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Guest Vince Roberge of Johnson Consulting Group talks through the process of strategic planning for funeral homes. He shares the best practices when conducting a strategic planning initiative and what firms can expect after completing the process. For more information about strategic planning for your firm, you can contact Vince at 480-556-8520 or vroberge@johnsonconsulting.com.
See the complete transcript here:
Rob Heppell:
Welcome back to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell and I am joined by a special guest, Vince Roberge, from Johnson Consulting. Hey there, Vince.
Vince Roberge:
Hey, Rob. Thanks for having me today.
Rob Heppell:
Yes, this is great. Looking forward to it. Can you let the folks know, who are listening, what you do at Johnson Consulting?
Vince Roberge:
Sure, Yes. I’m working in a part of our business that is associated with business growth. So as you may know, and some of our listeners may know, people come to Johnson Consulting, operators come and give us a call and they are usually looking for one of two things. Either something related to moving on to the next chapter, selling a business, a big transition that looms or they are looking at solving a problem or growing their business. And so I work in that second part, the business growth aspect, and working with funeral home owners, funeral home operators in a variety of ways to just help them improve, help their businesses grow, help them achieve the potential that they have.
Rob Heppell:
Cool. Yes, lots of folks could use that help and it’s good that you guys are there to provide that. Hey, now before we get into it and I think we will go in a little bit deeper, let’s find out a little bit about Vince. So where did you grow up?
Vince Roberge:
I am a native to the Metro Detroit area of Michigan. So born and raised in Metro Detroit. Went to school here, even went to college in the area. And I have traveled a bit, but spent my first couple of years with Johnson Consulting down in the Scottsdale area there. And I guess one of the little silver linings of the pandemic would be the ability to get back to my hometown area. So I am based out of the Metro Detroit area currently. So that is where home is and that is where family and friends are.
Rob Heppell:
Oh, cool. And now what about funeral service? How did you get into the funeral profession?
Vince Roberge:
Well, I always like asking this question to any funeral director. I know you are a funeral director, I always like the good conversation with the funeral director, but everyone has their funeral service story, how they got into it. Mine, I think comes from, like any good journey has a story of being lost in the woods kind of thing, I think I could probably trace my funeral service story back to a time in my life when I was just wondering what was next. I had just graduated from college, was accepted into a couple of very good grad schools and that looked like the plan. At some point I deferred the admission to both of those and just wanted to make sure it was the right move and took a year, I wanted to take a year, and in the meantime spoke to a friend of a friend who is a manager of a very large cemetery in the Metro Detroit area.
He said, Vince if you are interested in a career that is service-oriented and a high degree of professionalism, something that is very real rewarding, I want you to go talk to Kevin down the street. He manages that funeral home down there, he’d be a good person to talk to. I followed the lead there and talked to Kevin and started out working at the funeral home unlicensed and I think the rest is history. I moved my way up from an apprentice to a licensed funeral director, to a manager, and Yes, it’s been quite a trip. I never really thought I’d be where I am today, but like so many of those stories, it’s the people in our lives and the relationships we have.
Rob Heppell:
For sure. So then, how long were you at the funeral home?
Vince Roberge:
I worked there for about six years and then the opportunity presented itself at Johnson Consulting. So I’ve been with Johnson for three years now. In looking back, Johnson Consulting Group was just one of those great opportunities for me to utilize some of my skills from my education and then the experience working at the funeral home. So it was a unique blend for me and just a great opportunity and the rest is history. It’s been a great three years here and look forward to more.
Rob Heppell:
Yes, it’s great when you have that Venn diagram when your skill sets or interests all overlap and you find yourself there right in your sweet spot, right? And you can have that impact on people with really specialized knowledge.
Vince Roberge:
Yes, that is right. For years when I was working at the funeral home, even when I was in management there, I thought that I was not fully utilizing some of my skills. And that is really what was most exciting for me to be a part of Johnson Consulting is to sort of tap into some of those areas and contribute in ways that I was not to before. So that was really a perfect alignment.
Rob Heppell:
Cool. Now, with your role there at Johnson Consulting, if you could maybe go a little bit deeper into some of the services that your department offers.
Vince Roberge:
Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yes, absolutely. Yes, I use that term, the differentiator of operators who are looking to move into the next phase of their life and their business life and for many of them looks like a transition of ownership versus the other folks who come to us who are often looking for a solution to a problem, or just to grow to their full potential as a business, as an organization. And that looks like a lot of different things to a lot of different operators. People come to us with different problems, but the experience that falls within the walls of Johnson Consulting is quite vast. It’s been a pleasure to work with colleagues of mine and just a tremendous amount of experience.
We typically would group or categorize the types of help that we provide to about four areas. Some of the things we do range from improving the service that funeral homes are offering to their client families to really focusing on creating exceptional moments for families. We have a workshop, we do some pieces of training on that. We closely monitor customer satisfaction reporting and want to keep that front and center with our clients. We work with clients in a variety of capacities. I work with some clients on a monthly basis, others quarterly, and some it’s just a project base type of work where we are solving a specific problem or helping them on a specific project. But customer satisfaction, the client experience, I mean, it is always central. As any operator knows, it is your biggest competitive advantage. And so there are a lot of things that we do in our department that are customer satisfaction oriented because we recognize that it really has a tremendous impact on the future growth of your market share as an operator.
Beyond customer satisfaction, we help clients on matters of the workplace, helping them to create an environment at their funeral home where people want to work there. I think in this labor market, that is something that a lot of operators are challenged with, just scarcity of licensed staff. And I hear a lot of questions about how to find people, but the question I always ask is how are we making our workplace marketable for the few qualified and talented individuals that are out there? And that looks like a lot of things. I mean, we can unpack that in another conversation, but there is a whole host of services that we offer from incentive compensation plans to simple elements of creating a workplace culture that can pay big dividends for an operator or an owner.
Outside of the workplace, we work with clients about marketplace strategy, driving preneed sales programs, monitoring performance in the preneed area. We work with them on making impactful community relationships and all areas in growing market share. I mean, that is really the metric, the performance indicator that we are looking at when we are working with our clients in areas of the marketplace. And I think that everything that we do, everything I have just sort of touched on briefly there, it all culminates and points towards exceptional financial performance, and we are big proponents of measuring and managing, and that means measuring financially.
So if we are providing world-class service, if we are taking care of the people within our organization and we are making good strategic moves in the marketplace, then, generally speaking, we are going to be doing okay financially. But we can not just let it be and that is why we work with our clients on managing financial performance, looking for sales opportunities, controlling expenses to the degree that they can be and looking for ways to boost profitability and EBITDA, all materializing in increased enterprise value. So, I mean, that is why people come to us. They are looking for long-term solutions. They have a five-year plan. They have a 10-year plan. They want to be the best funeral home in their market, and so we listen to them, we walk alongside them and we have a lot of tools to really help them tap their potential as an organization.
Rob Heppell:
Yes. I was talking with Jake here in a different episode and he explained how all of the services, and it is not by any accident, that they all form and point towards that, building that enterprise value. So it is just great to see where Johnson Consulting has come to because I was down, it would have been 2008 when I kind of last visited there, they were on the parking lot at Whitney & Murphy and there was just a small handful of people. Jake’s sister was the secretary. And then when I was reintroduced to the Johnson Consulting team, in October 2020, and saw this Zoom call with 50 people, I was like, what happened? So it’s really changed in the last decade. So that is cool.
Vince Roberge:
Absolutely. Yes. It’s really fun to be a part of an organization that’s growing like that. You’re a funeral director and you know that one of the most rewarding parts of being a funeral director is walking the family through that experience of grief and getting them to the other side of the services and getting them to a point where they can function and they can move on and begin to heal. And that is something that I think anyone who is a non-practicing funeral director misses. I mean, I think that most would be lying if they said they didn’t miss that part of it because it’s rewarding and it feels good.
I thought that coming to Johnson Consulting I would miss that tremendously, and I have to some degree, but what I tell you has been a surprise is the feeling you get when you are walking alongside an operator or an owner. I mean, it is not the same thing by any means, but there is something that’s very rewarding when you have a relationship with owners and operators in this profession and you are walking alongside them for years and helping them improve and being a part of their journey because there is a similarity there. And that is something that is been a pleasant surprise for me as someone who has had the funeral home experience.
Rob Heppell:
Yes. And you kind of live vicariously through them, right? As you help them, then that should help them serve more families and provide more meaningful services, right?
Vince Roberge:
Absolutely. Yes. I get excited when I see clients that I work with and the metrics that we monitor, whether they are customer satisfaction metrics or even financial metrics, and things are going well. We do things like employee satisfaction surveys, and you look at that, you look at customer satisfaction, you look at financial performance, you are looking at a business through all these lenses. And I tell you, it’s exciting when a business is firing on all cylinders and things are going well, people feel it, and you want to be a part of that and that is contagious.
Rob Heppell:
For sure. So Vince, you kind of touched on the metrics there and for today’s conversation, we are going to tackle the strategic planning process that you offer. Maybe let’s give a little snapshot of what it looks like after. What are the kind results? One of these marketing terms is like results in advance. So what could someone do after going through this process, how will things look different for them if we’re talking about having a proper strategic plan?
Vince Roberge:
Yes, sure. I would say that if a successful strategic plan has been completed, a funeral home organization will have a clear vision of the company that they are going to become, and they will also have a clear alignment of their leadership and the rest of the employees. I liken the strategic planning process to a journey where we need to know the destination first. We need to know what constitutes success. And then we need to get everyone in the same vehicle and we need to be moving together down the road achieving the milestones, getting to the checkpoints. And so after completing a successful strategic plan, and when I say complete, I mean, that might be one or two years. These aren’t initiatives, these aren’t big goals that are accomplished in a month. There are some steps, some big rocks along the way, but sometimes the plan won’t be completed for a year or more.
So I think if I were an owner or an operator and I looked back and I said this was successful, I think it would be fulfilling the full potential of the organization, getting to become the company that we want to become, and having alignment around that. Because we all know you can have all the vision and goals in the world, but if you don’t have everyone in the same boat rolling in the same direction, we are not going to get to the destination. I think that is a successful strategic plan.
Rob Heppell:
Absolutely. Okay, so let’s say my funeral home is going to engage you for this, what are the steps? Do we have to do anything ahead of time and what are the different analyses that you do?
Vince Roberge:
Yes. Great question. I think that whether one of your listeners gives me a call or not, there are parts of this next phase of our conversation that are going to be valuable and I think that anyone can take some of this away and use it to varying degrees. But any strategic plan engagement, it really begins with, first of all, determining who the stakeholders are. Who are the people within the organization that are going to be part of this planning process? Generally, that’s the leadership team, often management level and above. For midsize companies, that might only be three, four, or five people. For a larger regional organization, that might be a half dozen to a dozen or more. So we have to determine who those stakeholders are who are the participants of the plan.
Secondly is a pre-work questionnaire that is absolutely vital to getting the thoughts of all those stakeholders. And these questions they reflective. I’ll share a few of them with you, but they get us thinking of what the business needs on a grand scale. So often we’re working day-to-day meeting the demands of the business, taking care of families, taking care of our employees, putting out fires, fixing potholes, the analogies go on and on. Any funeral director knows that. You could fill your day, and you do fill your day, with all those things that need to be done, meeting the demands of the business. But how often do we get a chance to step back, take a global view of where we were, where we are now and where we want to be, and make some decisions around that, decide how we’re going to get there.
So in the pre-work, the stakeholders will all answer independently and anonymously, a series of questions. Questions as simple as, what went right and what went wrong last year? Things like, what are the big opportunities ahead of us? What are the big challenges that are facing us right now? Some of my favorites are the two questions, what are we doing or what am I doing that I shouldn’t be? And what am I not doing or what are we not doing that we should be? And that gets people thinking about how we’re spending our time and where we’re spending our capital and so on and so forth. And we also get people thinking about, what would it look like if a big disruptor came into the market? What would they do and how could we protect or leverage some of those ideas ourselves? So it is really these questions, and I’ve only touched on a few of them, and these are good questions to consider on a regular basis for any operator.
But what we’re doing is we’re tapping all the talent that’s within our walls. All those stakeholders, all those managers, and we get all these thoughts independently. And what we do is we roll all that up, we consolidate it, we organize those thoughts into a workbook. And that workbook goes to the participants of the planning session in advance of the meeting, usually a couple of weeks in advance, and they are tasked with reading, first of all, reading and reviewing their colleagues’ input and then coming up with the key initiatives. What do we need to do? In light of everything that we’ve put on paper, what do we need to do to become the company that we want to? And so people come to the planning session prepared, their workbooks are completed, they’ve done a lot of hard and heavy lifting at this point. A lot of thought hopefully has gone into the process. And then it’s a full day. It’s a private full-day, closed doors planning session. And the agenda of that planning session starts with a review.
I also didn’t mention that part of the pre-work is a SWOT analysis. I know many of our listeners are familiar with SWOT, strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. And we have everyone come together with their completed workbooks, all the work has been done and it’s an intensive day because we have a lot of open and honest dialogue about what’s the path that this company is on. What do we need to do over the next year, the next three years? And part of the value of the strategic planning process is the process. Any participant really needs to trust the process, you need to trust the facilitator.
I’ve done strategic plans recently for non-funeral home organizations, actually a large charity in the Phoenix Valley there. And the board members of that charity are all fully capable of facilitating a strategic plan. They’re all entrepreneurs, they’re all business owners themselves, non-funeral space, but they’re all high achieving individuals that could most certainly lead a strategic planning session, but they still call upon us because they want an outside facilitator, someone who is not working in their organization. And so it’s valuable to have that.
Through the process of the day, we air out all the thoughts, all the concerns, all the ideas. We at some point have a list of what we call divergent initiatives. The divergent initiatives are the ones that everyone thinks need to be done. These are my personal ideas. But we also very importantly, early in the day, identify what the north star of the organization is. And through a process of voting and challenging and keeping that north star in mind, we move from a set of divergent initiatives to a list of what we call convergent initiatives. And the big difference is that we go from what every individual thinks individually this company needs to a position where we’re thinking more globally with our ownership hats on in what this company needs. And when I say convergent, I mean that there’s alignment behind, not only the direction but also the initiatives that are going to get us there.
So that’s always a rewarding time of the planning session is when we start to formulate that direction and there’s alignment about what are these important initiatives? And then we take some time and build them out, so to speak. We talk about what success looks like for each one of these initiatives. We layout the tactical actions or the steps that need to happen in order to achieve that success. We list out the resources that are needed. We list out potential pitfalls, what could go wrong here? But we also want to know, what are the indicators? How can we measure this initiative? And so there’s a really detailed process that we go through to really build out or find out what this initiative means and how to achieve it. I guess we want to leave that session and for there to be a direction for all the participants.
And then I think finally the most important piece that I haven’t mentioned yet is that accountability is an absolute necessity when it comes to this type of planning process. I mean, you could have all the great ideas, you could have all the details about how to achieve it, you have all the steps laid out, but if you don’t have someone who’s holding you accountable, then there’s a very good chance that either the initiative won’t be achieved or it’s going to be achieved much later than possible. So any planning process that we go through, any type of engagement that we do is going to have a series of accountability meetings where the stakeholders dial into a call and report on what they have accomplished, what corrective action needs to be taken. And it’s a time also to celebrate wins, offer up some kudos and review the last 90 days. So these are typically done in a 90-day type cadence.
Rob Heppell:
Well, hey, Vince, I could only imagine a number of times when they’re going through the process, and as you say, trust the process, where, whatever term you want to use, like the light bulb goes off, the penny drops, where they’re thinking, oh, I didn’t think of that before or I didn’t think that was that important. So I’m sure you see that happen all the time, right?
Yes. Everyone has their own seat within an organization, and that’s one of the rewarding parts of this time type of project or this type of work is the alignment. You do have people coming from different seats in the organization. Their experience might be only in accounting or maybe they’re a location manager, everyone comes with a different perspective. And sometimes the conversations get a little heated in the morning when we’re reviewing the pre-work because people care about the organization they work for and they want what’s best for it. And we all have different ideas of what that means, but through a process of some dialogue and identifying the direction, identifying that north star that I referenced, that guiding principle, we do get alignment and there is that aha moment that can happen for many.
I think that regardless of whether everyone would agree on the direction, knowing the direction and knowing the reasons for their direction, having that global perspective, can be really valuable for an organization to achieve its full potential, but also to have some good morale along the way, and to have a really good workplace environment. Because you are tapping the experience, you’re tapping all the skills, the assets of your best people. Your management team, your leadership team. So it can be, I mean, if done well, it can be a very fruitful and productive day and year with strategic planning.
Rob Heppell:
Well, and the other part that I wanted to touch on there was when you’re talking about accountability, right? Because whether it’s a funeral homeowner or manager, they’ve got so many things to do, and if they were to try to run this themselves, where it needs to be someone’s responsibility to make sure these things happen and at least get scheduled, because I don’t have to inform you, but in funeral service, your day can change on a dime and so it’d be very easy to put off these meetings or planning sessions if it was just done internally. But when you have an outside leader or facilitator to walk them through, everyone is kind of more accountable now and will keep that as a priority going forward and then adjust their schedules accordingly.
Vince Roberge:
Yes. You’re spot on there, Rob. I think that tends to be one of those hidden value components of any achievement is accountability. And as it pertains to strategic planning, you leave the session, you might have four or five key company initiatives that are the most important initiatives for this year. And many times, there’s significant progress. Maybe one of them or two of them are being done within a quarter, the first 90 days. But every initiative has an owner. There will be an owner for every initiative, and the owner is not the business owner. We really talk a lot about, who’s the best person to have this initiative? How would someone’s time be best spent?
And the other thing that we always make clear is if you own an initiative, that’s not to say you’re going to do everything that is going to lead us to success. So we’ve defined success for this initiative, you’re the owner of the initiative, it’s not up to you to do every step. I mean, this might have a couple of dozen steps along the way to make sure that we get to a finish line in this particular goal of ours, but it’s up to you to manage the project. And what we’ve done is we’ve cascaded all the responsibility to the proper areas within the company, and then we have a date on the calendar, 90 days from now, where we are going to hear from each owner and each owner is going to report on what’s done, what’s not done and what are the action steps that are being taken.
I think everyone has been part of a meeting where you’re being called out to report on something and you want to make sure you’re able to report positively. I mean, anyone wants to be in that position. So just having that accountability, having that quarterly meeting where we’re going to be saying to our peers that we either achieved or did not achieve what we said we were. That’s a powerful motivator.
Rob Heppell:
Vince, not to put you on the spot here, but could you maybe share just some examples of initiatives that you’ve come up with past clients? Just for the folks listening to realize, okay, this is what an initiative would look like.
Vince Roberge:
Yes. Good point, Rob, because I’ve been talking a lot in theory up until now. And I would say that these initiatives are going to look different depending on the size of the organization. A smaller funeral home operation, some of these initiatives are going to look like things like hiring a key employee. Even for a big organization, maybe it’s hiring a general manager for an area who is going to oversee half a dozen, dozen funeral homes. That’s a big initiative, that’s going to take some careful planning, that’s going to be part of a bigger goal. Oftentimes the business life cycle, where an owner or operator is within their own ownership, comes into play within a strategic plan, and we get on the topic of succession planning and succession planning might become an important initiative, and what are the steps we need to take to be in a position to make the call to Johnson Consulting and that type of thing?
Larger acquisitions might be an initiative. Maybe there’s a strategic acquisition in the market, in a neighboring town and we see a lot of opportunity there. Maybe it’s opening up a crematory, maybe it’s opening up a low-cost brand or a segment of our business, large training initiatives. Maybe we have an organization, we have 50 to 100 employees. Maybe we need to implement some type of large-scale training process or program.
The other one that comes to mind is technology and the implementation of different technology at the funeral home. For a large organization, well, our listeners would certainly appreciate that changing over a large technology system, whether it’s your point of sale or website or something along those lines, that’s a big initiative. Those things take time and planning. And again, it might be part of a bigger north star, a bigger vision, but these are all examples of key initiatives that might need to be completed by an operation.
Rob Heppell:
That’s great. Yes. It kind of plants the ideas into what these initiatives could be like. What then Vince? So when we’re now a year into it and we’re reflecting back, and I know that you’ve said that you’re going to have some specific goals and what does the success of achieving that initiative look like. But for the entire process of doing this, what kind of ROI would an ownership see after going through that? Or how long would it take? I’m sure there’s going to be some soft metrics that, oh, everyone is, we’ve improved our culture and it’s so happier. Maybe we have a higher employee satisfaction score. I’m sure that’s going to be one of the questions in the management’s minds is, okay, if we’re going to do this and make this commitment, there’s a lot of money. So they want to see what that may look like on the other side.
Vince Roberge:
Yes, absolutely. I would say that everyone has ideas or goals, whether they’re personal or professional goals. I have my own personal goals. Any business owner is going to have goals that he or she wants to achieve in the coming year, five years. If you think back though, personally, for all of us, last year, how many of your big goals did you really achieve? Did you achieve one, two, three? My sense is that strategic planning, the big return on investment is the fact that you will get big things done. I mean, as simple as that. Big things get done because of the process. So you might have six or eight or 10 or more initiatives that are completed within a 12-month period.
It’s possible. It doesn’t always happen, but if people are serious and commit to the process and commit to the accountability meetings and really make it a priority, you have to take the mindset that working on the business is as important or more important than the day-to-day. And if you take that stance and you’re serious about the process, then strategic planning would be a good return on investment because you’re going to get big things done.
Rob Heppell:
For sure. Hey, Vince, this has been great. If someone’s interested in strategic planning with Johnson Consulting, what would the next steps be? How would they get started?
Vince Roberge:
Well, they can reach out to me. I’m sure you can include my email or contact information, or info@johnsonconsulting.com, and we can talk about what this would look like for your particular operation. I appreciate that everyone’s coming from different parts of the country, different sizes, and whether it’s a full-on strategic planning session like I’ve described, or something that’s more refined to what you might need, the bottom line is that the questions that we reflect on and some of the processes that we can implement, they can be done for any size organization. Even if you don’t call me, even if you’re a listener right now and you don’t call Johnson Consulting, think about where you want to be in three years. Think about where you want to be in five years.
And then think about all the talent that you have in your organization. Are you tapping it or are you just meeting the demands of the day-to-day? And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but I think you got to ask yourself there, is there more? Is there more that you can achieve? And there’s a way to get there. So again, I guess to answer your question, vroberge@johnsonconsulting or info@johnsonconsulting, or just call our main line and we’ll have a conversation.
Rob Heppell:
Well, that’s great. Hey, I really appreciate this. Vince, it’s great to chat with you.
Vince Roberge:
Yes, it’s been an honor. Thanks, Rob.
Rob Heppell:
You bet. And I’d like to thank you for spending your time with us today. It’s our goal to share our experiences and insights in the hope that it may help other funeral professionals like you achieve the goals that you want. Make sure you check back soon for another episode of the Funeral X Podcast. Until the next one, this has been Vince Roberge and Robin Heppell.
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