It's time to spring into action

Blake Swinford,
Project Manager

Spring is in the air. The sun is shining. Flowers are blooming, the grass is turning green again and families are visiting cemeteries to spend time with their loved ones. Are you ready?

With Memorial Day right around the corner, your cemetery grounds will be full of families visiting and sharing memories. They may be interested in restoring their loved one's existing memorial, adding a medallion for extra personalization or even upgrading to something new. Talk and share stories with them during their visit. This is a great opportunity for you get to know the families in your community and learn how you can better help them.

If you are a memorial company, this time of year is a great opportunity to visit your customers as well. Go see them and talk to them about your products. Learn more about their business and how you can help them grow. If there is an opportunity to introduce a new product to them, see if you can help them start including it in their product selection before Memorial Day. You have been cooped up all winter, get out there and enjoy the weather.

And, as always, if you have any questions about the products we offer, call Customer Service at 800.798.4900.

This article originally appeared in Modern Memorialization, Trigard Memorials' weekly electronic newsletter featuring information for the funeral industry. Sign up for your free subscription at http://www.trigard.com/thursdays.

Honor thy neighbor with a bronze memorial

John Albers,
Plant Manager

Memorialization doesn’t just occur in our cemeteries. It appears in parks and schools, government buildings and grounds from municipal to federal. Memorials are dedicated by family, friends, shipmates, classmates and teammates.

Recently, I helped a group of elderly men, a morning coffee group, design and set a small bronze memorial at the base of a flag pole which stood in a neighborhood park. The plaque included the gentleman’s name and the quote, “Keeper of the Flag.” Obviously, this departed friend had seen to it that Old Glory was always in good shape and displayed properly. The dedication was an informal ceremony. A half dozen gentlemen, some of their wives and the widow of the deceased were present. There was immense pride on the faces of everyone in attendance. The name of their friend, who they loved and appreciated so much, was now a permanent reminder of the memories they shared while building and caring for the park.

I hope you’re always finding new ways to build bridges between your business and the community. It could create opportunities for people to keep memories alive and honor those that had such great impacts on their lives.

This article originally appeared in Modern Memorialization, Trigard Memorials' weekly electronic newsletter featuring information for the funeral industry. Sign up for your free subscription at http://www.trigard.com/thursdays.

How flexible are you?

Scott Darby,
Media Manager and
Certified Funeral Celebrant,
Camino del Sol Funeral Chapel
and Cremation Center

I am the last of my generation to join the family business. Before training to become a funeral celebrant, I had a thirty-year career experience that consisted of performance, theatre technology and finally event coordination. I consider myself to be somewhat of a Renaissance man, having had my hands in several pots along my career trajectory. I have lived in Chicago, New York City, Austin, and currently Phoenix. I come from the worlds of audience satisfaction and customer service.

We’ve all read the trade magazines and it’s no secret that cremation has taken over as the preferred method of disposition. This may not be great news to many of us in the business of memorialization. Me? I see it as a challenge. Coming from theatre and hospitality, I am used to hearing, “This is what we need. How do we make it happen?” I want to bring this attitude into the funeral industry. Instead of looking at this information as a hurdle, I challenge you to see it as an opportunity to make memorialization better than it has ever been.

I remember a car drive I recently took with my sister, Karen. We were driving down a palm tree-lined street. It was the beginning of monsoon season. I love a good thunderstorm and was expressing my excitement about the coming weather. The monsoons in Arizona can get pretty severe with high winds, rain, amazing lightning shows and huge claps of thunder.

I said to Karen, “I can’t believe there are so many palm trees around. They must get destroyed during the monsoons.”

“Actually,” she replied, “that’s why they are so tall and thin. They are very flexible and bend with the wind. They do very well in the weather.”

Since we are being honest, I have to let you in on a secret. I’m not supposed to be living in Phoenix. By now, I was supposed to have a very successful career as an actor on Broadway, and be lounging by my pool in the Hollywood Hills, reading scripts for my movie debut. What happened?!?
I tell you this story to drive home the importance of taking risks and being flexible with the results. Be the palm tree that bends in the wind and survives the highest of winds to grow even taller.

People and companies are working differently than they have in the past. The internet has made the mobile workplace not only tangible but successful. Small businesses have to fight for their market share against corporations. There’s no way around it, we have to learn a new ballgame. This sounds daunting, I know. But the way I see it, we have the chance to create an even deeper meaning for memorialization and its importance to society. The world is open to us. It is an exciting time to be in our industry. Let’s shift the paradigm from, “That’s how we’ve always done it,” to “This is what we need. How do we make it happen?”

Cremation is a new frontier and I beg of you, don’t waste this opportunity. I implore you to be willing to take a few curveballs in the face. I promise you, after getting a few in the kisser, you’ll learn how to dodge them.

This article originally appeared in Modern Memorialization, Trigard Memorials' weekly electronic newsletter featuring information for the funeral industry. Sign up for your free subscription at http://www.trigard.com/thursdays.

The power of the process

Ethan Darby,
Director of Business
Development

Do mistakes happen often in your business? Are those mistakes preventable? Do certain tasks seem like they take longer than they should? At the end of the day, do you ever feel like nothing was accomplished? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to take a step back and look at your processes.

At Trigard, we recently stepped back and took a good, long look at our own processes. And, I must admit, it can be very difficult to diagnose an issue with the way you do things, especially when you do those things every day.

The route that we took was called Value Stream Mapping, which can be conducted on any type of process, no matter if it is a manufacturing, administrative or service type of process. A Value Stream Map is basically a list of every step of your process, how long that step takes to complete, how accurate that step is, etc. It helps you to understand what steps are adding value that your customer is willing to pay for and which steps are a waste.

You have already seen some of our successes due to a recent Value Stream Map that we conducted on our bronze order process. Now, you are receiving proofs a lot quicker than before; and Customer Service can better track orders throughout our plant.

If you think your company would see some value in doing a Value Stream Map exercise with your staff, I highly encourage you to do it. For one, your staff knows the processes better than you do and they can provide you with solutions that they believe in. At Trigard, we cut our lead times in half and greatly decreased the number of mistakes we make. I encourage you to give it a try. We have seen the value, and we hope you do too.



This article originally appeared in Modern Memorialization, Trigard Memorials' weekly electronic newsletter featuring information for the funeral industry. Sign up for your free subscription at http://www.trigard.com/thursdays.