We have found in Australia in the short time we’ve been there that people have chosen to spend more on funerals. I want again to emphasize “chosen.” It’s been their choice. The fact that our revenues per funeral have grown in Australia is because the Australian public have demanded it. In the U.K., that’s our goal, as well.
There is a segment on SCI’s immediate predecessor, one Howard Hodgson, known as the “yuppie undertaker,” a great fan of Mrs. Thatcher and one of the entrepreneurial stars of the Iron Lady’s regime. He describes how he achieved economies of scale via the “clustering” strategy, refurbishing funeral parlors, buying new hearses, and adding services like embalming, in fact, preparing the ground for SCI, to whom he eventually sold.
According to “Over My Dead Body,” 50 percent of the British dead were embalmed in the Hodgson era; yet the
I was fortunate to be given what is known in the trade as a “cameo appearance” in the video. This took place in a large and well-appointed undertaker’s showroom where Derek Gibbs, owner of the London Casket Company, explained the offerings. He obligingly raised the casket lids to display a variety of beauteous linings in “luxury velvet” or “high-quality crepe.” Best of all was “The Last Supper,” described in the catalogue as “mahogany finished poplar timber, cream madeira crepe interior. Scene of The Last Supper colour insert in lid. Swing bar handles and adjustable bed. Angel corner pieces supplied on request at no extra cost.”
“Oh, how absolutely smashing,” I said. “I think they’re lovely, they’re absolutely top-quality,” replied Mr. Gibbs. “We do not hard sell them at all. They really just sell themselves.” We had the following conversation:
JM: But they must cost a fortune. First off, how much is the wholesale cost?
DG: Well, we supply purely to the trade, so what funeral directors do in this country is they buy the casket from us, and then they add it to the cost of their traditional funeral service.
JM: How much do you charge them for this, for example? You charge them how much?
DG: Well, I would be loath to say, because as I say we supply to the trade and they would actually add this to their traditional funeral.
JM: That’s why I wanted to find out. How much do you pay for it?
DG: I don’t really want to discuss what we pay—is this a rehearsal?
Long accustomed to the reticence of American funeral directors on the sensitive subject of the wholesale cost of caskets—one of the best-kept trade secrets—I was not surprised by Mr. Gibbs’s reluctance to disclose prices. But as it turned out, this was by no means the end of the matter. Some weeks later, on January 30, 1995, Mr. Gibbs wrote to the Broadcasting Complaints Commission, which is responsible for maintaining standards of fairness and privacy. (Its function is roughly parallel to that of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission.) His letter was full of anguish:
Apart from one small moment, I thought that I handled myself well and gave sensible and reasonable answers. I accepted that my products are very foreign and extravagant but explained that there was a demand for elaborate high quality burial caskets.
It was to be my first appearance on television and so I told all my customers, friends and family to be sure to watch it. You can therefore imagine my acute embarrassment when the program turned out to be a complete hatchet job on the industry that I serve….
At the time, I tried to laugh it off…. As time goes on, I felt increasingly angered by the whole affair. Every customer that I visit taunts me with the phrase, “This is only a rehearsal, isn’t it?”…
Reading this letter, I could not fail to be impressed by the poignancy of Mr. Gibbs’s experience. However, it hasn’t hurt his business. In April 1996 he told an interviewer that his casket sales for 1994–95 had been 312—up from 242 the year before. “It was slow going to begin with,” he said, “but our sales have grown steadily over the years. This last quarter, January, February, March, has been our busiest quarter ever. So it’s getting better. People like the idea of preservation. That is the point of the sale.”
Fast-forward to 1996. SCI has now held sway in this scepter’d isle for two years, long enough for a preliminary estimate of its impact on the British funeral scene. The
The Americans pioneered a fast-food, hard-sell approach to death. It is not the British Way. Sarah Bosely and Peter Godwin investigate creeping disneyfication—and soaring prices—in the British funeral industry.
It’s the ultimate commercialisation—the final tastelessness. McDeath is on its way to a funeral parlour near you. The Americans are here, although you may not yet have noticed it. We British don’t talk about these things. But there they are… gearing up to effect a huge change in the British way of death.
The BBC’s “Public Eye” obliged with a documentary broadcast on February 17 entitled “Pay Now, Die Later.” Unsurprisingly, the presenter tells us that SCI refused to be interviewed for the program. But as is often the case, some of the best copy was mined from “internal documents” procured by some light-fingered sleuth on the “Public Eye” team.
For example, we are treated to “notes” issued to “SCI funeral directors in Britain to help them to overcome their ‘difficulty combining their helping role with that of a business role’ when helping a client to choose a coffin.” And here are the notes, eerily reminiscent of SCI’s directive to its Australian employees (see chapter 16, “A Global Village of the Dead”). It’s a small, small world.
Present the coffin range to its best advantage.
Direct the attention of the family to the highest quality item on display (perhaps the Regal).
Next present the Crown.
Then present the Classic Royal, and so on in descending price order.
Know how to respond to objections: Respond with empathy, not defensiveness or aggression or impatience. For example, “I can understand your concern about the price but let me explain the difference in design and manufacture again.” Or for example, “Yes, I can see your point about them just going into the ground, but we need to provide an extensive range like this in order to suit everyone’s taste.”
So far so good, but that’s only for starters. Through more internal documents, “Public Eye” discovered that SCI was disappointed with the low income from “memorial sales,”[23] which, according to a memo to its general managers, is “without a doubt the single most important area of our activity to be improved.” To remedy the situation, SCI launched a new sales program, its details spelled out in the memo:
All families that we have conducted a cremation [for] in 1995 but who have not purchased a memorial from us… to be contacted by letter with a phone contact follow-up where possible …
In the case of some of our larger volume locations, this will require our contacting upwards of 1,000 to 1,500 families…. Do not be overwhelmed if there are large numbers of families to be contacted. Large numbers only mean big opportunities! If all you do is post 100 letters a week, this is 100 possible sales that you would otherwise not have.
The unfortunate inclination of many survivors to scatter cremated ashes over sea, land, or in the Gardens of Remembrance adjacent to British crematoria has long been a major headache for the funeral industry, resulting as
