his career in the cemetery business more than 42 years ago with
the Gibraltar Mausoleum Corp., Indianapolis,
Indiana. For the past 33 years, he served as
senior vice president of sales and marketing for Inglewood Park Cemetery and its
affiliate, Parklawn Cemetery, in Inglewood,
California. He is currently director of sales
and marketing for Western Memorial Corp.
and Western Sequoia Corp.
Wharmby has been a speaker for the
ICCFA, the National Catholic Cemetery
Conference and the Latin American cemetery
association. He has been active in his
community and received many honors.
Educational Foundation Chairman James

Price, CCFE, CCrE, presents the Lasting
Impact Award to David Wharmby, CCE.
Having had the opportunity over the

past 42 years to have recruited and trained
hundreds of people, both across the country
and across multiple cultures, makes this
recognition by my peers all the more
meaningful, Wharmby said.
r
Cypress Lawn
donates $50,000
to foundation
for scholarships
Marilyn Gould of MKJ Marketing
stands in for Kenneth Varner, CCFE,
CEO of Cypress Lawn Cemetery,
Arboretum, Heritage Foundation &
Cremation Society, Colma, California,
in presenting a check for $50,000 to
representatives of the ICCFA Educational Foundation. The funds have enabled the foundation to grant more scholarships.
Foundation awards scholarships to ICCFAU
he ICCFA Educational Foundation

awarded 13 scholarships to this years
ICCFA University, to be held July 1722 at the University of Memphis in Memphis,
Tennessee:
Heather Leigh, Greenhaven Memorial
Gardens, Elgin, South Carolina (made
possible by Live Oak Bank);
Jacquelyn Poirier, Forest Hill Cemetery,
Fitchburg, Massachusetts, (made possible by
Matthews International);
Audrey Hoffman, Columbia Wilbert
Vault, Caycee, South Carolina (made possible
by the Memorial Classic Golf Tournament);
Delana Pratt, Forethought Life Insurance
18
ICCFA Magazine
Co., Batesville, Indiana (made possible by the

Next Generation Scholarship Fund)
Lorraine Piller, Town of Olds, Alberta,
Canada (made possible by Regions Bank);
Brent Dotson, Dotson Funeral Home,
Maryville, Tennessee (made possible by
Eagles Wings Air);
Lisa Vaeth, Association of Jewish
Cemeteries, West Hartford, Connecticut
(made possible by the Next Generation
Scholarship Fund);
Dominic Jude, Trinity Funeral Services,
Singapore, Thailand (made possible by
Cypress Lawn/Kenneth Edward Varner
Memorial Scholarship);
Mike Franko, Green Hills Mortuary,

Rancho Palos Verde, California (made
possible by NGLNational Guardian Life);
Becky Zoch, City of Evansville Cemeteries, Evansville, Indiana (made possible by
the Next Generation Scholarship Fund);
Craig Stires, Dawayne Spence Funeral
Home, Canal Winchester, Ohio (made
possible by NGLNational Guardian Life);
Samantha Renner, Riverview Cemetery,
Jefferson City, Missouri (made possible by
the Memorial Classic Golf Tournament);
Kerry Boshers, Williams Funeral Home
& Crematory, Columbia, Tennessee (made
possible by Batesville).
r

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Powered by Multiview, ICCFA

Supply Link is a superior tool for
our unique community that
streamlines your efforts to find
products and services.
Start your search at
www.iccfasupplylink.com
July 2015
19
At the ICCFA awards ceremony, from left, Certifications Subcommittee Chairman Bob Gordon Sr. CCrE, CCFE, CSE; Nicole
Wiedeman, CSE; Daniel Villa, CCE; Janice Stetz, CCE; Richard Touchette, CCE; Mich Rose, CCFE; Lauren Blevins, CCFE;
Jerry Wantz, CCE, accepting on behalf of Mark Funke, CCE; and ICCFA 2014-2015 President Fred Lappin, CCE.
ICCFA members earn professional certifications
Kenneth Varner, CCFE,

Cypress Lawn, Colma, California;
Michael Berger, Mt. Elliott
Cemetery Association, Clinton
Township, Michigan;
Stephen C. Dawson, SaxCertification designations
Tiedeman Funeral Home &
The ICCFA certification program
Crematorium, Franklin Park,
recognizes individuals who have
Illinois;
demonstrated a high degree of
Joseph Dispenza, The Forest
competence and a high level of
Lawn Cemetery & Crematory
cemetery, cremation, funeral
Group, Buffalo, New York;
management and supplier experience
Robert A. Gordon Jr., Service
and skills. The following persons
ICCFA 2015-2016 President Darin Drabing with new
Corporation
International, Orange
received certifications:
Quarter-Century Club members Tim Lancaster, CCFE,
County,
California,
and Eternal
Lauren A. Blevins, Williams
and Alan MacKinnon, CCE.
Hills Memorial Gardens & Funeral
Funeral Home & Crematory,
Massachusetts, Certified Cemetery
Home, Klamath Falls, Oregon;
Columbia, Tennessee, Certified
Executive;
Tim Lancaster, CCFE, Eternal Hills
Cemetery Funeral Executive;
Richard N. Touchette, Albany Diocesan
Memorial Gardens & Funeral Home,
Mark Funke, Spring Grove Cemetery
Cemeteries, Albany, New York, Certified
Klamath Falls, Oregon;
& Arboretum, Cincinnati, Ohio, Certified
Cemetery Executive;
Alan MacKinnon, CCE, The Gardens
Cemetery Executive;
Daniel Villa, Inglewood Park Cemetery, at Gethsemane, Boston, Massachusetts;
Linda Jankowski, Midwest Memorial
Inglewood, California, Certified Cemetery
William B. McDonald, Memory
Group, Beverly Hills, Michigan, Certified
Executive;
Gardens Inc., Centerville, Tennessee.
Cemetery Executive;
David Whitener, Service Corporation
Cheryl D. Lewis, Inglewood Park
International, Houston, Texas, Certified
Cemetery, Inglewood, California, Certified
Half-Century Club
Cemetery Funeral Executive;
Cemetery Executive (CCE);
The International Cemetery and Funeral
R. Nicole Wiedeman, Forethought Life
Jacquelyn R. Poirier, Forest Hill
Association presented awards honoring
Insurance Co., Cincinnati, Ohio, Certified
Cemetery, Fitchburg, Massachusetts,
those who have belonged to the association
Supplier Executive.
Certified Cemetery Executive;
for 50 years. Inducted into the Half Mitch Rose, The Woodlawn Cemetery,
Century Club:
Quarter-Century Club
Bronx, New York, Certified Cemetery
Helen Abernathy, McCoy & Harrison
Eight people received awards for
Funeral Executive;
Funeral Home, Houston, Texas;
belonging to the association for 25 years.
Janice Stetz, Forest Hills Cemetery,
Ronald C. L. Smith, Hetrick-Bitner
Inducted into the Quarter-Century Club:
Crematory & Columbarium, Boston,
Funeral Home, Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. r
he ICCFA honored a number
of members during its 2015
Annual Convention &
Exposition.
20
ICCFA Magazine
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I C C FA 2 0 1 5 C O N V E N T I O N
SPEAKERS
The following pages include information gleaned from presentations made at the ICCFA
2015 Convention & Expo. If youd like to hear more from a particular speaker, you can order
recordings of most conference sessions at www.iccfa.com/2015-annual-convention-recordings.
r Keep in mind the message you

convey in your help-wanted ads
Cindy Gallop
When it comes to communication and
marketing, not enough people are conscious
of the power of the overheard message,
messages put out there with a very specific
audience in mind, a very specific purpose in
mind, but which can play a very powerful
role in communicating to other audiences in
achieving other objectives.
One of the most powerful overheard
messages any company or brand can put out
in any category is recruitment advertising,
messaging and communication.
When you go out into the community
and represent working with you as a career
choice, when you advertise and call for the
people you want to work for your business
and when you do that in a way that says,
very overtly, this is the kind of business we
are, these are the values we hold, these are
the values that have been in our family for
generations, this is how we are reinterpreting
them for the world today, that makes an
enormously powerful statement to everybody
else out there who may see that messaging.
Recruitment messaging is particularly
valuable because it gives you an opportunity
to state exactly what you are looking for,
the kind of people you are looking for, and
therefore to make people think, Wow, those
are the people that I would like to work with,
and those are the people that I would like to
handle the most sensitive part of the human
experience.
with people who have varying degrees of

closeness to me and are dealing with loss.
And these days, when you encounter that
somewhere like Facebook, as well as in real
life, you are at a loss for words. Sorry for
your loss. We need more than that.
By the way, this is something my team
and I are doing on Make Love Not Porn. We
are building a new vocabulary for real world
sex. Im not going to give you examples
from this stage, but if any of you want to
find me, Ill be very happy to do that over a
drink tonight, and I can promise you a very
entertaining conversation.
Find different vocabulary and put it out
there; the rest of us will be so grateful when
you do. Im reduced to saying, Im so sorry;
I know there are no words. Because literally
there are no words, and there should be.
r Listen to your youngest workers

One of the things I observe in every industry I
work with is that each industry does not listen
enough to the youngest people in it. If you
want a really effective strategic tool for the
future of your business, identify the youngest
people in your company across every area,
every discipline.
Give them a safe space to come together
in and ask them to say, completely frankly
and openly, without any fear of any sort of
backlash, exactly what they think of the job
theyre doing, the company theyre doing it
for and the industry theyre doing it in.
I promise you will find what they say
fascinating, because the youngest people into
any industry are very clear-sighted about the
business and how it operates, and they have
r
unique perspectives.
Stephanie & DeWayne Hughes

Hughes Crown Hill Funeral Home, Dallas, Texas
Stephanie: Weve enjoyed it. Weve always gone to NFDA,
so this is new for us. Weve been told its a little more innovative, a little more out there, which is what we want.
Did you hear Cindy Gallup?
Stephanie (laughing): That was definitely out there.
DeWayne: I dont see her speaking at NFDA.
Ive enjoyed the convention. Its a little bit different format.
I enjoyed the way they did the exhibits.
James Sickonic
Mountain View Mortuary &
Cemetery, Altadina, California
I really like it. Its definitely
something that Im going to come back to. Its
definitely a learning experience. Its definitely opened
my eyesIve only been in the industry
for seven months.
r Change the language of death

One of the easiest ways to make people think
differently about something is to change the
language around it. If we want to socialize
death, we need to change the language.
Through social media, I come into contact
FIRST-TIMERS
22
ICCFA Magazine
If you want to do one thing to make your business more innovative and more
disruptive immediately, theres a very easy thing you can do: Identify every single area
that is all male or male-dominated, and change that. And everything I say about gender
also applies to race, ethnicity and sexuality. Innovation is born of many different
and diverse insights, perspectives and world views coming together and clashing in
constructive, creative conflict to get to a better place that none of us could have gotten
to on our own.Cindy Gallop
KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
Genius is a team sport. Creativity

researchers will tell you that there is
no such thing as a lone geniusthats
a myth. Thomas Edison stands for 14
different people who worked for Thomas
Edison, integrating until they finally
solved the problem.Tim Saunders
to go around, it enables you to break all

boundaries, to share with people you used to
compete with.
This idea that adjacent people in our
industryhospice, for exampleare against
us as opposed to colliding with some of our
value propositions is a seismic decision we
make. When you make the decision theres
enough to go around, you create co-opetition.
In the tel-com business Ive seen
companies reinvent themselves as wireless
operators and thrive during incredibly tough
times. Nynex out of New York, through a
couple of twists and turns, has become the
powerful Verizon by cooperating with AT&T,
with Nokia and with a variety of other people
they used to see as competitors.
So when you adopt an abundance mentality, the spirit of generosity, the spirit that we
will have market collisions but regardless of
them we will cooperate, innovation happens.
Relationships are the secret to creating a
culture of innovation, and relationships are
the secret to solving complex problems.
r Embrace the idea of co-opetition,

that were all in this together
Tim Sanders
I have worked for leaders who practiced
some of the things Im going to talk about
Mark Cuban and Ed Demming. They
possessed a remarkable way of seeing the
world.
Its unconventional, but absolutely
foundational for you to embrace the idea of
sharing, the idea of co-opetition, cooperating
with each other. The belief in your heart that
there will be collisions in the market, but that
thats OKwere in this together.
When times get tough, people compete.
It is very natural. Most of my life, Ive
possessed the scarcity mentality. But when
you embrace this idea that there is enough
r Read books, not just blogs

Mark Cuban said everything you need to
know about the future is in books. He taught
me that books are the Whole Foods of
knowledge; everything else is processed.
You show me a person who still reads one
book a month cover to cover either to solve
his or her problems, understand the future
or to be able to give advice to a colleague,
and Ill show you somebody whos also a lot
smarter and a lot more innovative and a lot
more confident than a person who reads blogs
and USA Yesterdaythey should call it USA
Yesterday.
The bite-sized knowledge that so many
of us have been socialized to consume by the
birth of the World Wide Web has directly cut
into our ability to be good mentors to each
r Use laughter to control stress

Steve Rizzo
When you start laughing in the midst of a stressful
situation, your brain is no longer focusing on that
negative situation. Your brain is now somewhere
else. And even if it does go back to that negative
situation, which it will do, it wont be as
overwhelming as it was before.
Why? Because youve calmed your nervous
system down to the point where you can have some
kind of control over that situation, rather than that
situation controlling you.
I cant tell you how many opportunities Ive
blown in my life because I couldnt control my
24
ICCFA Magazine
other. So my prescription is to read at least

one book every eight weeks cover to cover.
Every book that I have bought and
finished cover to cover has added $1,000 of
net worth to my bottom line, because of my
ability either to dispense knowledge and build
bonds, to solve problems in the real market
space or, if nothing else, to take bold steps
whether others paused.
r Network. Dont prospect; do real
networking and introduce people
A lot of people think of networking as a form
of prospecting: Ill go into a crowd and start
talking to a salesperson and hell notice Im a
speaker who has a research companyI am
not a prospect. Hell tell me, Excuse me, sir,
I need to go network. And he will wade off
into the crowd with a stack of business cards.
Thats not networking; thats prospecting.
Thats good, but its not networking.
Ill see people that put a couple of people
together with an introduction, something
really great happens and they show up with
their hand out for their finders fee. Thats not
networking, thats brokering.
Real networking is when you put two or
more people who should meet and you get
out of the way. You have no expectations that
theyll do anything for you
As a matter of fact, you put people
together for the love of it. For the satisfaction
of making magic happen by creating business
opportunities out of thin airor better yet,
creating business opportunities out of your
address book.
That is the spirit of networking. And
as you operate with the mentality that
networking is a gift, your network grows.
Not just in terms of the number of people, but
the quality of the people, the givers you bring
into the system and the takers you squeeze
out of the system.
r
emotions. How many bridges Ive burned because I

was making decisions in an unhealthy state of mind.
Thats how powerful the gift of laughter is,
and we have a big problem in this country: Were
stifling our laughter genes, our humor genes. Were
becoming so politically correctyou cant laugh at
that; you shouldnt laugh at that.
There is a difference between laughing at
something thats really serious and allowing yourself
to laugh off the fear that represents it. And I believe
thats why we have laughter. It allows us to look at
life head-on, look at our deepest fears, and when you
laugh, youre telling fear, You cannot control me,
theres a higher part of myself thats here.
r
Feeling good is the fuel

that drives motivation.
Steve Rizzo
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C R E M AT I O N
r Beware of the newest thing:
Family suing over being excluded
Poul Lemasters
Im involved in a case right now, and Ive
always feared that this would become an
issue. One of the children either doesnt want
to participate or is not allowed to participate
and then they file a lawsuit. Everybody thinks
the laws on my side; it says, majority
rules.
But in one of the cases Im dealing with
right now, the child who was basically pushed
outside isnt suing because they were against
cremation. So, the whole part of the law that
says majority rulesthats fine, but do you
know what that child is suing for?
They wanted to participate. They wanted
an opportunity to see their dad and have some
involvement. The law doesnt say anything
about that.
During depositions and discovery, they
said, I was never against cremation.
Well, there goes the whole majority rules
protection. But they pushed me out, and I
wanted to be involved.
Its an ugly case; its pure emotion.
Emotion is horrible in lawsuits.
Thats becoming a bigger and bigger
issue.
r Dont let people leave without
information about final disposition
Cremation is not final. How many of you
have families that take cremated remains
home and you are not sure what theyre going
to do with them? I would assume this is
everybody here.
So my question to you is how are you
educating them? When that family is filling
out that authorization form, What would you
like to do with him?
Oh, gosh, I dont know.
Of course you dont; thats too hard to
decide right now.
And we want to make it easy on them,
so you say, Just come pick him up; you can
decide that later.
I believe in that time frame, you need to
educate them. Tell them, Just so you know,
here are some things to think about.
How many of you do that? When they say
theyre going to take those cremated remains
home, how many of you have a segue into
another conversation to tell them what they
can do, cant do and maybe some information
about that?
Because I would want to tell them right
then about scattering: You may be thinking
26
ICCFA Magazine
When theres a debate, you wait to

cremate. Its a very simple rule to live
by.Poul Lemasters
about scattering. Then tell them the pros and

cons, whether its legal or not.
A lot of the scattering cases I handle start
off with this: Well, we asked the provider if
we could do it, and they said if we didnt tell
anybody, it would be easier to do it that way.
Id have it part of the authorization form.
Oh, youre going to keep those? Make sure
you understand a few things. One, if youre
going to transport these by mail, priority
express mail. Make sure they know that.
Are you going to transport these by
airplane or by car across borders? Make sure
they know they need to hang onto this death
certificate.
People want to keep the cremated remains
because they dont want to make a difficult
decision at that moment. Let them know there
are some decisions; its not that easy, even if
they wait.
r Dont assume the person paying
the bill can authorize the cremation
How many of you believe that the person
who wrote the check has a little more
authority? A lot of people believe that if
somebody is paying for the cremation, they
rank higher.
That is not true.
I always tell people, basically you need
two signatures to perform a cremation. One
of those signaturesor at least one group of
signaturesis whoever is authorized by law
to do the cremation. For a child, its going to
be the parents; typically both parents is what
you want, to avoid issues.
Thats one set of signatures that you need.
The other signature you need is whos going
to pay the bill. I dont care who pays the bill,

but somebodys got to sign it. Those dont
have to be the same peoplea lot of times,
they are, but dont ever get confused between
money and authority to control.
How much more power does the executor
have? There are a few states where the
executor has a little bit more. But for the most
part, the person whos the executor, when it
comes to cremation, is at the bottom of the
list. Why? Because typically, the will may not
even be seen and read until afterward. If we
put all the weight on the will, and make that
person No. 1, and then dont find it until after
the cremation, we could create a problem.
Its very different in Canada, but Canada
also says if you have the will and rely on it,
youre fine.
r Properly document changes in
who can pick up cremated remains
This is becoming, by far, the biggest issue
with consumers: Whats happening with
those cremated remains.
In one case a woman wanted to know if
her mother-in-law could pick up the cremated
remains for her. The authorization form said
that only the daughter could pick up the
cremated remains. The crematory said they
didnt know. What the crematory should have
said is we are bound by that contract.
Thats perfect, because if they give them
away to somebody else, those are ugly cases.
Having a family member hold cremated
remains hostagethose are very ugly cases.
And yes, they happen.
Ive had cases where family members
have gone and scattered the remains, just to
be mean. Those become very emotional
and emotional means moneythats what
emotional is code for.
Many times in those cases, we just take
the authorization on the phone and say,
Its OK, its fine. But you are bound by
that written contract to only release those to
whomever is identified on there. If you dont
do that, thats a breach of contract. For this
case, we were able to do a written addendum
to allow it.
When you make changes to an authorization form, you need to make sure you
document it. An addendum is probably the
easiest thing. A simple piece of paper: I,
Bob blah-blah, in signing the authorization
form, stated that I was going to be the one
picking those remains up, however, I am now
authorizing Tom to pick them up. That in
your file is all you need.
r
C R E M AT I O N
r Learn how to properly respond to
phone calls asking about cremation
Lacy Robinson
Oftentimes, the funeral director will spend
about 10 minutes talking about direct
cremation, cremation with no services, and
they spend one minutemaybe not even
that, maybe five secondstalking about their
traditional cremation package.
The worst Ive heard it explained: Well,
thats the whole ball of wax. That doesnt
work. I want you to reverse it, and I want
your price range to reflect the order in which
you will explain those cremation offerings.
Dont lead with the low price.
Quickly follow up with a key discovery
question: Has anyone taken the time to
explain the different choices with cremation?
That discovery question can change that
phone call immediately. It works over the
phone, it works in person and it serves as a
transition. You want to ease into asking the
caller effective personal discovery questions.
Take your time with that and try that question
before any other discovery question youre
thinking about asking.
You want to uncover the familys
experience. May I ask, is this the first
cremation youre planning in your family?
Or How did you come to select cremation
for your mother?
The most ineffective question you could
ask a family thinking about cremation is,
What type of cremation do you want?
Instead, you should be asking, Have you
given thought to how you may want to honor
your mothers life?
When youre ready to explain those cremation packages, use a permission question:
May I take a few minutes and explain to
you the four different cremation packages
we offer at Smith Funeral Home? or May
I take a few minutes and explain to you how
Smith Funeral Home can help honor your
husbands life?
A permission question is a sign of respect,
and it serves as a verbal alert. Youre going to
let the caller know that important information
is about to come up.
When it comes to home memorials

and garden memorials, think about
the shows youre watching on HGTV,
especially landscaping shows. Theyre
putting in a garden oasis where families
can reflect, relax. Think about the
products that may or may not contain
cremated remains you can offer that
can be placed in that garden oasis
families are creating.Lacy Robinson
r Tell people why youre unique

Lacy Robinson
Explain those differentiating factors. What
makes your funeral home unique? I call
funeral homes that own their own crematory.
They have cremation specialists on staff.
They have beautiful reception facilities. And
do I hear that in the conversation? No.
The caller needs to hear that from you.
I want you to invite the family to the
funeral home. Extend that invitation and
identify the next step that is to take place. Use
action verbs.
Share with the caller whats going to
be accomplished if they come in and meet
with you in person. Use the action verbs of
show, meet, plan, create, organize,
discuss, ask, answer.
Many times, Im not given an invitation
to come into the funeral home. But when
I am, its something like this: This is so
overwhelming, this is so confusing. Theres
no way I can talk about this over the phone. I
think it would be a lot easier if you came in.
Does that sound appealing? It sure
doesnt. Use those action verbs.
r
r Add a fourth package to offer

families a viewing with cremation
Steve Jones
Many times we work with funeral homes that
say, Weve got packaging. Often, its three
packages. Theres a funeral, theres a simpler
version of a funeral and theres a memorial
service. And the next thing would be a direct
cremation, or as I like to call it, a cremation
without services.
Let me give you an example of what can
happen. I come into your funeral home to
make arrangements for my mom and I say,
My mom wanted to be cremated, but she
didnt want any bells and whistles; she didnt
want anything extra.
That sounds like what a lot of us call
direct cremation. Based on what Ive told
you, you price a cremation without services,
or a direct cremation.
I call you up the next morning and say,
You know, my brother Mike just got in
town. He has not had a chance yet to say
goodbye to Mom. Would it be OK if he came
over to the funeral home to say goodbye?
And of course you say yes.
So my brother comes over with his wife
and kids. And my wife and kids might as
well come over too, and a couple of other
relatives, and maybe a neighbor who was
a good friend of Moms. And pretty soon
theres 12-14 of us, and 45 minutes later,
were done saying goodbye. Thats not a
cremation without service, thats not a direct
cremation.
Two things have gone wrong here. One,
you priced me a direct cremation and you had
to do a lot more work. So financially, it didnt
work out well.
And two, probably more importantly, in
fairness to the family, if they said to you, We
dont want anything extra, but then they
called you the next day and said, We want to
come in and say goodbye, they didnt want a
direct cremation in the first place. They didnt
want a cremation without services. They just
didnt know what to call it.
Think about that as the missing
package.
r
FIRST-TIMERS
Christian Crews
Omneo Group Americas,
Miami, Florida
Its wonderful; its great.
Ive seen a lot of companies, met a lot of people.
Having a lot of fun.
28
ICCFA Magazine
David Long
Arizona Funeral, Cemetery & Cremation Association, Gilbert, Arizona
Overall its been a very wonderful experience. Our state association, like
the ICCFA, embodies funeral, cemetery and cremation aspects, and Fred
Lappin was good enough to come to our convention and tell us about
the ICCFA. We decided to see what its all about. Weve really enjoyed
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July 2015
29
HOSPICE
How, why to engage with hospice

Kim Medici Shelquist
Why would we engage
with hospice? There
are a lot of reasons, and
I think you all know
what they are. I do want
to keep focus on this
one thing: We know
that talking about death
and dying, we know
that having community
Kim Medici
conversations, really does
Shelquist
make a difference in how
The ICCFA Hospice people perceive what
we do.
Committee is
I felt that way when I
developing a kit for
worked in hospice care;
ICCFA members
to help funeral
I feel that way in funeral
directors and
service. If were not
hospice workers
having conversations, I
better understand
think people dont have a
each other.
good context in which to
place us; they dont know what we do or how
we do it. They dont understand.
So I would just say that today, at this point
in time, when it comes to death and dying,
hospices drive those conversations. They own
that territory, because right now, 45 percent
of deaths happen under hospice care, which
means that half of the families we serve as
funeral professionals are first cared for by a
hospice professional.
Thats where theyre getting their infor
mation, and thats a fine thing. We are kind of
an afterthought as funeral professionals.
Norene Mostkoff
Are you contacting the hospice once you
know where youre going to pick up that
body? And do you know things like the size
of the deceased? And if youre going to
somebodys home and you know that thats a
large person, send two people. Do not expect
my nurse to help you lift that body, because
when I go to that home to take care of that
patient, I send two people.
Know about the house. I asked some of
our nurses about what I should say at this
convention, and they said, tell the funeral
directors to ask some questions about the
removal of the body before they show up.
Because if that body is on the third floor,
and that house is an old house and you cant
get your cot around flat and youre going
30
ICCFA Magazine
Dont bring hospice workers cookies.

Bring real information and help them
with the pains they have. Were in Iowa.
Its rural; there are a lot of people on dirt
roads. When the call comes in the middle
of the night and its a stormy night, its icy,
when the funeral director gets a call from
the nurse and says to the nurse, Do you
want to ride together to that home? That
is a meaningful way to help, and you need
to look for those ways.Norene Mostkoff
to turn that body up to get around some of

those angles, lets prepare the family for
that in advance. We dont want that family
to be saying, Oh, my gosh, that funeral
home did not take care of my loved one with
dignity. All theyve seen on TV is that body
horizontal.
Lets work together to help prepare the
family for what happens at first call. Some of
the funeral homes, part of their orientation is
to come to our hospice housewe run four
of themand discuss our protocol at end of
life, and they also talk about what happens at
a nursing home and in a persons home.
Greg Grabowski
You have a lot of folks
who are drawn to
hospice because they
see it as a movement,
and I think that thats an
important word for you
to remember. It started
as a movement, before it
became a benefit, before
Greg Grabowski we could get reimbursed,
before for-profit
companies got involved. People were proud
to do it; there wasnt money on the table.
In the 1970s, when we were just starting
this movement, what happened? We went

to physicians and they said, Hospice? Im
trying to cure people; I dont have time for
that. Im going to take care of them until the
day they die. And we kind of marched and
said, No, we have value, and this is what
were about.
This is not consistent across the board,
because you will find hospice professionals
who are very willing to talk to you on a pro
fessional basis, but I would say, in general,
theres a little bit of mindset in our heads
when you come to us: We paid our dues. And
sometimes when funeral directors talk to
hospices, youre not paying your dues.
I get that youre professionals, I get that
youve been in the community for a long
time, I get that some of you are sixth, eighth
generation; you are very involved in the
community.
Im just telling you that we fought, so in
some ways its in the back of our heads that
They havent paid their dues; they havent
fought hard to understand who we are.
I have met some funeral directors who
have been wonderful, and they talk about
what is really a value proposition, this idea of
continuum of care, and that has really bridged
the divide.
And Ive met other funeral professionals
who walk into a room and say, I have a bone
to pick with you. Your social worker keeps
doing X, Y and Z and I dont agree with that
and I want to talk about it. Probably not the
greatest approach.
Lacy Robinson
One of the challenges
that hospice providers
face every day is
differentiating between
the funeral homes in the
communities they serve.
I want you to think
about those touchpoints
you have with families
and hospice providers
Lacy Robinson
together, whether its the
notification of death, whether its the transfer
from the site of death or the visitation/funeral,
the arrangement conference.
If those points of contact are lackluster
in that customer service experience, or
essentially the same as the other funeral home
HOSP I C E
in that town, of course hospice providers are
going to have a difficult time differentiating
between funeral homes.
I want you to ask yourself, How can
we be different? How can we make those
common points of contact more meaningful,
positive for the family and the hospice team
workers?
Because your job is to make sure that the
hospice care team member doesnt forget
about you, and first impressions absolutely
mean everything to family and to hospice
team members.
Glenda Stansbury
They are watching. If
you dont do anything
else when you go home,
you sit down and analyze
your first-call procedures.
If youre using a third
party, then how are you
touching base with that
family? Theres a gap
there between when
Glenda
removal takes place and
Stansbury
when youre sitting down
with that family. Are you going to the house
anyway? Are you making a call? Are you
touching base with them?
Are you sending your apprentices? Are
you sending your parttimers? Are we making
our first impression with the most lowpaid and leasteducated people on our staff
because, golly gee, I like to sleep at 2 oclock
in the morning?
Thats your first impression, and every
hospice worker in America has watched
funeral directors come in and say, Wheres
the body?
Are you training people who are going in
to do this very first sacred moment of transfer
in how to respond to the family, how to talk
to them, how to leave the cot in the van and
sit down and have a conversation with them?
I know owners who spend a lot of time
worrying about what theyre wearing, but
its much more important that youre training
them in how to sit down and talk to a family.
We can change a whole lot of perceptions
about us with hospice if we can change what
Lacy called that touchstone moment.
Lauren Blevins
We do a tour based on first call: What
happens after we take somebody into our
care? That intrigues people. When we bring
people in, we say, OK, this is what is going
to happen.
We go
through
the whole
routine. We
fingerprint
everybody,
walk them
through
the entire
thing. We
Lauren Blevins
show them
the cooler, we show them our garage, we
show them our hearses.
We usually feed them lunchhowever
long we can hang onto them, we do. They
will also meet our staff. I say, these are the
guys youre going to see; here are their cell
phone numbers.
It brings comfort for them to know that
theyre going to see one of these guys walk
through the door. We want them to feel
comfortable with what we do. We want them
to know more about us than anybody else.
This is all about relationships.
Jodi Clock
Jodi Clock
The pet side of the

business was the big
dooropener for me with
hospice.
Several years ago on
the human side, we threw
grief out the window. We
had aftercare, and what
we found is that people
dont want to come see
their funeral professional.
They dont want to come
in that building.
So we let hospice do the aftercare, and
hospice does a fabulous job. However, what
we found is that hospice, when it gets to that
pet loss component, either they dont have
time for it or theyre not strong in that. So we
provided a niche that they dont have.
We partnered with hospice to the point
where hospice actually welcomed us, gave
us a room in their facility, paid for our
advertising, put us on their websites, put
us on all their brochures, and they started
promoting us.
The interesting thing about that is its
circled back to the human side, because we
were able to have those dialogues about
that first call, what happens, how come this
happens when we go into a home. So weve
been able to listen and better provide care to
those families.
r
GR IE F
r Treat grief as a transitional
process, not a pathology
Andy McNiel
When someone dies in our
life, whoever that person
isa spouse, or a parent,
or a childthis is an
experience that changes
the way we understand the
world works. Its a process
of becoming someone
who we were not prior to
that.
Andy McNiel
Grief is not a patho
logy. We dont have to try to help families to
overcome grief. What were doing is were
providing a service so that families can live
with the reality that someone has died. And we
all play a part at different points along the way.
Grief is integral. Grief is an integral part
of that persons story and life now. This death
becomes part of them, and they take this
experience with them on into the future.
Grief is transitional. What I mean by that
is that its not stagnant. Theres hope. Its not
that you just stay where you are in your grief.
Theres movement, and as you experience
life and as you adapt to this, you begin to
realize that I can live without this person
physically present in my life. At first it seemed
like I cant, but as I live and find that I can
accomplish things, I find that I can do it.
Its a transitional process; its not a
pathology. It doesnt need to be treated. Its a
natural process that we go through in life. r
r Realize that expressions of grief
are affected by developmental age
Coral Popowitz
Each individual member
of the family is going to
grieve differently than the
other.
When my father died,
I told my young son what
had happened. He of
course had that immediate
reaction of crying and
being very upset. And 20
Coral Popowitz
minutes later, hes out in
the backyard playing football with his brother,
and Im thinking, Whats wrong with this
kid?
I didnt know the developmental processes
of children well enough, even as the mother of
seven children, to know that was a perfectly
normal reaction for him to have had, because
of where he was developmentally.
r
July 2015
31
FIRST-TIMERS
Bill Clark
Carberrys Crematorium,
Trail, British Columbia
Its been very, very
pleasant. People are
great. The format is not
something Im used to,
but its very positive,
very good. The fact that you have
your keynotes in the morning and
then youre able to take in the actual
floor scene, seeing the vendors.
Monte
Joe
Brown
(with
Chris)
Brown
Owens &
Brumley
Family Funeral Home/Crematory, Fort
Worth, Texas
We love it. It was so entertaining and
also the workshops were dynamic.
People from all over, the topnotch
people in the funeral industry were
here to give us so much information
that we need, as a small funeral home.
Ive got a whole notebook of stuff that
Im taking back home with me.
Lynn Cappon
My Tribute Gift,
Markham, Ontario
Its very interesting.
Met a lot of nice people,
dispelled a lot of myths
and learned a lot of new
information.
Kenneth Ross
Buchanan Group,
Marietta, Georgia
I thought the convention
was very good. I was
very pleased with the
turnout; I was pleased
with the interaction
with the people I met. It
seems to be overall that this is a convention where people are more business-minded and open to new ideas
and very receptive to new concepts
being introduced into the industry, and
considering the product I represent
is a new concept to the industry, its
refreshing to be welcomed.
Pedro Vargas
Parque del Sendero,
Santiago, Chile
It was a great experience. We learned a lot
about the business; it
was great.
32
ICCFA Magazine
MANAGEMENT
r Think about whether what you
want is to sell or to step down
Dwight Glover
It may sound counterin
tuitive, but we found
emotional issues tend
to be as important as
the financial issues
when youre selling a
businesssometimes
even more important.
So we wanted to talk
through some of the
Dwight Glover
questions you should ask
yourself when youre thinking about selling
your business.
First and foremost is: Do you enjoy going
in to work every day? Do you still love
meeting with families? Do you still love
working on management issues, keeping up
with employees? Or are you starting to get
tired of the long weekends and the 3 a.m.
calls? Are you tired of dealing with employee
drama? The stress of paying bills? Meeting
payroll? Collecting accounts receivables?
If youre starting to get tired of some of
those things, maybe its time to start thinking
about what your next steps might be.

If you are starting to get tired of the
management side of the business, do you
have any family members or employees who
can take over and carry on your tradition?
Weve dealt with a lot of clients who had
family members who maybe loved meeting
with families but werent as comfortable
with the financial issues, so they didnt feel
comfortable taking over the management side
of the business.
r
r If you leave your business to

family, make an equitable division
Bill McQueen
Most of my clients put
an estate plan together
because they want to
make sure their assets
get to whom they want
it to get to. They want to
make sure their heirs are
protected from creditors
or future predators out
there.
Bill McQueen
But they also really
want to try to keep
harmony within the family unit. If theres
something thats probably going to create
more disharmony in the family unit than
anything else, its when you leave your
business to all your children equally and
some work in the business and some dont.
Those who work in the business are going
to think of those children on the outside who
are demanding dividends as those are those
darn parasites who are sucking the blood out
of this company when I need to put more
money into it and build it and grow it.
And those on the outside looking at on the
children that are running the business on a
daytoday basis, are saying, youre taking

all these bonuses, youve got this fancy car;
youre just plundering this business and Im
not getting my fair share of ownership.
Equal doesnt equal equitable. There are
ways to balance it out so that all of your chil
dren are treated fairly, but I would strongly
encourage you not to leave everything to all
of your children in equal shares if some are in
the business and some are out.
r
r Make your
business more
attractive to buyers
Tony Kumming
Some things that are
really important, whether
youre buying or selling,
to get your business in
the right position: Any
buyer is going to want
quality, detailed financial
Tony Kumming
statements. So if that
hasnt been a priority, its something you
want to begin before you begin the sales
to page 33
r Plan your exit strategy years

ahead of when you want to get out
Alan Creedy
Most people look at
exiting their business as
an event; in fact, its a
process. Its not unlike
selling your home. You
dont just put it on the
market, youve got to
get ready to put it on the
market.
The best time to start
Alan Creedy
thinking about this is
about five to 10 years before you want to
leave. When I get the phone call and its Im
75 and Im ready to get out, boy, the options
have narrowed significantly.
to page 33
IC CFA 2015 CONVENTION

MANA G EMENT
Kumming from page 32
process. So maybe two or three years of
good-quality financial statements.
If you dont do so already, its a good
idea to start maintaining market share
(data) within your community. Ideally, that
would be by rooftop, by location ,of all your
competitors.
The better the preneed maintainanceits
pretty vital. Its one of the biggest risks in the
business.
Make sure your facility is uptodate,
clean. Thats always vital for any buyer.
If you can kind of standardize all your
operational metrics, thats probably a good
idea.
I would say the biggest thing buyers
want is a good staff. Something you guys
could look into is securing good employees,
whether through employment agreements
or noncompete agreements. A lot of buyers
would find value in that.
One of the biggest things today, with the
changing market, with more competition, is
if you are to go out and build a new facility in
a new part of town, dont overbuild. The day
of 20,000squarefoot funeral homes is over;
keep it under 10,000 square feet is a good rule
of thumb.
r
Creedy from page 32
But when I get the phone call, Hey, Im
55 and I really think I can do another five
or 10 yearswhich is sometimes code
for, Im ready to get out if I get the right
pricethats great. We can do a lot with a
five- or 10-year horizon.
This is one of the questions we use, and
its a question I think all of you need to search
your hearts about: What does leaving mean?
Because leaving means different things to
different people.
When I was running BrownWynn
Funeral Homes in Raleigh, leaving to Bob
Wynn was throwing the keys on the desk and
walking out the door and leaving town. He
literally moved out of town.
Or slowly transition over a period of time.
Or I want to work when Im needed, but I
dont want to have to report, I dont want to
be on a schedule, and if I leave for a month,
thats OK.
Or, I want to always work, but just
take care of families. I dont want the
responsibility, I dont want the liability, I
dont want to deal with the employees, I just
want to serve families. I hear that actually
quite a bit.
r
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July 2015
33
MANAGEMENT
Wednesday morning. Rather than having
another chapel, absolutely identical, sitting
vacant 345 days a year.
In the cemetery world,

were spending so
much time making
the salesman the
superstar, yet more
family has contact
with the property
careperson. So if Im
having more people
in touch with my
groundskeeping crew
than my salespeople over the course of
time, who should I be spending the time
training on people skills?Dan Isard
r Make more efficient use

of your funeral homes chapel
Dan Isard
The future buildings of this business are
getting smaller. Over the last 20 or 30 years
weve seen the average funeral home go
from 18,000 square feet to new construction
at 12,000 or 13,000, and today were seeing
new construction at 6,000 to 9,000 square
feet.
Because youre learning to tell families,
Im sorry; we are already booked for
Tuesday afternoon, but we can do this
r Create director positions that

will be attractive to potential hires
Chris Butler
Successful recruiting and hiring does require
a process or a plan. The best candidates are
always in demand, so its important to show
them why they should choose you. What are
the benefits of working for your organization?
What are the things that make you different
than the other options that the candidate is
considering?
And whats the culture of your organiza
tion? Is it something to be proud of? That
wasnt something I had on my radar till
mid2000s. I started in mid80s; was a fully
license funeral director in 1990. So I had a
number of years where I guess I knew what
culture was but it wasnt really on my radar,
and now I know that its one of the top most
important items you need to be thinking of.
Whats the culture of your organization?
You need to guard it, protect it and nurture it.
then expected to come in the next day and be

bright and cheery and be able to meet with a
family. You might have been able to get away
with that in the 60s, when every family came
in all you really had to doI know it was
more complicated than this, but really all you
Our directors, whom
had to do was to decide what time was the
we call ceremony
ceremony going to be, where was it going to
specialists, are focused
be, where was burial going to take place and
on arranging, directing
what kind of casket was needed.
and being masters of
Our directors arent doing any professional
ceremony for our celebrant if our celebrants
care; theyre doing arranging, directing and
involved. If our celebrants not involved,
masterofceremonies work. Theyre not
theyre master of ceremony for whomever the working the visitations. Theyre not working
clergy is. Thats their primary role as director. out in the parking lot. All the administrative
Theyre not working evening visitations;
work is done by administrative people.
were keeping their average hours 43 or
But they do shadow, as part of their
below a week. That doesnt mean they dont
training. They shadow those people for
have higher weeksyou know how it is. But a couple of weeks, so they know and
on average, theyre 43 hours a week or below. understand all the work that their coworkers
Theyre not doing night calls. I was on
need to do to create that premium client
call practically every night when I started and experience.
r
r Create jobs that are attractive

because of aspects other than pay
Mark Jorgensen
Why do people leave jobs? Often, people will
say its all about money. But the research just
doesnt bear that out. The No. 1 reason people
make a voluntary change is advancement.
The second thing theyre looking for is
better worklife balance. Its very much on
the mind of millennials.
Trailing at third is money itself.
Theres another study that looks at it
from another angle: What are people seeking
in that new job? Intuitively we say, more
money.
But its not. Its stability; theres a great
desire for stability in an organization and
being part of an organizational culture.
Compensation is important; its second on
Work-life balance: For

many years, we often
thought of this a a
gender-based issue.
The experts tell us
no, its not a mommy
issue anymore.
Flexibility is highly
valued in the world of
work today, and is a
critical issue for the
millennial workforce.Mark Jorgensen
34
ICCFA Magazine
r Put in place a board that realizes

a cemetery has to be a business
We have to eliminate the concept of nonprofit
from the cemetery mentality, even if it is
a not-for-profit cemetery. If your board of
directors meets once a quarter only for the
free lunches, get a new board of directors.
Get people who understand this as being a
business, as being a valuable business.
r
What weve learned

is the best recruiting
process for directors
is to have interns and
apprentices.
Chris Butler
this list. Aretha Franklin would be very

pleased that respect ranks high on the list at
No.3; health benefits, fourth; and work-life
balance, fifth.
So what I find very interesting is neither
survey suggests that money or compensation
is first and foremost in peoples minds. And I
would further suggest that as either recruiters
or owners or hiring managers, we often get

focused on starting salary and leading with
that. Our opportunity is not with starting
salary but with aligning our offering with the
primary attributes candidates are seeking.
So often were asked, Whats the work
schedule at that firm? What are the nonfinancial benefits? What nights do I have to
work?
The belief in most highperforming
organizations today is that individuals need
to have the ability to selfactualize in the job.
They want an opportunity to achieve their full
potential. That they can be equally satisfied
with work as they can with leisure.
And if we can create an environment
in the workplace that allows them to
selfactualize, we have a better shot at
retention.
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July 2015
35
MANAGEMENT
Women in leadership
r Change how you start your day

Cate Collins
Ive done a lot of research with leaders from
across the world. What they have said to me
is that their morning ritual is vital for them.
You know why? Because everybody wants
a piece of them as soon as they look on that
computer and check out their emails and
check their voice messages.
How they start their day is how they shape
their day.
And who are you when you rush out of
bed? I dont know about you, but for me, the
taskmaster takes over. If you ease into your
day, its something different.
What you need to know is, your leadership
fingerprints are everywhere. So, if you dont
take care of yourself, guess what? That shows
up everywhere.
So this is your morning ritual: No. 1 is
meditation or prayer. How many of you
meditate? I cant believe everybody doesnt
Cate Collins starts her session by getting the audience moving.
have their hand up, because you see, all of us

meditate on our problems.
The reality is this: Why dont we change
that up? We know that more successful
leaders take time to meditate. It doesnt have
to be, ommmmm.
It can be, if thats what you want to do. It
can be five minutes of you just taking some
time of silence Just being with naturethats
a form of meditation.
r
you agree that out of 100, about 20 of them

have real grief? But do most people who
walk up to the front of your chapel or your
visitation space and see a dead guy up there
theyve never met before, do those people
have grief?
Probably 80 percent of the people who
walk into that visitation parlor dont even
know the dead guy. They are there for just
one purposeand thats why they call
it paying your respectstheyre there
because of their relationship with the son or
daughter or another relative. They dont even
know
the dead guynever met him before.
r Use your flat-screen TVs to
market to your non-grieving guests And theyre wandering around in your place
of business never more open to your death
Doug Gober
care message than they are on that day.
Every time you do a service, you have a big
When they walk around in your place of
audience to impress. Five or 10 of themor,
if youre in Alabama, about 27 of themwill business, you need to be using those blank
walls, you need to be using those flat screens,
be the arranging family. And youve already
to tell me the story not only of the deceased
made enough of an impression on them
but of your business and your capabilities.
that they called you to begin with. Youve
How many of you have flat screens on the
impressed the heck out of them, maybe with
walls of your funeral home now? Not nearly
just your bedside manner.
enough of you. Use those flat screens to tell
But what about the rest of them? Lets
your story when theyre not being used to
assume theres 100 people walking in your
front door, and you have a 30 percent market tell someones story. The one in the visitation
parlor tells the individuals story, but the one
share. Statistically speaking, 70 of every 100
people who walk in your door belong to some in the public space, or in the lounge or on
the wall outside the bathroom, can have a
other funeral home or some other place of
constantly running video of everything youre
business, funeral home or cemetery.
Lets talk about their state of mind. Would capable of doing in your funeral home or
Three-D printing has
the potential to eliminate the manufacture
of urns. It gives you the
potential, potentially
four or five years from
now, with a $5,000 3D
printer, to create any
kind of urn anyone
wants at your place of
business, for probably
a cost of less than $100. If youre in the
urn business, you should be as scared as
the casket guys are.Doug Gober
36
ICCFA Magazine
cemetery, so that everyone walking around

in there without grief gets a full blitz of your
portfolio of offer.
Every other business in America pays
huge amounts of money just to do one thing
in their store, to create traffic, and we have
people coming into our store all the time with
no grief who are open for a free sample of
your offer. And what do we do, many times?
Almost totally ignore them.
Were so focused on the arranging
familiesand we should never stop that
that we ignore the funeral guests, those
people who come who have no grief and who
potentially are committed to another business,
and they encounter an LOL at the front desk.
Does everybody know what an LOL is?
You kids in the room probably think laugh
out loudyouve been on the computer too
much. What is an LOL? A little old lady at
the front door who looks like shes landing
planes at Logan Airport in Boston: Mrs.
Smiths on the left; Mr. Jones is on the right;
and the bathrooms are in the rear.
Theres simply a loss of opportunity there.
In the crassest terms, your current revenue
opportunity comes in the back door with a
toe tag on it, but your future in this business
comes in the front door living and breathing.
Everyone who walks out of your place of
business needs to know what to do when its
their turn to be a host instead of a guest.
r
MANAGEMENT
r Stop data-dumping if you want to
connect with people and lead them
Shannon Leahy
If you want to have a
shot at changing peoples
behaviors, changing
peoples hearts and
heads, step one is to stop
data-dumping.
Data-dumping is the
PowerPoint slides, the
statistics, the numbers.
Its one of the reasons
why auditors and
The most likable
accountants are very
leaders, people
special kinds of people,
who inspire
because they deal in the
dedication and
commitment, are left brain.
When you do a dataleaders who talk
openly about
dump on your staffand
their failures.
yes, this also applies to
Shannon
your families when you
Leahy
take the information like
name of deceased, thats a kind of a datadumpyou are actually inviting people to
not connect with you.
When you push people into their left brain,
their analytical brain, they neurologically
cannot have an emotional reaction. They do
not access emotion, or their why?
And Ill show you: Sir, what is your
name? Spencer. Where are you from?
Phoenix. Spencer, Im from Canada, and Im
going to change your mind about American
health care. His heels are digging in.
Dont get me wrong, there is a place for
facts and figures. My recommendation is that
you dont lead with it. Because when we aim
to convince people with data, it means, I
want you to change your mind.
And they push back, because when you
change someones mind, they lose face.
Millennials are the most purpose-driven
people ever. Theyre looking for meaning,

and stories offer meaning. They dont define
it, but they offer it.
Stories are the way in. So step one, to
actually inspire your staff to care about your
business and your families as much as you
do, step one: Stop data-dumping.
Stop leading with the facts and the figures
and the argument and all the bad news and
Excel sheets. Theres a place for those, but
were not just going to come into the room
with it.
Step two: Emotion is the potion. Were
going to honor emotion. Were going to
stop thinking that were rational beings. In
fact, were emotional creatures who make
emotional decisions that we then back by
logic.
So emotion is the potion. How are we
going to access that emotion? By doing FTD,
which stands for feel, think, do.
Youre going to show, dont tell, and how
are you going to show, dont tell? Where do
you find stories that actually connect you
with your staff, that start a conversation?
Successes, failures and fumbles, mentors and
life.
Your most negative person on your team,
what do you want them from them? Willingness to try. You know what the underbelly of
willingness to try is? Willingness to fail.
r Tell a story to write a eulogy
What is the difference between a traditional
obituary and a powerful, life-changing,
transcendent eulogy?
The traditional obituary is a bit of a datadump. A really powerful, beautiful eulogy
is a story. And stories wire both brains,
the analytical and the emotional, together.
Emotion gives us meaning. Its why you can
recall stories, both positive and negative, so
quickly and so visually.
r
JFDA
Rabbi Daniel Cohen
r Look for Elijah moments

Rabbi Daniel Cohen
I dont know how many of you have
heard of something called NODA
(No One Dies Alone)volunteers.
A woman wrote this on our
Facebook page about how she was
an Elijah. She said, Im a NODA
volunteer at Stanford Hospital. We
stay with patients who are at the end
of their lives and do not have loved
We dont call it a rental

casket, we call it a
ceremonial casket
completely different
meaning. Brad Rex
r Market to female
baby boomers
Brad Rex
Who is our target
audience? Female baby
boomers make 76 percent
of the arrangements. We wanted to zero in on
this group, so we hired a marketing agency
that had no experience in the funeral industry,
but knew how to market to baby boomers. Id
like to share some of what they came up with.
The first question is, how do you reach
them? The fastest-growing group in the
Internet world are female baby boomers, so
youve got to have a fabulous website.
This was the website when I first joined
Foundation Partners Group for one of our
sites. Its a great website if you want to know
the weather in Charlotte. But if you want to
attract somebody to come into your firm, it
might not be so hot.
We instituted, across the entire network,
Funeral Ones websites, but weve added a
few twists. Our websites have a 360-degree
virtual Google tour of the inside of the funeral
home. Think about the female baby boomer
who lives out of town. Shes not familiar with
your location. Shes doing research and says,
Great, I can get a complete view around the
funeral home without even visiting it.
We also were one of the first firms to
institute live chat on our websites, and we
have had families contact us with death calls
on live chat. This is the way people want
to communicate. You have to make it easy
for them, by email, by phone, by live chat.
Whatever way they want to reach us, we need
to provide.
r
ones available to be with them. We

become their loved ones as they
leave this world.
In September, I sat with a cognitively disabled man several times.
At my first visit, he was awake, and
I fed him vanilla ice cream. By my
last visit, he was heavily sedated and
nearing the end of his life. I held his
hand and somehow felt even more
connected to this patient than I had
to others I had sat with.
A few weeks ago, I shared my
experience with my family and

found out that this gentlemans
father was the doctor who delivered
me at Stanford Hospital in 1956. His
father was there to help my arrival
into this world, and I was there to
help his sons departure 60 years
later. That was my Elijah moment.
This is about being present,
being in the moment. Look for these
momentsand youll see them
every day in your line of work if you
r
look for them.
July 2015
37
TECHNOLOGY
r Make the best use of the Internet
by making videos people will watch
Eric Spellman
Every business out there has to make their
content go viral. Im not talking viral like
every teenager is forwarding your post. Im
talking about people in generalyour target
demographicforwarding your content to
other people, spreading the word for you
without you having to drop a lot of dollars
on it.
Video is key; video is where its at. You as
a funeral director need to start thinking about
video. Whats the key to those videos? How
in the world are you going to make a video?
The key is to understand the mindset of those
watching videos. Youve got to realize that
everyone on the Internetincluding you
has ADD, and theyre lazy.
When people go on the Internet, theyre
in a hurry. Are they going to read everything
on that website? No! Theyre going to scan it
from top left to bottom right, and if they dont
In my opinion, if youre just throwing

obits on Facebook, youre wasting your
time. Because the goal of Facebook is
interaction.Eric Spellmann
find something on it that says We may have

the answer to the question you have, theyre
going to hit the back button and go to the next
guy in Google.
Thats why the content is key. If you have
a video, theyre more likely to watch the
video than read a paragraph. Thats the lazy

part; they would rather watch something than
read something.
What kind of video? Should it just be our
commercial that we run on TV? NO! That is
the worst video in the world.
Dont you dare put your TV commercial
on your website. Why? Because thats not
what people want. They dont want to be
advertised to; they want to be educated.
People on the Internet have a problem.
They have a problem and you have a
solution. They have a question and you
have the answer. Your videos need to be
educational, not promotional.
On your first video, never make a script,
because youll come across looking plastic.
What you need to do is just talk. You need to
talk to that camera the same way you would
talk to me if I was in your office. You dont
need to act, you just need to be you.
Whats the tipping point for videos? Five
minutes. Remember, people have ADD. r
r Ensure that you show up in

the top results of a Google search
Bob Sheridan
I think we would agree
that if were not in the
top five search results
on Google, were
probably irrelevant, so
thats where you want
to end up.
What are families
searching for? They
are looking about
education about the
funeral industry, they
are looking for unique
Bob Sheridan
services and they want to know how much it

costs.
So when youre looking at what content
should be on your website, these are the three
items you should focus on. Theres no magic
to this; you are getting those same questions
every day in your funeral home.
Seniors are going to use e-readers and
tablets more than they are phones for
accessing online.
Twenty-seven percent of seniors use a
social network. I think thats surprisingly
high. Social activity is increasing within age
groupso its not going to stay at 27 percent;
its going to continue to increase.
People dont stay on funeral home
websites very long. Theyre very short visits,

theres a low page count. You have to be
efficient with your call to action. Make it very
obvious where they express their condolence,
where they order flowers, where they should
contact you for information.
Nine-six percent of our traffic is obituaries. Keys are, streamline navigation: We
recommend that obituaries, when theyre on
the home page, put them above the fold so
that you dont have to scroll down to find
them. Nice large blocks that have not only an
image of the decedent but also information
probably their name, date of their service.
Very easy for users to get from your home
page to the obituary in one click.
r
r Engage people on Facebook to

get more people to see your posts
Zachary Garbow
Remember the chart I showed you about how
five percent or less of your fans are going to
see your average post? You can increase that
through engagement.
The way Facebook works, when people
engage with your content, thats your page
telling Facebook, look, Im posting good
stuff, Im getting engagement. In return,
Facebook will show your content to more
people. Facebooks whole business is based
on showing people good stuff. If they start
showing people bad stuff, people are going to
leave Facebook and their stock price is going
to sink. They want to

show good content,
so you have to prove
that you have good
content, and Facebook
will show it to more
and more people.
So engagement is
important. Photos and
videos do very well.
People are going
onto Facebook to be
social, to have fun.
Zach Garbow
They dont want to see
ads; they dont want to be sold to. So what we
need to do is use Facebook to build up that
audience, that reach, that loyalty, but then we

need to move people off Facebook in order to
convert leads.
And the most powerful lead conversion
tool is actually one of the oldest: its email.
Every industry uses it extremely effectively
except, surprise!, our industrys just a little
behind that curve, but it does work.
How do you get people from Facebook
into your newsletter mailing list? One thing
you can do is simply ask them to join.
You can also sweeten the pot, give away
an informational guide or an ebook in return
for them signing up. Maybe you hold a free
webinar or event. You might offer a service
discount.
r
38
ICCFA Magazine
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CEMETERIES
r Think about how to save fuel
Gino Merendino
Sustainable cemeteries
really spend a lot of
time thinking about
transportation, because
thats where a lot of their
fuel and environmental
headaches come from.
One of the things we
did is change our fleets.
Gino Merendino
We had a fleet of F350s
that would burn about 7 to 10 miles to a
gallon, and we just asked ourselves why? Why
do we need such big trucks? Well, because we
have to do snow-plowing, and we get a lot of
snow in the Northeast.
Then we started thinking about the trucks
that go over the road. Do they really need to be
large diesel trucks that burn that much fuel? So
we started getting highly efficient vehicles into
our fleet.
We started looking at where the trucks are
going, how fast are they going, and we were
able to see idle time was coming from these
GPS reportsinside the cemetery.
We put little stickers on the dashboard
reminding employees not to idle their
equipment. Its a simple little reminderit
saves tons of fuel, and tons of pollution.
Of course the Priuses, the hybrids, do it
on their own, and weve got a fleet of them
now. Very effective. You pull up to a light, the
engine shuts off. If youre sitting there waiting
for a funeral, the engine shuts off unless you
have the heat or the air conditioning on. Were
saving over $10,000 a year per hybrid.
r
r Use this app to
document graves
Tom Comstock
We designed this app to
involve a segment of the
society that has never
been engaged before.
Thats the youth all the
way up to the most senior
people. What do kids
Document your love more than anything
cemetery. If you else in the world? Their
dont, someone phones.
else will.Tom
You can walk out
Comstock
into a cemetery and this
phone app immediately
identifies what cemetery youre in, and as
you walk in front of the grave, you hold it
over the memorial and take a picture and it
40
ICCFA Magazine
r Picture the experience you want

families to have in your garden
Paul Krueger
We started off with the
goal for our cremation
garden of building the
experience. Right from
the start, we wanted to
have that before anything
else, and then everything
else wraps around
this idea of build the
experience.
Ive been to
Paul Krueger
cemeteries, Ive visited
a site. You look at the headstone for a couple
of minutes and then you walk away. We
wanted to do something a little more than
that, we wanted to people to have more of an
experience when they get there.
That was our end goal, to make sure that
people enjoyed the grounds, were able to
spend some time there, wanted to spend time
there and maybe reflect on that loved one
they miss. We wanted to draw people who
work in the area who maybe just want to
walk on their lunch break.
We wanted to give people options. We
wanted to create an atmosphere that hits as
many senses as possible. We developed a
water feature, some nice plantings.
And we wanted to be a leader in the area;
we didnt want to wait and see what other
people would do.
After we identified our goals, we had to go
in and do some research. We looked at other
cemeteries, we looked at our local market. r
r Develop your cremation garden

in phases, and dont overcrowd it
Brian Nilges
Talk to your people who
are constructing the
features, because there
may be some things that
can be changed to make
it more maintenance
friendly or to allow more
space for cremations.
Consider future
additions. We are using
a phasing approach.
Brian Nilges
Within the first phase,
we allowed a lot of room for expansion. We
added a few products in there to see what
would sell, what families are interested in.
Our families love the water feature;
they love just coming in and sitting by the
fountain, hearing the water trickle.
We planted a lot of native trees so that
there wouldnt be a lot of maintenance and
they would last for years. Were surrounded
by roads on three sides, so to make it a private
garden, we planted screening trees around it.
We worked closely with manufacturers,
called a lot of them and got ideas and tried
to go with good products, maintenancefriendly products, easy-to-use products like
columbariums that are easy to open and close,
that felt secure to families.
The main thing is dont overcrowd your
garden, dont try to cram as much in that little
space as you can. People want to come in and
feel like theyre in a park. If you cram stuff
everywhere it takes away from that feeling. r
plish: To get as many

human interactions with
the public as I can possibly
manage that are not specifically funeral- or burial- or
cremation-related.
How can I get eyeballs
on the building, how many
visitors can I get into
Alan Creedy
the cemetery, how many
personal interactions can I createbecause
immediately logs the GPS location of that
this
is a relationship business.
record. If there are multiple sides to the
With
genealogy being one of the most
headstone, you can link them together.
r
popular hobbies in the entire world, the
r Create relationships with local
opportunity to affiliate with local genealogical
groups involved in geneology
societies and the like is significant. I hope
Alan Creedy
most of you have lounges and other areas
When I work with my clients, theres one
where you can invite those groups to hold
core strategy I always work hard to accomtheir meetings.
r
If we dont adapt,
were gone. Id like
to read a quote from
Charles Darwin: Its
not the strongest,
fastest, or most
intelligent who
survive, but those
who are the most
adaptable.
Tom Flynn
CEMETERIES
Our chapel holds about
80 people seated,
about 100 people
standing. We used to
have pews attached to
the wall. We removed
those and made them
movable pews. We
now have a completely
adaptable chapel
for standup cocktail
parties, weddings,
receptions. We put bars in there for some
events. Its important to have your chapel
able to do all that.Paul Williams
r Consider using community

service volunteers on projects
Paul Williams
Another program we use that you should
consider: We call them community service
volunteers. Theyre actually the courtordered individuals who have been sentenced
to hours for various crimes.
It sounds worse than it is. They are noncriminal individuals; they are non-violent. We
do a background check.
We use them because they accomplish
hundreds of jobs at the cemetery at no cost.

We usually have on average probably two to
three court-ordered volunteers.
They come in various shapes, sizes and
skill sets. We accomplish a lot of office
work, cleaning, organizing, they do outdoor
landscaping, they do mulching, they water
our trees, they do branch removal.
In D.C., if youre prominent, you probably
dont want to be picking up trash along the
highway. The cemetery is a little private.
We had one who was a solar panel
expert. He gave me a package of materials, I
put a cover letter on it and sent it to a grantmaker and we got a $50,000 grant to install
solar panels in the cemetery, something I
wouldnt be able to do.
We had one who is a chef, a pretty prominent guy also sentenced to community
service. We had an upcoming event for which
we were going to spend about $5,000 on a
caterer, and he said, You know what? Why
dont I give you that for the community
service hours? I said, Hell, yes. So we
bought the food and he prepared it for us.
So you never know how your community
volunteers are going to help you out.
r Look into offering space

for yoga or other exercise classes
Yoga Mortis: This is an interesting concept
that we just initiated last year. Its pretty easy.
We have a chapel on the grounds, as Im sure
a lot of you do. The chapel goes unused 99.99
percent of the time.
So we gave the keys to a yoga instructor.
We do a 70/30 split with her. This costs no
staff time whatsoever. She charges $16 per
class; she has about 25 people in attendance.
She does two classes a week; over eight
months thats 64 classes.
We receive about $125 per class, or about
$8,000 a year. And this is a chapel rental at
7 a.m., when no one is going to have a
funeral or a wedding in our chapel.
Its a good use of space; people like it.
It attracts some interesting people who like
to do yoga in the middle of a cemetery. But
then again, were a pretty peaceful park in the
middle of an urban city.
It gets even better: She does an outside
yoga class during the summer months that
we split 50-50. So all total, we get about
$10,000 for yoga classes, and it really costs
us nothingand no staff time, as well.
r
July 2015
41
MANAGEMENT
r Dont make directors mow lawns
Marty Ludlum
True or false: Keep
employees working, even
if its mopping the floor.
I hope you said false.
There are cheaper ways
to get your lawn mowed
and all these kinds of
tasks done. Youre not
saving money, youre
building resentment.
And if your
Marty Ludlum
employees are mad about
being there, it shows in everything they do. It
shows when they answer the phone. It shows
when somebody walks in the front door, that
theyre just sick of being there and theyre
mad because the boss had them, an educated
professional, out there mowing the grass.
If you like doing it because its good
exercise, thats fine.
If its just Im sick of my employees
sitting here and it doesnt look like theyre
productiveIm going to have them go clean
all the windowsills, the employee doesnt
translate it as Im cleaning all the window
sills, he translates it as Im being punished
because the boss doesnt like me. And that is
a hard problem to fix.
r Stock up on cash, not inventory
During good times stock up on inventory so
you can get through the rough times. False.
If anything, during the good times you want

to stock up on money, not inventory. Because
with money, you have options.
If all you have is inventory, Hey, look,
we were doing good so we bought 10 years
supply of embalming fluid. Isnt that good?
Uh, no, not next month when payrolls due.
r Run the numbers when
considering refinancing
Kara Ludlum
I get this question pretty
often with my clients
theyre considering
refinancing for a number
of reasons. So I want
to take you through an
example of an actual case
where we considered
whether or not a firm
should refinance.
Several years ago,
Kara Ludlum
back in 2008 when we
were all having banking problems, financing
for funeral homes was a tough thing. The
SBA wasnt all that excited about it. This
year, on the convention floor, there were a
number of banks here that want to refinance,
so Im sure thats whats fueled the questions
to CPAs: Is that a good idea for me to do?
You certainly want to check with your
CPA, because Im going to give you an
example, but there are 1,000 scenarios.
This is an actual example from a client.
They had bought the funeral home originally

for $1.7 million, and they had financed it
at 6.75 percent, a variable loan, 15-year
amortization; they had seven years remaining.
Theyre making $15,000/month payments
for seven more years. So if they keep going
as theyre going, theyre going to end up
paying $1,263,000.
He was looking at a 20-year refinance
and the interest rate was going to be lower,
5 percent, which is pretty typical on these
SBA loans right now.
So, monthly savings over the first seven
years: Hes going to drop his payment from
$15,000/month to $6,600/month. Sounds
pretty good, except on the surface hes going
to be paying $1.5 million total.
So it seems like a bad deal, because
it seems like youre going to be paying
$240,000 more over the long term.
But then you have to consider the other
parts: The time value of money part and the
opportunity cost part.
Youre saving $8,443/month over that
seven-year term, which means you save
$709,000. So what my client asked me was
could I put that $709,000 in a savings account
and what situation would I be in with this
loan at the end of seven years? Could I really
pay it off so that in effect Im still paying my
loan off in seven years, but Im still having
access to that $700,000 in cash?
So would that be a smart thing do to? The
answer to that is absolutely.
r
SALES & MARKETING

r Get directors and preneed
counselors to respect each other
West Foulger
First of all, weve got to build trust. How do
we do that? We have to have open and safe
communication. I try to, as best as possible,
to communicate with the funeral directors and
say to them often, If a preneed consultant
does something that youre not comfortable
with, I want you to tell me about it, because I
cant fix a problem unless I know about it.
And then we have to make it safe. When
they bring a problem to me, I cant make
excuses for that consultant, I cant say, Oh,
their jobs tough, and theyve got to prospect
every day, and theyre running in-home
appointmentsyou just need to deal with it.
When things come up, they have to be
dealt with. For a long time, we let preneed
consultants get away with things that we
would never let a funeral director get away
with.
42
ICCFA Magazine
Lets say you get a

complaint that someone
is high pressure. Oh,
thats just their job;
thats just what theyre
supposed to do. We kind
of give them a pass. But
if we got a complaint
about someone serving
someone whos just lost
a loved one and we hear
that a funeral director
West Foulger
was high-pressure, do
we tolerate it? We dont. So we have to have
consistency in our organization.
One of the most important things, I
believe, is that training should be conducted
together. We have preneed training, and we
have at-need training. But we try as much as
possible to combine those groups together,
because guess what? Were all cemetery and
funeral planners.
You shouldnt have separate dress codes

for your preneed staff and your funeral
directors.
You want mutual respect? You want
funeral directors to really respect your
preneed team? Have them have the same
dress code. I like what Zig Ziglar says, one
of my favorite quotes of his, is that for every
sale you lose because youre too enthusiastic,
youll lose 10 because youre not enthusiastic
enough.
So if we twist this, for every sale you lose
because youre overdressed, you lose 10
because youre underdressed. Its better to
overdress than underdress.
When we walk through the doors of our
facility, we shouldnt look different. We
should have the same standard of careour
dress code and our hygiene standard for our
funeral directors and our preneed consultants
should be the same to create that comraderie
and respect between teams.
r
SALES & MARKETING
Win the heart and the mind will follow.

Steve McKee
r Understand what branding is

and is not, and manage your brand
Steve McKee
We often have a misunderstanding of what
branding is really all about. One of the first
things I want to correct is this idea that
branding is somehow soft or frivolous, that
branding is your logo or branding is your
advertising or branding is what you put on
billboards or in newspaper ads. It includes
that, but I believe you cannot separate the
business from the brand.
There is nothing a business does that
doesnt contribute to or detract from the value
of its brand. And theres nothing you can
do in branding that doesnt contribute to or
detract from the value of your business.
You say, Is the Coca-Cola brand really
worth $79 billion? I dont know, but its
worth a whole lot of money.
In fact, if you could have one or the other:
The Coca-Cola brand and none of the assets
of the Coca-Cola Co., or all of the assets of

the Coca-Cola Co. but not its brand, which
would you take?
With the Coca-Cola brand, you could
rebuild all the other assets, could you not?
But with the other assets, if you cant have
the Coca-Cola brand, then its just another
caramel-colored sugar water. So I would
rather have the brand.
I believe is your brand is the single most
important asset you own. Im not just saying
that because Im a branding guy. Name me
another asset that you own that does not
depreciate.
Buildings age; roofs leak; valued
employees leave; trademarks get violated;
patents expire; cars need service. Other assets
ultimately depreciate, but a brand never needs
to. It doesnt mean they dont depreciate,
because theyre not always well managed, but
they dont need to.
r When you plan your ads, realize
that emotions outlast memories
A study done on amnesia patients showed
that the emotions associated with an event
outlast the memories associated with an
event.
Have you ever been in a fight with a
family member, and youre very emotionally
upset and then you realize it was a misunderstanding, nobody was at fault? So the logic
of it canceled the fight, and yet you still feel
emotions. Or if youve been yelled at at work
by your boss, the same thing.
Emotions last longer than memories
think about that and branding. The next
time somebody says our ad needs to say
something, it cant just be funny or entertaining. Thats not true; emotions last longer. r
r Add packages to your website

John Callagan
Five years ago I wouldnt
have said this, but now I
believe its true: You need
to have some packages on
your website.
Todays consumers
expect to be able to go
to your website and see
enough information to
basically be able to make
the decision before they John Callaghan
come in the door. They
dont want to feel sold. They want to see their
options, understand their options and be able
to come in your door.
This is an example, a downloadable
pdf one of my clients puts on his website
laying out three different levels of cremation services. This is a real example of what
happens: They had a price shopper call, a
bereaved father whose son has just died of
a drug overdose, wants the lowest possible
price on cremation. They said, Go to our
website ...
Next morning, he shows up with his
wife and they went with the medium-priced
standard cremation. Why? Because she had
time to talk to him that evening, calm him
down and say, We need to do something for
the family.
If they had left it until the next morning,
his heels would have been dug in and you
wouldnt have gotten anywhere.
They need time to process it, and they
want to process it in their own home. They
want to be able to look at this material, get a
sense of what their options are, think about it
and decide as a family.
r
July 2015
43
Convention sponsors
AlanCreedy.org
American Funeral Financial
American Memorial Life Insurance Co.
Answering Service for Directors (ASD)
Assurant Life of Canada
Astral Industries Inc.
Aurora Casket Co.
Axiom Business Systems
Batesville Casket Co. Inc.
Carriage Services
Clearpoint Federal Bank & Trust
Coldspring
Disrupt Media
Eckco Products
Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks &
Mortuaries
Forethought Financial Group Inc.
Funeral Directors Life Insurance Co.
Gethsemane Memorial Gardens
GREEN SERVICES
r Create a space for the living
Lee Webster
This is critical to what
were trying to do with
green space. Its not
just about disposition
of bodies, where were
going to keep those
bodies. Its everything to
do with creating a space
for the living.
By creating spaces
where we can have
Lee Webster
people come whenever
they want to walk, hike on trails, meditate
or bird watch, what were doing is giving
people an opportunity to nurture family and
community.
And if we really search back to why we
have funerals to begin with, its about that. I
had a wonderful theologian who explained

it this way: She said when someone dies, the
fabric of their community is rent in two, and
that its the job of all the rest of us to mend
that, and we do that through ritual, through
the funeral process, and its what weve lost
through direct cremation.
By creating an alternative where people
not only take the time to connect to each
other when someone dies, but to have a space
like this means that they can come back again
and again and again, and it nurtures that
community feeling and that sense of place.
And they can also feel good about
their contribution to the planet and their
community, helping to sustain the natural
environment in the community that connects
and grows there. They understand that theyre
a part of something bigger; its not just saying
goodbye to Uncle Harold.
r
Green Hills Memorial Park

Guerra & Gutierrez Mortuaries
Hepburn Superior US Chemical
Holman Howe Funeral Home
Independence Trust Co.
INEX Inc.
Inglewood Park Cemetery
Johnson Consulting Group
Live Oak Bank
Madelyn Co.
Matthews International Corp.
Michigan Memorial Park
NGL Insurance Group
NOMIS Publications Inc.
John Eric
Rofstad
r Think about how much maintenance is really needed

John Eric Rolfstad
Even in a hybrid cemetery, a lot of people prefer to allow the landscape
to go more natural. Maintenance mostly involves filling in as either the
casket collapses or the body decays. But if youre using a burial shroud,
theres very little shrinking of the site and very little need for restoration.
If youre using a wooden casket, there will be a greater need.
Generally we find 66 percent of the cemeteries have to add some
soil at some point along the way to fill in where the grave site was.
Fifty-two percent do some restoration of the sod or grass. Thirtyfive percent plant native trees or shrubs, and 31 percent add organic
material to feed the natural vegetation. Seven percent do nothing.
Seventeen percent do other.
r
NorthStar Memorial Group

Physicians Mutual Insurance
Precoa
Regions Bank
Rick Miller
Riviera Tailors Ltd.
Security National Life Insurance Co.
Service Corporation International
Sinosource International Inc.
Spring Grove Cemetery & Arboretum
Starmark Funeral Products
StoneMor Partners LP
Supernova International Inc.
Texas Funeral Directors Association
The Academy of Professional Funeral
Practice
The Signature Group
Wuxi ANA Industries Co. Ltd.
44
ICCFA Magazine
r Create a trail, hold an open house

and make people love the land
Matt Alcide
Another whole facet that can open up your
cemetery to the public is making this green
space. I was talking with Ed, who was saying
its unbelievable the connection people have
now to his cemetery because he created a trail
throughout his cemetery.
Its a natural cemetery, very little
maintenance. Light maintenance includes
blowing leaves from the path and removing
branches, and he mows a meadow once a
year. He opens his facility up to the public,
and what hes been finding is that people who
use the space fall in love with the space and
want to be buried in the space. Its essentially
having an open house at your cemetery that
people can use on a daily basis.
Start small. If youre a current cemetery
operator, you can start

with half an acre and
test it. Our survey
results have shown
that the demand is
there and that families
appreciate it, they want
it and they have very
high satisfaction rates
and those polled said
there was zero percent
dissatisfied families with Matthew Alcide
green burial. Youre
going to see return customers; youre going
to see word-of-mouth spread.
Welcome the public to your site;
engage them. Create trails for them to use.
Have classes, have speakers, community
outreach. Making people connected to your
land is key.
r
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July 2015
45
Dealing with
an Ebola case
David Patterson
The press was notified.
The nice thing was,
nobody asked me what
crematory I was going to
use. So the media was at
a great disadvantage. It
looked just like standard
traffic coming in and
out of the hospital. We
David Patterson made it all the way to the
crematory without anybody following us.
We werent sure which route we were
going to take. They wanted us to stay off the
freeway, but theres no way to stay off the
freeway from where the hospital was to where
the crematory was.
They didnt want us speeding, because
they didnt want to attract attention with a
white Suburban with two marked cars behind
it that would look like it was a police chase or
something like that.
r
I contacted the CDC
right before this and
asked this question and
they sent me a letter that
absolutely, there was
no chance, no risk that
the Ebola virus would
make it through that
cremation process.
Scott Smith
Scott Smith
Texas suspended everything for us as far as the
cremation permits. The medical examiner did
not want any part of this. Thats the last thing
they wanted, was this body to be brought to
their facility. So they immediately signed up
to waive any type of cremation authorization
permit from the county.
We received all the family authorization
forms, signed, after the fact. This was ordered
by a county judge for cremation; no other
option was available. We went back and got
all the necessary documentation completed,
but the state of Texas quickly came in and said
there will be absolutely nothing holding you
back from getting to the cremation facility as
soon as possible.
Dont be surprised, in your areas, your
county government, your hospital, some
states are requiring they have an emergency
preparedness plan ready in case this happens.
Now, this could also cross over into any highly
contagious disease.
r
46
ICCFA Magazine
EMBALMING
We get a lot of requests
from people: If youre
only going to have one
fluid, what fluid would
you recommend? And
I generally suggest
12-year-old Scotch
whisky, because
youre going to need
one before and after
your work to be able
to bolster your courage to do everything
with one kind of fluid and to meet with
the family and tell them why dad looks so
ordinary.Jeffrey Chancellor
person who has passed away? More time in

my building; more people coming to see the
product that Im putting forward.
r Reconsider mimimum prep
I see a phenomenon in the United States
that is very interesting, called the minimum
prep or the ID view. Many firms have a very
modest charge for them, and the families are
being exposed to bodies that perhaps dont
look as good as they could look.
I was recently visiting a West Coast firm
that does a large volume of business and the
senior funeral director said to me, Well you
dont want the bodies to look too good when
theyre only purchasing a minimum service.
When I asked him, What about counseling the family on maximum service
and minimum merchandise, maximum
experience? Ah, whos got time for that?
I believe that when the brain fails, the
heart takes over. When somebody dies and it
shatters your world and youre grieving, your
brain fails a little bit, so your heart takes over.
And it requires words of heart.
r Listen to what families want

the results of embalming to be
Jeffrey Chancellor
I did some market research in the United
States, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and
Singapore in the last 12 months where I met
with families who had chosen embalming
and were disappointed with their experience.
I found it really fascinating that the things
they were disappointed about were exactly
the things that the embalmers were trying
to achieve. They were disappointed in rockhard bodiesthey didnt want bodies to be
hard. They didnt want a lot of cosmetics on
the body. And they wanted the body to more
resemble what the person looked like before
they got sick or before they underwent a
medical procedure or accident.
It was interesting when I call on funeral
homes with our sales team, the embalmers
will say to me, What do you have that I can
rock them up with one bottle? as opposed to,
What do you have that I can ensure that the
family is going to want to spend time with the
r Prep bodies before refrigeration

Before you place that body in refrigerated
storage, bathe it, shampoo it, disinfect it,
contain things like bedsores. Moisturize them
before they go into the cooler. And when I
say moisturize, a best practice that you can
do isnt having a jar of massage cream with a
paint brush for a fence and it looks more like
a primordial stew than it does massage cream.
The best way to moisturize your bodies
is to first disinfect them, clean them off, and
then apply a moisturizer that will absorb in,
then use your massage cream as a barrier. r
r Work with other funeral directors

to let coronors know what you need
Shun Newburn
Often, what you end
up finding is that with
an autopsy, youre
unfortunately not left
with the common
carotids. We had a huge
problem in LA County
years ago. Myself, along
Shun Newbern
with Epsilon Nu Delta
and LA county funeral directors met with our
coroners office techs and explained to them
what we needed them to do for us.
Consider sitting down with your coroner
officers. Not as an individual funeral
hometrust me, that doesnt work, because
they will take it as a personal hit. Come
together as an association and sit down with

those techs, sit down with the coroners,
those liaisons, whomever it may be, and
explain to them what your expectations are.
Youd be surprised, that oftentimes the
techs, as well as the pathologists, have no
idea that you need those carotids for injecting.
They have no idea what you do, what your
role is. Communication is so important.
If you are missing your common
carotidstheyre gone or theyve been cut,
theyre too short and they pop, you cant find
themgo back to old textbooks and get that
facial artery. Take the time to do that. Get the
preservation you need in that face. Because
if youre placing a pack on every single one
of those cases, youre actually destroying the
face, youre causing discoloration and youre
not getting the preservation you need.
r
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July 2015
47
P L PA
PLPA College, for the first time held during the ICCFA convention, included not only educational sessions but also displays by
several exhibitors. From left, Terrybear, Custom Air Trays, KapLind, Cedar Valley Box Co. and American Crematory Equipment.
r Write the job title last, after

youve written the job description
Mark Jorgensen
The job title probably
should be the last thing
you write. So, if you
believe you need a pet
crematory operator, that
may well be the right
job title, but what we
want to do first is look
at the responsibilities of
On-boarding
the position, and the job
is sort of a
requirements.
critical step.
What will the
Dont just
turn someone person have to do?
loose on day What education do they
one, saying,
need to have? What
You know
certifications? What are
how to do the the absolute baseline
job; go get
requirements, and if
em.Mark
theres a licensing or
Jorgensen
certification process for
this particular state, can they meet that?
Are there physical requirements? If
they just had back surgery and cant lift
more than a 6-pound gallon of milk, is that
an issue? It probably is.
And a disclaimer saying there may be
additional responsibilities should be part of
this job description.
r Dont rely on spellcheck
The other thing we see in resumes quite
a bitand this millennial generation is
horrible about this because spellcheck is
the be-all-end-allis all kinds of copy
errors in resumes. I cant tell you how
many people have in their resume that
they were a regional manger. I tell the
students at mortuary school, sit down with
somebody else in the class, swap resumes,
and tell them youll buy them a Starbucks
drink for every mistake they can find.
Everything you do is detail-oriented.
If they cant even get it right in their
own resume, will they get it right in the
paperwork for your families?
r
48
ICCFA Magazine
r Step back and think about why you

went into this business to begin with
Sherif Ebrahim
I want you to step back and remember why
you started your business. Why are you in
your business? What are you trying to really
accomplish? Not the day-to-day, every day
that youre bogged down in. I want you to
step out and think strategically, bigger picture.
Why are you really here?
Strategic innovation requires an
organization to make trade-offs. We have to
make trade-offs when we compete. We have
to not just decide what were going to do, we
have to decide what were not going to do.
We have to say, We are going to do X, but
were not in the business of Y.
A customer pulls up and says, I want
you to do all of this, and by the waycan
you wash my car? Is that in your business
model?
Theres a reason why you dont want
to do certain things: It distracts from your
organization. Organizational alignment helps
us create that fit. It helps us create the right
people in the right seats doing the right things
to help us achieve those long-term goals.
It says that our organization does what its
supposed to do.
How many of you say to employees,

Our goal is customer service and
making a difference. How many of
you have an employee incentive plan
focused on sales? How many of you
have an incentive plan focused on
customer service?Sherif Ebrahim
can begin to do is reevaluate what were

going to do before it happens. Because if we
start planning what to do when the declines
become to come, its too late.
The issue is not that youre putting
yourself out of business, the issue is that you
will go out of business if you dont continue
to innovate. The issue is that you want to
engage in planned obsolescence, where you
r Innovate or accept that someone
replace yourself, rather than letting someone
will put you out of business someday else replace you.
Everything has a life cycle. Its the same thing
The new product, the new service, has
with a business: It has a life cycle. Every
to be better than the one it replaces. It has to
product, every service. We can sit and pretend be compatible, it has to make sense in the
that its never going to happen, or what we
to page 50
Brian Melius
r Learn and then meet

veterinarians expectations
Brian Melius, DVM
What do veterinarians want?
Reputation of your facility is key,
and that all goes to setting high
standards, saying what youre
going to do and then doing it.
Availability is very important to
veterinarians. They want you guys
to be available all the time. You

cant be an 8-to-5 business, its got
to be 24/7.
If you live in a rural area, where
youre traveling 300 miles out,
I can understand six to 10 days
turnaround, but when youre in the
city, theres no reason in the world
why you cant deliver two-day
turnaround time.
r
Mark Solverud, President and CEO
The word trust gets used a lot these days. At NGL, we use it too. But to
us, trust is something we have to earn. And we know that earning your trust
comes first, even before you choose to do business with us. It also needs to be
maintained through our actions every dayby saying what we mean, doing what
we say and living up to our reputation. Markets evolve, rates rise and fall, people
come and go. But integrity is something our partners and customers have relied
on for over 100 years with NGL. And thats not about to change.
National Guardian Life Insurance Company 888.239.7047 www.nglic.com

National Guardian Life Insurance Company is not affiliated with The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America a.k.a. The Guardian or Guardian Life. PN-Ad 10/13
P L PA
r Update safety policies regularly
and make employees read them
Kevin Woronchak
Prevention starts with having sound policies
and procedures in place. Very detailed,
updated regularly. We just went through that;
it was no easy task. But its really important
to keep them updated as rules from OSHA,
or, in Canada, WorkSafe, change.
We make it mandatory for our employees
to read the policies, as dry as they are. Its
important that they know them to protect
themselves and us. Theyre accessible, so on
their down time the booklets there for them
to read.
r Have the right extinguisher
for dealing with electrical fires
In our crematory room, we have a heat
detector. Smoke alarms go where you
arehallways, offices. Its all about early
detection.
A simple ABC extinguisheryou can
get them at Costcoputs most fires out.
But understand how

theyre used and for what
classes of fire. If you
expect someone to use it,
make sure theyre trained.
If theres an electrical
short in your crematory
panel or anywhere like
that, its very expensive.
It is believed, You cant dump water
especially by on it. You need to do
WorkSafe,
something, so you try to
that almost
de-energize it to stop it.
all accidents
But if theres a fire,
are preventdont
ever use an ABC
able.Kevin
extinguisher. A CO2
Woronchak
extinguisher is the best
for electrical equipment. So if you have
expensive crematory equipment, get a
CO2 extinguisher. It puts out the fire
and it doesnt damage your equipment.
If you put that powder thats in the other
extinguishers on it, it will cause a lot of
damage.
r
Pet Loss Pioneers
PLPA Co-chairs Bill Remkus, CPLP, and Coleen Ellis,

CPLP received the ICCFAs
first Pet Loss Pioneer Awards
during the 2015 Convention
& Expo. The award recognizes those paving the way
in the relatively new pet loss
profession. Coleen and Bill
created the PLPA and they
are the experts in the field of
pet loss. They literally blazed
a trail to develop standards, best practices and guidelines in the
pet loss profession, where there was no oversight previously,
said ICCFA 2014-15 President Fred Lappin, CCE.
Ebrahim, from page 48

context of what the customer wants or what
they understand or what theyre looking for,
even if they dont know theyre looking for it.
It has to make sense and solve a problem.
It cant be too difficult to understand
or use. You have to understand what the
customer understands, what the customer
relates to, and think of it in the context of
your customer or your referral source.
It has to be try-able, which means you
have to be able to experiment with it on a
limited basis.
It needs to be somewhat tangible. For
services, thats why we create productsit
gives us a package. It gives us something
the customer can look at and give them
something tangible. When you go buy a car,
they dont give you the car, but they let you
sit in it, press the buttons and do a test drive.
You need observability. People need to see
what other people are adopting. They need to
see that it actually is providing value to others
that they can relate to.
r
CPLP designations
Katherine and Daniel

Heuerman, Pets & Animal
Lovers Service (PALS),
Phoenix, Arizona, received
their CPLP designations
during the convention.
Also recieving Certified Pet Loss Profession
designation were John
R. Booth, Oakeys Pet Funeral Home & Crematory,
Roanoke, Virginia; and
Jane E. McMillian Rose,
Rose Pet Memorial Center,
Indianapolis, Indiana.
Memorial Service
The PLPA held its

first-ever Pet Memorial Service during the
2015 ICCFA Convention & Expo. Following opening remarks
by PLPA co-chairs
and co-founders Bill
Remkus, CPLP, and Coleen Ellis, CPLP,
PLPA Education Committee Co-chair
Kate Moore, CPLP, (pictured) sang
Over The Rainbow. This was followed by a moving memorial video of
all the pets being honored, produced by
FuneralOne. A closing benediction was
offered by John Wilson of Platinum Pet
Memorial Services, New Hope, Texas.
50
ICCFA Magazine
Attendees at the annual PLPA Reception network with like-minded individuals.

I CCFA 2015 CONVENTION

S C E NES FROM THE EXPO HALL
Matthews International
Aley Shalechet
Destiny Casket
New Memorials Direct

Security National Life Insurance
Refine Manufacturing & Design
Precious Memories
Bass-Mollett
Blindcheck
July 2015
51
ICCFA 2015 CONVENTION

SCENES FROM THE EXPO HALL
Sweet Shop USA
Osiris Software by Funeral Directors Resource
Physicians Mutual/Outlook Group
Cherokee Casket Co.
Facultatieve Technologies
Regions Bank
Funeral Directors Life Insurance Co.
Eagle Granite
Vac-Tron Equipment
US Metalcraft
Cooperative Funeral Fund
Coldspring
McCleskey Mausoleums
Holland Supply
52
ICCFA Magazine
Star Granite & Bronze
Batesville Casket Co.

I C CFA 2015 CONVENTION

S C E N ES FROM THE EXPO HALL
Kryprotek
Biondan North America
Axis Corp.
American Funeral & Cemetery Trust Services
Shiva Shade
Passages International
Carriage Services
Howard Miller/Hekman
Peaceful Paws
The Dodge Co.
Bernardaud
Trust 100
Progressive Environmental Services
The Brickman Group
54
ICCFA Magazine
Vantage Products Corp.


The Davey Tree Expert Co.
Live Oak Bank
American Cemetery Supplies
Madelyn Co.
EDA Land Planning
Ensure-A-Seal
Trigard
Funeral Home Gifts
NGL
Memory Glass
Church & Chapel Metal Arts

Eagle Coach Co.
Pontem Software
July 2015
55

Blissful Tribute
Eickhof Columbaria
Nick Timpe of webcemeteries.com

visits Flowers for Cemeteries
The Tribute Companies

Sanctuary Reserve
Cemetery360
Keith M. Merrick and Premier Columbaria
FuneralScreen
Executive Coach Builders
FrontRunner Professional
StoneMor Partners
Johnson Consulting Group
The Living Urn
Yadkin Senior Care
3D Universal
B&L Cremation Systems

56
ICCFA Magazine
Homesteaders Life Co.
Forethought Life Insurance


Granite City Steel
Great Western Insurance Co.
Park Place Equity
Funeral Call
Funeral One
Mabrey Products
Messenger
Continental Computer
American Crematory Equipment
Natural Legacy
Zontec
Implant Recycling
VKM
Heirloom Bible Publishers

58
ICCFA Magazine
ClearPoint Federal Bank & Trust
Supernova International/AP Lazer

EXPLORE INSIGHT
AW
A
WA
W
AKEN Y
YO
OUR
SALES
ANALYZE
YOUR BUSINESS
ALIGN
C O N V E R S AT I O N S
CREATE
AN ACTION PLAN
with Forethought InSightSM, a visual business analytics tool

InSight has proven to be a great tool for our Advance Planning staff.
Reports are automatically emailed to us at the same time each week,
making it easier to stay on top of our metrics, which we review at our
monthly staff meetings. In addition, having the capability to now track
our sales by zip code has helped me decide where its best to spend my
advertising dollars. I know that InSight will continue to become more
valuable in running my business.
Randy L. Grimes
DeMoney-Grimes Funeral Home
Find out more at forethought.com/insight. Request a demo today by calling (866) 449-3722.
M8656 (05-15) 2015 Forethought

Elleanor Davis Starks, 100 Black

Women of Funeral Service
Remembrance Creations
Artistic Urns and Tile Artisans Digital Imaging
Tukios
Wilbert Funeral Services

Columbian Financial Group
WithumSmith+Brown
SRS Computing
Qeepr
Answering Service for Directors
LifeArt International
F.H. Noble
KMI Columbaria
Heritage Flower Co.

60
ICCFA Magazine
Federal Coach Co.
Sinosourse International
I C C FA N E W S
FALL MANAGEMENT CONFERENCE LOEWS VENTANA CANYON RESORT TUCSON, AZ SEp. 30-OCT. 2, 2015
Full-day workshop on creating markets and eliminating

competition on Fall Management Conference agenda
uilding off of the workshop-style program that was

highly rated by attendees last October, this years ICCFA
Fall Management Conference will feature a full-day
program/workshop on Thursday, October 1, focusing on The
Blue Ocean Strategy in Action. This years conference will be
held September 30-October 2 at the Loews Ventana Canyon
Resort in Tucson, Arizona.
What is the Blue Ocean Strategy (BOS)?
Most businesses operate in a Red Oceanan ecosystem where

you succeed by drawing blood from your competition. The
market is often overcrowded with shrinking profit margins and
limited growth opportunities. In a Blue Ocean, you create new,
uncontested market space instead of competing in existing ones.
In the process, you stand apart, energize your company, take
advantage of the higher profit impact that comes with creating
new market spaces, yet keep costs low.
BOS has researched over 150 successful and failed new
market creations over the past 100 years across 30 industries.
What they have found are systematic patterns that separate
successful, market-creating moves from market-competing
strategies.
The day-long workshop will be broken down into five onehour interactive lectures followed by group work and discussion
after each lecture. Youll be given real-world examples and use
the four tools proposed by the BOS during the working sessions:
Eliminate, Raise, Reduce and Create.
You may visit the Blue Ocean System website to learn more or
to sign up to receive its e-mail newsletter at
www.blueoceanstrategy.com.
About the workshop leader
In his role as senior global consultant

and practice director for the Blue Ocean
Strategy Network, Jason Hunter has lead
successful strategy development initiatives
to some of the worlds most recognizable
organizations, including KPMG, Danone,
Pearson PLC, Toshiba, General Electric,
Samsung, LOreal, Vivendi and the World
Bank. Currently, he is leading a White
Hunter
House initiative focused on dramatically
raising the value proposition of American
higher education.
As an executive senior fellow with INSEAD (a graduate
business school with campuses in Europe, Asia and the
Middle East), he teaches strategy, innovation and leadership
to executives at many of the worlds leading business schools.
In this position, Hunter has worked closely with professors
W. Chan Kim & Rene Mauborgne in the development of the
family of practical tools and methodologies behind Blue Ocean
Strategy & Value Innovation.
At INSEAD he has taught strategy, innovation and leadership

to approximately 1,000 executives and senior managers annually
from the worlds largest companies.
The rest of the program
The full conference program will be announced in the next

few weeks, but the schedule will pretty much follow that of
previous years:
Wednesday, September 30: Board Meeting; Golf
Tournament; Tennis Tournament; Welcome Reception
Thursday, October 1: Full day workshop on the Blue Ocean
Strategy
Friday, October 2: Government & Legal Affairs Breakfast,
followed by another keynote session TBD and other
programming until midday
Loews Ventana Canyon Resort
This four-star, four-diamond resort is nestled in a valley of the

Catalina Mountain Range and offers spectacular views of natural
beauty. It was included on Travel + Leisures 2014 list of the Top
50 Hotels for the Worlds Best Family Travel, while its Lakeside
Spa was named one of Conde Nast Travelers Top 100 Resort Spas.
It is about 30 minutes from Tucson International Airport (TUS).
The ICCFA room rate is $169 per night and includes free
wireless Internet in hotel rooms and public spaces. Make your
reservation by calling 1.800.234.5117 by August 31 and ask to be
included in the ICCFA Fall Management Conference room block.
By invitation only
Due to the limited size of the resort, this event is by invitation

only. Past attendees will be invited, as well as those leaders in the
profession whom we think will be fully engaged and contribute to
the CEO-level dialogue.
Invitations to the conference will be mailed out by early
July. If you havent received an invitation, but would like to
attend, please contact Robert Treadway, ICCFA director of
communications & membership services, at robt@iccfa.com or
1.800.645.7700.
q
July 2015
61
I C C FA N E W S
ICCFA trains 2,072 in cremation over the past two years
ver the past two years,

2,072 people have
completed one of
the International Cemetery,
Cremation and Funeral
Associations three cremation
certification programs: Crematory
Operator, Cremation Arranger or
Crematory Administrator.
The Crematory Operator
Certification is the training required in
18 states (with #19, Nevada, awaiting
pending legislation) and three Canadian
provinces, before operating a crematory
retort. It offers an in-depth look at what
cremation is, the science behind it, the
components and how to properly operate
and maintain a retort machine, proper
and constant tracking of remains and an
update on applicable laws and how to
limit your liability.
The ICCFA is the only deathcare
organization providing a Cremation
Arranger Certification. This training
discusses the history, myths and facts
about cremation, the preferences and

desires of modern consumers, pricing
vs. value, marketing, limiting liability,
ethics and how to conduct an effective
cremation arrangement where everyone
walks away happy.
This is truly a one-of-a-kind
program, says Poul Lemasters, Esq.,
ICCFA cremation programs coordinator.
It is built to help educate everyone
who interacts with a family choosing or
asking about cremation, he said.
The Crematory Administrator
Certification, another ICCFA original
cremation program, is only offered as
part of ICCFA University each year.
This certification covers the business
and liability aspects of providing

cremation services.
All certification programs
are approved for continuing
education credit by the Academy
of Professional Funeral Service
Practice, are reasonably priced
and include breakfast, lunch and
an afternoon refreshment break.
Upcoming training events include:
July 17-22 (in conjunction with
ICCFA University) where all
three certificates will be available:
Memphis, Tennessee
September 10-11, Cremation Operator
and Arranger: Dallas Institute of
Funeral Service, Dallas, Texas
Registration for these programs, as
well as advice and answers to cremation
concerns, may be found at
www.cremationcentral.com.
Dont forget: you may receive
cremation advice any time, anywhere,
24/7 by calling the ICCFA Cremation
Resource Hotline: 1.855.388.CRM8.
q
Still time to register for ICCFAU, the experience of a lifetime
CCFA University is
designed for anyone who
wants to be inspired. You
will learn from top cemetery,
cremation and funeral service
professionals as well as business
and economics faculty from
the University of Memphis;
meet people who share your passions; and
prepare for a future that continues to grow
with each course you take and each new
connection you make.

Theres still time to register
to attend ICCFA University,
which takes place on July 1722, at the Fogelman Executive
Center at the University
of Memphis in Memphis,
Tennessee. Walk-ins are always
welcome, space permitting.
ICCFAU is considered by many to
offer the most comprehensive funeral
service education outside of attending a

mortuary school.
There are seven colleges and two
graduate programs to choose from,
each with courses that combine proven
business theory with practical operational
instruction.
Register today at www.iccfa.com/
university or call 1.800.645.7700 to ensure
your spot in the college of your choice as
class sizes are limited.
q
2016 ICCFA Annual Convention session proposals due August 3
n preparation for the ICCFA 2016 Annual Convention

& Exposition, April 13-16, in New Orleans,
convention Co-Chairs Jay Dodds, CFSP, and Lee
Longino have issued a call for presentations.
If you have expertise in a particular area of
cemetery, cremation and funeral service, this is
your opportunity to give back to your profession.
Proposals are due to the ICCFA by August 3.
Any request for compensation must be included
in your proposal or it will not be granted.
Please note that we ask that speakers refrain
from speaking about prices or other issues subject to
62
ICCFA Magazine
antitrust legislation. In addition, we ask that speakers refrain

from any type of promotional marketing or selling of any
product or service.
We typically receive many more proposals than
we can fit into the program, so please be sure
to follow the guidelines and clearly explain the
value proposition for attendees.
Read the complete guidelines and submit your
proposal via our new online submission system by
August 3 by visiting www.iccfaconvention.com.
Questions? Call Kirsten Kase at 1.800.645.7700
or email her at kase@iccfa.com.
q
I C C FA N E W S
Travel, office supply discounts added for ICCFA members
ou now have the ability to SAVE

THOUSANdS of dollars on
your travel, car rentals, Orlando
vacations, cruises, hotel/motel rates,
office supplies and much more this
summer. ICCFA recently added several
discount programs as benefits of ICCFA
membership, including partnerships with
the following companies:
You can
save up to
25 percent
off your next
car rental while experiencing the comfort
and reliability that come with renting from
Avis. With 4,800 locations in over 140
countries, theres always an Avis nearby
to help you with your car rental needs. To
rent a car, visit www.avis.com/iccfa or call
1.800.331.1212. Remember to use your
ICCFA Avis discount number (AWd):
b636129 to enjoy these special savings.
Make
your budget
go further
by getting a great deal on a great car from
budget. As an ICCFA member, youll get
an amazing deal every time you rentup
to 25 percent off Budgets great rates.
To book your car, visit www.iccfa.com/
member-benefit-discount-programs or
call 1.800.527.0700 and mention the
ICCFA budget discount number (bCd):
V052518 to receive your discount.
Weve partnered with Americas
largest cruise agency, CruisesOnly, to
offer the lowest

prices in the
cruise industry
to ICCFA
members. In fact, CruisesOnly even backs
their prices with the only 110 percent best
price guarantee in the industry. Shop and
compare thousands of cruises from 25 of
the worlds top fleets departing from 22
U.S. ports, on over 250 ships. Browse the
latest in new promotions and last-minute
offers or shop by categoryweekend
cruises, family cruises, honeymoon cruises
and more. Use the link directly from
the ICCFA website at www.iccfa.com/
member-benefit-discount-programs.
Motel 6 has
partnered with ICCFA
to provide all members
a 10 percent discount
at any of the 1,100+
pet-friendly Motel 6
locations in the United
States and Canada. Motel 6 offers a clean,
comfortable room and great service for
the lowest price of any national chain,
and the discount will help you save you
even more. To book your reservation,
call 1.800.4.Motel6, and use the code
CP576803 to receive the discount. Theyll
leave the light on for you.
Through www.OrlandoVacation.com,
receive discounted tickets and vacation
packages for Disney World, Universal
Studios, Sea World, Discovery Bay,
Aquatica and more. Save up to 60 percent
off rack rate at select

Orlando hotels close
to or on theme park
property. Rates start as low as $55 per
night. Or choose to stay in vacation homes
that are fully-stocked and professionally
decorated, most with pools, with rates
starting as low as $99 per night.
Receive
up to 20
percent off the
best available rate at more than 7,500
participating Wyndham Hotel Group
locations worldwide. Book online or call
1.877.670.7088 and give the agent your
special discount Id number 1000010014
at time of booking to receive the discount.
Office Depot and OfficeMax now
offer ICCFA
members to
chance to
save up to
80 percent off on printing, cleaning and
office needs. Shop online or in any Office
Depot or OfficeMax store. Enjoy FREE
next-day delivery on online orders over
$50. All key contacts for each ICCFA
member property will receive by mail
a personalized wallet and keyring card
directly from OfficeMax/Office Depot
that allows you to receive free shipping
of purchases of $50 or more online, and
up to 80 percent off online or in-store
purchases.
More discounts will be added over the
next few months. Stay tuned!
q
2016 ICCFA Wide World of Sales Conference call for presentations
he ICCFA Sales & Marketing Committee is preparing for

the 2016 Wide World of Sales Conference, January
13-15, at the Monte Carlo Hotel & Casino in Las
Vegas, Nevada, and we invite you to share your expertise with
your colleagues.
The Wide World of Sales is the only conference specifically
for sales and marketing professionals in the cemetery, cremation
and funeral service profession.
We are seeking the very best, most relevant and most
thought-provoking sales and marketing programs, tools and
techniques being used today. We want presentations with
concrete, how-to information, with an emphasis on the how
rather than the why.
If you have expertise to share, this is your opportunity to
give back to the profession. The committee invites you to
submit a session proposal.
The format for this conference calls for numerous breakout

sessions 50 minutes in length, so please narrow your topic
to one or two key points that you can fully develop and
communicate within that time period.
ANy REqUEST FOR COMPENSATION MUST bE
INCLUdEd IN yOUR PROPOSAL OR IT WILL NOT bE
GRANTEd.
Speakers will receive a complimentary registration to the
conference. Panelists or speakers sharing the stage with three
or more people will be offered the option to purchase a full
registration at the one-day rate ($250 in 2015).
Submit your proposal via our new online submission system
by July 15 by visiting www.wideworldofsales.com.
Questions? Call Kirsten Kase at 1.800.645.7700 or email her at
kase@iccfa.com. Thank you for your willingness to share your
time and your knowledge.
q
July 2015
63
If youre a funeral industry supplier but not an IMSA member, you should
know what our members are getting that youre not: the best booth pricing
at the major tradeshows, hours of free one-on-one consultation from top
industry experts, business-boosting webinars, networking with other IMSA
members, and so much more. And the kicker is, our members pay only
$175 a year for the privilege. Is that unfair? It is, unless you join IMSA
too. Dont lose the upper hand. Join now at www.IMSA-Online.
Supply Line
Perfect Memorials biodegradable salt

urns.
UPD Urns CEO Tyler Fraser holds an

example of a bronze urn/urn topper the
company makes using 3D technology.
In this case, he was the model.
READERS: To find the products and services you need online, go to www.iccfa.com
and select directory to find:
Supply Link Search
Engine, the fastest way
to find the products and
services you need at your
funeral home, cemetery or
crematory.
SUPPLIERS: Send your press releases
about your new products and services,
and about awards, personnel changes and
other news to sloving@iccfa.com
for inclusion in Supply Line. Large files that
will not go through the ICCFA server can be
sent to slovingiccfa@yahoo.com.
66
ICCFA Magazine
n Perfect MeMorials, Eden Prairie,

Minnesota, has introduced a new biodegradable salt urn that dissolves in water.
Each salt urn is artfully and individually
crafted from a solid block of 250-year-old
Himalayan rock salt. Once the urn is placed
in water, it will dissolve and disperse the cremains within four hours. Because the salt is a
natural material, each urn has a unique color,
finish and veining. Each urn comes with a
biodegradable bag to hold the cremains and a
tie to secure the bag closed.
www.perfectmemorials.com
n UPD Urns, Three Rivers, California, has
announced a new product, always Busts,
which leverage 3D technology to lower the
cost of bronze sculpting and likeness artwork
on cremation urns. The company offers
12-inch-tall likenesses. The busts are used
as a topper to a full-sized wooden or brass
urn. The bust can also be the urn and hold
cremated remains. Currently the busts come
in two materials: gypsum and genuine bronze.
1.800.590.4133; email@updurns.com;
www.updurns.com
n in the light Urns, Three Rivers,
California, is offering a free ebook, celebrating life: how to create Meaningful
Memorial services With templates & tips
by gail rubin of A Good Goodbye, Albuquerque, New Mexico. 1.800.757.3488;
www.inthelighturns.com
505.265.7215; www.AGoodGoodbye.com
n MeaDoW hill, Fox River Grove,
Illinois, has been acquired by Dougherty
enterprises, a custom jewelry caster. Dougherty has produced Meadow Hills keepsakes
since 2003. The company, which will continue
to operate as Meadow Hill, plans to broaden
its market share in custom keepsakes and to
reduce turnaround times. 1.877.848.6243;
info@meadowhillco.com;
www.meadowhillco.com
n aMPlivox, Northbrook, Illinois, is
offering a mobile event booth. It integrates
digital display screens, PA sound systems
and a customizable signage panel. The booth
consists of a spacious base unit, providing a
convenient desk space for users, storage for
materials, and room for customizable graphics on the front and side panels. Overhead,
a choice of mounting bars supports custom
signage, a computer monitor, or a flat screen
television. The entire unit is manufactured
of heavy gauge steel with a weather resistant
black powder coat finish, and rolls easily on
heavy duty casters. www.ampli.com
n aUrora casket co., Aurora,
Indiana, has launched family connections advisor. This technology solution
provides families with a private, password-
Auroras Family Connections Advisor.
protected website where they can learn about

the choices for creating a meaningful and
appropriate final goodbye; record favorite
memories, pictures, and preferences of their
loved one; and connect with other family and
friends to inform them of the passing, along
with funeral or memorial details. Family Connections Advisor is part of the Advisor suite
of technology solutions that Aurora provides
to funeral homes. www.auroracasket.com
n MattheWs international, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has released a report
highlighting how crematories can be more
profitable. The companys first Crematoria
Business Report, which it plans to release
annually, found that firms could reduce fuel
usage, labor costs and environmental impact
by changing the way cremations are scheduled. The report summarized data Matthews
gathered from over 84,000 cremations during
2014, using the M-pyre operating system.
Our statistics show that most crematories handle less than 400 cases/year, said
Dan Giesler, division sales manager, North
America, but most of those facilities still
operate five days a week. That means theyre
averaging one case per day. Thats the most
expensive way to run a crematory.
The Matthews report, available for download from their website, shows that running
two or more cases per day was much more
efficient. The second case of the day had an
average fuel savings of 23 percent, while running three or more cases produced savings of
more than 30 percent. Cremation cycle time
is also shorter, with the second case of the
day averaging about 20 percent less time to
cremate than the first case. Shorter cycle times
generally mean more productivity and lower
labor costs per case.
1.800.223.4964;www.matw.com
n QeePr, Montreal, Quebec, hosted gail
rubin and chris raymond for its second
roundtable discussion of death and dying.
Rubin is author of A Good Goodbye: Funeral
Planning for Those Who Dont Plan to Die.
Raymond is editor of About.coms death and
dying section. Their discussion was streamed
live via Google+ and YouTube.
514.886.7900; info@qeepr.com;
www.qeepr.com
S U P P LY L I N E
NRJs drain-on-demand MortPort system for unionalls and super-capris.
n nrJ, Royal Oak, Michigan, was recently

granted a U.s. patent for its drain-on-demand MortPort systems for unionalls and
super-capris.. The MortPort addresses the
top cause of union all failures, fluid overflow
caused by buildup. MortPort products have
resealable ports above each foot that can accommodate any aspirator hose. This drainon-demand system allows cases to be drained
on the table or dressed and casketed.
248.577.9975; Ron@graveyardgift.com
n hoMesteaDers, Des Moines, Iowa,
has partnered with students at Drake
University to phase out plastic water bottle
use at their West Des Moines office in favor
of a more environmentally-sound, costeffective alternative. Homesteaders Chairman
and CEO Steve Lang announced the shift
at the companys second-quarter employee
meeting alongside a contingent of students
from Drakes Environmental Action League
and leadership education and development
program.
The students, who have been coordinating
with Homesteaders executives throughout
the fall and spring semesters, developed and
presented a cost-benefit analysis and shared
their experience with a similar student-led
initiative implemented on their Des Moines
campus in fall 2013.
We expect that after two years, Homesteaders will have saved enough by cutting out
plastic water bottles to cover the initial investment in new hydration stations, said Kelly
Leatherman, a sophomore public relations
and environmental policy major. After that,
we project a savings of over $4,800 each year.
Also, company account executive Brianne
Niedemyer was named Des Moines Area
Committee Volunteer of the Year at Make-AWish Iowas Hats, Horses and Hope Gala. The
annual award is given to one local volunteer
who does the most to advance the foundations mission in the metro area.
1.800.477.3633; www.homesteaderslife.com
n astral inDUstries, Lynn, Indiana,
recently held an open house and continuing education session for funeral directors
in the Chicago, Illinois, area.

The open house gave funeral
directors the opportunity to
become better acquainted
with their sales representatives, see some of Astrals
newest casket models and
earn continuing education credit. The continuing
education programs focused
on the changing wants and
needs of families and discussions about how funeral
homes could increase their
revenue.
1.800.278.7252;
sales@astralindustries.com;
www.astralindustries.com
n Jim cummings, vice
president and chief experi- The photo from Compass magazine of Jim Cummings
ence officer of life celof Life Celebrations.
eBration inc., North
Wales, Pennsylvania, was recently featured
have embraced the experience economy and
in the spring issue of compass, the 3D
used it to differentiate themselves from the
experience magazine. The magazine reports
competition by appointing a chief experience
on trends and issues in business, research and officer. 1.888.887.3782;
design, education, society and industry. The
jcummings@lifecelebration.com;
article focuses on how traditional businesses
www.lifecelebrationinc.com
r
LED Lighting Solutions

for Memorial Products
E N E R G Y S AV E R
LED light bulb for Crypt

& Niche Fronts
Warm color for Bronzes
E A SY TO I N S TA L L
www.septechnologies.com
1 877 515-4672
Timberland Urns
Wholesale and Custom memorial products;
designing and manufacturing.
Unique and affordable memorial urns
for Humans and Pets.
651-688-0875
customerservice@timberlandurns.com
www.timberlandurns.com
July 2015
67
BuyersGuide/BuyersGuideAds/2015BuyersGuideAds/Timberland_cremurns.indd
FROM THE EXPO HALL
The Life Chest
Orbis Robotics
Paradise Pictures
Franklin Wrap
CONVENTION SPEAKER CONTACT INFORMATION

alcide, Matthew (p 44), Arlington, Virginia
alcidems@gmail.com
Blevins, lauren (p 31), Williams Funeral
Homes & Crematory, Columbia, Tennessee,
laurenablevins@gmail.com
Butler, chris (p 34), Butler Funeral Homes
and Cremation Tribute Center, Springfield,
Illinois, cbutler@butlerfuneralhomes.com
callaghan, John (p 43), FuneralSuccess.com,
Farmington Hills, Michigan,
john@funeralsuccess.com
chancellor, Jeffrey (p 46), Eckels, Guelph,
Ontario, jchancellor@eckelsandcompany.com
clock, Jodi (p 31), Clock Life Story Funeral
Home/Clock Timeless Pets, Muskegon,
Michigan, jodi@clockfuneralhome.com
cohen, rabbi Daniel (p 37), Congregation
Agudah Sholom, Stamford, Connecticut,
rabbicohen@cas-stamford.org
collins, cate (p 36), Powerful Journey
Consulting, Columbus, Ontario,
info@powerfuljourney.com
comstock, tom (p 40), Billion Graves, Cedar
City, Utah, tom@billiongraves.com
creedy, alan (p 32), Raleigh, North Carolina,
alan@alancreedy.org
ebrahim, sherif (p 48), Strategic Management Group Inc., Metairie, Louisiana,
SEbrahim@StrategicManagementGroup.com
flynn, tom (p 40), Americas Cemetery, Hermitage, Pennsylvania; tom@avenueofflags.com
foulger, West (p 42), Larkin Mortuary, Salt
Lake City, Utah,
wfoulger@larkinmortuary.com
Crematory Manufacturing & Service

68
ICCFA Magazine
gallup, cindy (p 22), www.cindygallup.com

garbow, Zachary (p 38), Funeral Innovations, Louisville, Colorado,
zack@funeralinnovations.com
glover, Dwight (p 32), NewBridge Group,
Atlanta, Georgia,
dwight@newbridgegroup.com
gober, Doug (p 36), Gober Strategic Solutions, Kenner, Louisiana,
doug@goberstrategiccapital.com
grabowski, greg (p 30), Seasons Hospice
Foundation, Rosemont, Illinois,
ggrabowski@seasons.org
isard, Daniel (p 34), The Foresight Companies, Phoenix, Arizona, danisard@f4sight.com
Jones, steve (p 28), Aurora Casket Co., Aurora, Indiana, sjones@auroracasket.com
Jorgensen, Mark (p 34, 48), Global Recruiters
of Batesville, Batesville, Indiana
mjorgensen@grnbatesville.com
krueger, Paul (p 41), Olathe Memorial Cemetery, Olateh, Kansas, pkrueger@olatheks.org
kumming, tony (p 32), NewBridge Group,
Atlanta, Georgia, tony@newbridgegroup.com
leahy, shannon (p 37), Raysorm Communications, Toronto, Ontario,
shannon@raystormcommunications.com
lemasters, Poul (p 26), The Poul Lemasters
Co., Cincinnati, Ohio,
poul@lemastersconsulting.com
ludlum, Marty and kara gray (p 42), Edmond, Oklahoma, mludlum@uco.edu
Mckee, steve (p 43), McKee Wallwork & Co.,
Albuquerque, New Mexico,
smckee@mwcmail.com
Mcneil, andy (p 31), National Alliance for
Grieving Children, Stuart, Florida,
Andy.McNeil@ChildrenGrieve.org
McQueen, William, (p 32), McQueen & Siddall, St. Petersburg, Florida,
bill@mcqsidlaw.com
Melius, Brian (p 48), Heavens Pets, New
Orleans, Louisiana, bmdvm@aol.com
Merendino, gino (p 40), Merendino
Cemetery Care, Linden, New Jersey,

1776gino@gmail.com
Mostkoff, norene (p 30), HCI-VNS Care
Services, West Des Moines, Iowa,
NMostkoff@hci-vns.org
newbern, shun, (p 46), Metropolitan Mortuary Jurapa Valley, Riverside, California,
shunnewbern@aol.com
nilges, Brian (p 41), Olathe Memorial Cemetery, Olathe, Kansas, bnilges@olatheks.org
Patterson, David (p 46), Global Mortuary
Affairs, Mesquite, Texas,
drpatterson@globalmortuaryaffairs.com
Popowitz, coral (p 31), Childrens Grief Connection, coral@childrensgriefconnection.com
rex, Brad (p 37), Foundation Partners Group,
Orlando, Florida,
brex@FoundationPartners.com
rizzo, steve (p 24), www.steverizzo.com
robinson, lacy (pp 28, 30), Aurora Casket,
Aurora, Indiana, lrobinson@auroracasket.com
rolfstad, John eric (p 44), Seattle, Washington, johneric@comcast.net
sanders, tim (p 24), www.timsanders.com
shelquist, kim Medici (p 30), Homesteaders
Life Co., West Des Moines, Iowa,
kshelquist@homesteaderslife.com
sheridan, Bob (p 38), Batesville Casket,
bob.sheridan@batesville.com
smith, W. scott (p 46), Heritage Crematory,
Plano, Texas, scott@heritagecrematory.com
spellmann, eric (p 38), Spellmann & Associates, Amarillo, Texas, info@EricSpellmann.com
stansbury, glenda (p 31), Insight Books,
Oklahoma City, Oklahoma,
glenda@insightbooks.com
Webster, lee (p 44), Plymouth, New Hampshire, leewebster17@gmail.com
Williams, Paul (p 40), Historic Congressional
Cemetery, Washington, D.C.,
pwilliams@congressionalcemetery.org
Woronchak, kevin (p 50), Until We Meet
Again Pet Memorial Center, North Vancouver, British Columbia, uwmapmc@gmail.com
AD INDEX
17 Abbott & Hast
43 AFCTS
33 American Cemetery/Mortuary
Consultants
41 ASDAnswering Service for
Directors
4 Astral Industries
23 Continental Computer Corp.
35 Custom Air Trays
72 Eagle Granite Co.
45 Ensure-A-Seal
41 Flowers for Cemeteries
59 Forethought Life Insurance
Companies
17 Funeral Call Answering Service
27 Great Western Insurance Co.
33 Grever & Ward
35
7
65
47
29
21
33
25
57
17
19
9
49
19
45
Holland Supply
Homesteaders Life Co.
IMSA
Inman Shipping Worldwide
Kryprotek
Live Oak Bank
Madelyn Co.
Matthews International
Merendino Cemetery Care
Miles Supply
Miller Architects & Builders
MKJ Marketing
National Guardian Life Insurance Co.
Nomis Publications
Obermayer Rebmann Maxwell &
Hippel
71 Park Place Equity
5
17
29
67
2
11
3
19
19
67
39
45
53
47
45
Perfect Memorials
Pontem Software
Security National Life Insurance Co.
SEP Technologies
SRS Computing
Star Granite & Bronze
SuperNova International
Supply Link
SVE Portable Roadway Systems
Timberland Urns
U.S. Metalcraft
WithumSmith + Brown
Worsham College
Wuxi ANA Industries Ltd.
Zontec Ozone
r
Calendar
E-mail calendar listings and additions or
corrections to Association Pipeline to
bclough@iccfa.com.
For continually updated meeting listings

and direct links to websites for professional
associations, go to www.iccfa.com; select
Directory, then Industry Association Directory.
July 10-12: The Compassionate Friends

38th Annual National Conf., Hyatt Regency
Downtown, Dallas, Texas.
www.compassionatefriends.org
July 10-12: Australasian Cemeteries & Crematoria Assn. Mid Year Sem., Novotel Melbourne,
St. Kilda, Victoria. www.accaweb.com.au
July 12-15: Michigan Cemetery Assn. 55th
Annual Summer Conf., Crystal Mountain Resort,
Thompsonville. www.mcainfo.org
July 16-18: Florida Cemetery, Cremation &
Funeral Assn. Convention, Bonita Springs.
www.thefccfa.com
July 17-18: Associated Cemeteries of
Missouri Annual Convention, The Resort
at Port Arrowhead, Lake of the Ozarks.
westbydale@sbcglobal.net
July 17-19: Association of Independent
Funeral Homes of Virginia Annual Convention,
Homestead Resort, Hot Springs. www.ifhv.org
July 17-22: ICCFA University, Fogelman Conf.
Center, University of Memphis, Memphis,
Tennessee. www.iccfa.com
July 18-20: Colorado Assn. of Cemeteries
& Colorado Funeral Directors Assn. Annual
Joint Convention, Cheyenne Mountain Resort,
Colorado Springs. www.cofda.org
July 28-August 1: Cremation Assn. of N.
America 97th Annual Convention, Marriott
Marquis & Marina, San Diego, California.
www.cremationassociation.org
August 1-6: National Funeral Directos &
Morticians Assn. 78th Annual Convention &
Expo, Renaissance St. Louis Grand Hotel,

Missouri. 1.800.434.0058
August 3-5: Ohio Cemetery Assn. Annual
Convention annual Convention, Hilton Garden
Inn, Miamisburg.
www.ohiocemeteryassociation.com
August 3-5: Professional Grounds Management Socitys School of Grounds Management
Summer Confernce, Sacramento, California.
www.pgms.org
August 5-6: National Funeral Directors &
Morticians Assn. 77th Annual Convention &
Expo, Hilton Anatole, Dallas, Texas.
nfdma@nfdma.com
August 6-8: Washington Cemetery, Cremation
& Funeral Assn. 5th Annual Death Care
Professionals Convention, Emerald Queen
Casino, Fife. info@wccfa.us
August 14-16: West Virginia Cemetery &
Funeral Assn. 65th Annual Convention, Canaan
Resort, Davis. www.wvcfa.org
August 16-19: New York State Funeral
Directors Assn. Annual Convention & Exhibition,
Poughkeepsie. www.nysfda.org
September 9-10: ICCFA Cremation Arranger
& Operator Training, Dallas Institute of Funeral
Service, Dallas, Texas. www.iccfa.com
September 16-19: Selected Independent
Funeral homes 97th Annual Mtg., New Orleans,
Louisiana. www.selectedfuneralhomes.org
September 18: Massachusetts Cemetery Assn.
Suppliers Day Expo & Clambake, VFW Medway.
www.macemetery.org
To see all industry conventions and meetings for

a particular month, go to www.iccfa.com; select
Find a Member, then Industry Calendar.
September 20-22: Independent Funeral
Directors of Georgia Annual Convention, Hyatt
Regency, Savannah. www.ifdg.org
September 22-25: Catholic Cemetery Conf.
66th Annual Convention & Exposition, Town &
Country Hotel, San Diego, California.
info@catholiccemeteryconference.org
September 23-26: ALPAR (Latin America)
Convention, Fortaleza, Brazil. www.alpar.com.co
September 24-26: Monument Builders of
the Carolinas Annual Convention, Landmark
Resort, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina.
www.mbcarolinas.org
September 25-27: Devota, Messegelande, Reid
Im Innkreis, Austria. www.devota.at
September 29-October 1: New Jersey State
Funeral Directors Assn. Annual Convention,
Atlantic City, New Jersey, www.njsfda.org
September 30-October 2: ICCFA Fall
Management Conference, Loews Ventana
Canyon, Tucson, Arizona. www.iccfa.com
October 1: Ohio Cemetery Assn. Fall
Maintenance Sem. South, Ferncliff Cemetery,
Springfield. www.ohiocemeteryassociation.com
October 2-4: Pacific Northwest Monument
Builders Assn. Fall Mtg. & Skills Sem., Whistler,
British Columbia. www.pnmba.org
October 3-6: New York State Assn. of
Cemeteries 37h Annual Fall Conf., The
Sagamore, Bolton Landing. www.nysac.com
October 6: Ohio Cemetery Assn. Fall
Maintenance Sem. North, Catholic Cemeteries
Toledo. www.ohiocemeteryassociation.com
to page 70
July 2015
69
Classifieds
Check the classified announcements at www.iccfa.com/employment.htm

To place a classified, contact Rick Platter, rplatter@iccfa.com
Cemetery & preneed

receivables financing
We will lend your company money

on your receivables, or we will
buy your receivables if you prefer.
Either way, you retain access to
your customers. Fast closings, with
immediate funding of perpetual
care fees. Call Harry Van Sciver at
508.428.3458, or fax your request to
508.428.0607, or contact us through
our website at www.whitebriar.com.
Director of
administration
Gibraltar
Remembrance
Services LLC
is offering
the position of director of
administration. Qualified
candidates will be responsible for
managing, monitoring, training
and overseeing administrative
and company procedures and
systems throughout our cemetery,
funeral and cremation businesses.
Candidate must be proficient in
the following qualifications and
experience.
Fluent in business systems
software, including all applications
of Microsoft Office and similar
related financial software. Com
pany utilizes industry-based

software, Nexus and proprietary
point of sale software that candidate will become champion of.
Cemetery and funeral admin
istrative experience preferred,
however not an absolute requirement of the position if qualified.
Understanding of general
accounting, bookkeeping and
trust management and procedures,
including internal controls.
Ability to travel and work
independently. Must be selfmotivated, detailed and organized.
This role requires stellar personal
skills and ability to communicate
effectively with front line employees as well as with finance
manager and business partners.
Please submit resume, including specific experience qualifications, to Michael Uselton at
muselton@kays-ponger.com. All
inquiries will be held in strict
confidence. Gibraltar Remem
brance Services LLC is an equal
opportunity employer. Candidates
must be willing to submit to a
formal criminal background check
as well as a pre-employment drug
screen.
IMSA executive director
The International Memorialization

Supply Association (IMSA) is
seeking qualified candidates to
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apply for its newly created executive director role. IMSA comprises
the group of organizations and
their representative professionals
that offer products and services for
use in funeral-related commerce.
IMSA exists to create member
benefits by working in conjunction
with the various industry associations.
The complete position description follows. Additional information about IMSA is available
online, www.imsa-online.com.
Interested candidates should email
their resume to Gary Forston,
sales@forston.com.
International Memorialization
Supply Association: executive
director position description:
Position overview
Responsible for directing all
functions related to the operation,
administration and communication
of International Memorialization
Supply Association (IMSA).
Essential responsibilities
Maintain historical and
current records of IMSA.
Accept all incoming commu
nications to IMSA and relay
them as appropriate to IMSA
officers and members and respond
accordingly.
Review, verify and submit
bills for payment.
Collect annual membership
dues, send reminder notices,
maintain records of current and
past members and communicate
membership status to IMSA Board.
Work with the president to
develop meeting and conference
call agendas.
Prepare and disseminate
meeting materials and details prior
to the in-person meeting 30 days
prior.
Record and distribute draft
minutes for review with the
Secretary, then distribute to all.
Administer and implement
decisions resulting from meetings,
as appropriate.
from page 69
CALENDAR
October 7-8: Illinois Cemetery

Funeral Home Association 87th
Annual Fall Convention, Harrahs
Joliet Hotel & Casino.
www.ICFHA.org
October 9-10: California Assn. of
Public Cemeteries Ed. Seminar/Area
Mtg., Crowne Plaza Beach Hotel,
Ventura. publiccemeteries@aol.com
October 18-21: Australasian
70
ICCFA Magazine
Secure convention/hotel space

as required for IMSA Membership
Meeting.
Plan and coordinate meeting
logistics, including meals, AV,
room setup, transportation and
extra events.
Oversee and direct the work
of the marketing, fundraising and
other consultants.
Review all invoices against
contracts and services provided.
All other duties as assigned.
Qualifications
Bachelors degree required.
Strong interpersonal skills, strong
leadership skills and vision, along
with the ability to communicate
effectively, both verbally and in
writing, are essential. Position
requires an ability to handle
multiple projects and tasks, an
attention to detail and the highest
degree of confidentiality. Must
be able to work in a fast-paced,
deadline-oriented environment
with a variety of diverse individuals. Must be flexible regarding
work hours and have the ability to
travel occasionally. Knowledge of
all Microsoft Office applications
required. Prior experience in nonprofit/associations preferred.
Physical requirements
The physical demands
described here are representative
of those that must be met by an
employee to successfully perform
the essential functions of this job.
While performing the duties
of this job, the employee is regu
larly required to sit for a long
time period, use hands/fingers to
manipulate a computer keyboard,
communicate verbally over the
phone and in person and hear.
The employee is required to stand
and walk, sometimes bend, twist,
stoop, reach, kneel, crouch, grasp
and lift up to 35 pounds. Specific
vision abilities required by this job
include close vision, color vision,
peripheral vision, depth perception
and ability to adjust focus.
r
Cemeteries & Crematoria Assn.
Annual Conf., Hobart, Tasmania.
www.accaweb.com.au
October 18-21: National Funeral
Directors Assn. Annual Convention
& Expo, Indianapolis, Indiana.
www.nfda.org
November 9-11: Two Hearts Pet
Loss Centers Pet Loss & Grief
Companioning Certification Course,
Austin, Texas. 317.966.0096
r
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ICCFA Magazine July 2015

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July 2015

From Death Care to Memory Care

CHANGE THE FACE

Laser Engrave Every Memory

LEADING THE WAY

Astral Industries, Inc.

Light Blue, Pewter,

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BEST PRICE GUARANTEE.

Scenes from the 2015 ICCFA Convention

International Cemetery, Cremation and Funeral Association

Comments from people attending their first ICCFA Annual Convention

AwArds & reCognitions

Hall of Fame Award recognizes Fred Millers service to ICCFA

22 Keep in mind the message you convey in your help-wanted ads

26 Beware of the newest thing: Family suing over being excluded

30 Hospice: How, why to engage with hospice

Grow with Us!

Partners in business growth

R Loose has high expectations for his pre-need

Our unique relationship marketing database helps firms build a

42 Stock up on cash, not inventory

sALes & mArKeting

62 2016 ICCFA Annual Convention session

Web Expo directory of suppliers and

ICCFA Government and Legal Affairs

Subscribe to ICCFA Magazine

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Name as it appears on card

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Register online at mkjmarketing.com

2015 MKJ Marketing

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n To apply for ICCFA

ICCFA University: Just do it

s the parent of 18-year-old twins, I have

Darin B. Drabing, president

Michael Uselton, CCFE, president-elect

Susan Loving, managing editor

attend for just one or two years, or you may go on

Rick Platter, supplier relations manager

Daniel Osorio, subscription coordinator

2015 by the International Cemetery, Cremation

Like the ICCFA on Facebook & friend ICCFA Staff

ICCFA Government and Legal

Recent columns are available

he communications revolution has

16. Kandy Shackelford, Shackelford

6 At the annual State Association Leadership Lunch discussing what is going

What did you

11 Donald and Stella Taft, Community Cemeteries, Beaumont, Texas,

Hall of Fame Award recognizes

rederick Miller, CCE, CSE, received

the last day of his term, a vote was taken and,

Past Presidents Fred Miller, CCE, CSE,

The Hall of Fame award is the ICCFAs

New members elected, appointed to ICCFA board

he ICCFAs Board of Directors for

Funeral Home in Klamath Falls, Oregon;

TreasurerGary M. Freytag CCFE,

"

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