PUBLISHED: September 2026
By Todd Carlson, Executive Vice President and Chief Sales Officer at Funeral Directors Life
Quick summary
Growing your preneed program isn’t just about writing more contracts or hosting more seminars. It’s about making sure the foundation of your business is strong enough to handle the extra weight. Before you add a new location or ramp up your marketing, you need to make sure your goals, process, and people are all on the same page. Scaling with clarity is the difference between a thriving business and a staff that’s just plain burnt out.
Many funeral home owners reach a point where preneed is no longer just a "side project." It becomes a core part of the business. You’ve put in the work, you’ve seen the results, and you understand how an active preneed strategy protects your future.
But then, things get complicated:
Maybe you’re opening a second location and realizing you can’t be in two places at once to oversee every preneed lead.
Or maybe your single location has become so busy that your team just can’t keep up with the phone calls anymore.
Growth is a magnifying glass. At this level, "more" usually just means more chaos. If your preneed success depends on one or two people doing everything, growing your preneed program will eventually cause things to slip through the cracks.
Before you take your next big step, here are 6 questions to help you grow your preneed program with confidence and for long-term success.
To keep your preneed program consistent across multiple locations, you need a single, active strategy that ensures every family receives the same education and funding options.
The biggest risk in growing is that your preneed program can feel watered down. You might have one location that is proactive and educational, while your new branch still treats preneed as a passive filing cabinet.
Scaling your preneed program across locations requires:
One message: Make sure every staff member, regardless of location, uses the same educational approach to help families understand the value of preplanning.
One funding standard: Avoid creating confusion for families by making sure your contract prices, travel protection options, and funding products are consistent.
One lead system: Use one tool to track every preneed lead across your entire organization, ensuring a lead doesn't get lost or fall through the cracks.
One view: Seeing which of your locations are protecting their future market share and which ones are falling behind is a must when trying to scale your preneed program.
Main takeaway: As you grow, you need to move away from letting each location do its own thing. Use one central system to track every family you talk to so you can see exactly how the business is performing across all your locations at once.
It’s time to invest in professional marketing when your staff is spending more time "hunting" for leads than sitting down with families.
A single-location funeral home can often get by on word-of-mouth. But a growing business with multiple locations needs a predictable way to reach families who haven't walked through your doors.
If your team is waiting for the phone to ring, your marketing is the bottleneck. Scaling requires a marketing plan filled with digital ads, social media, and community education events that work in the background to keep your preneed calendar full of qualified appointments.
Main takeaway: Scaling requires a shift from "passive" marketing to a predictable way of finding new families. Look for a marketing plan that reaches people where they are, whether that’s online through social media and search ads or in person through community events and seminars.
When you inherit a preneed book through an acquisition, you must audit those contracts to see if the growth on the policies will actually cover the rising cost of your services.
For funeral home owners who are growing by buying other firms, that old filing cabinet is a major financial responsibility. An acquisition is more than just buying a building. You’re inheriting promises made years ago to families.
Before you move forward, you need to know:
The shortfall: Will these preneed policies pay for the future services families expect today? If there’s a gap between the policy value and your current prices, you need to know now.
The relationship: When was the last time anyone spoke with the families who own these preneed policies? An inherited book is a goldmine for new leads if you have a plan to re-engage them.
The risk: Are these preneed policies still active? Have the families moved away or stopped paying?
Main takeaway: Never assume an inherited preneed book is in good shape. Have a preneed expert look through every contract to see if there is a gap between the policy value and your current prices. Then, reach out to those families to introduce yourself before a competitor does.
A growing funeral home needs a back office that can spot preneed-specific problems, like lapse trends or funding inefficiencies, before they hurt your bottom line.
As your preneed backlog grows, small mistakes in paperwork or accounting can turn into massive liabilities. That means you need to move past just looking at last month’s sales. You need to see where your business is headed by spotting trends in your average contract sizes and funding quality, so you can make better decisions about your funeral home’s long-term value.
Main takeaway: When you’re writing a high volume of preneed contracts, doing the math by hand is a recipe for trouble. Use a funeral home-specific accounting service that can show you the real-time health of your preneed program and warn you about potential financial problems before they happen.
You should consider adding a dedicated preneed sales professional to your staff when your at-need volume starts to get in the way of serving families who want to plan ahead.
In a smaller firm, a "jack-of-all-trades" approach for your team can work fine. But as you grow, preneed often becomes the first task that gets pushed to the bottom of the to-do list.
If a preneed lead sits on your desk for 3 days because your team is focused on an at-need service, you aren't just "busy"—you’re losing future market share. Families looking for information today won't always wait for you to become available. They’ll call your competitor down the street.
A dedicated professional ensures that every family gets a prompt, caring, and educational experience without pulling your funeral directors away from the families they are serving right now.
Main takeaway: You’ll eventually reach a point where you can’t expect your funeral directors to do everything. Hiring a dedicated preneed sales professional makes sure that families who want to plan ahead get the attention they deserve, even when your funeral home is at its busiest.
The best partner for preneed growth is one who manages the specialized complexities of preneed, like sales training, lead generation, and funeral home-specific accounting. That way, you can stay focused on doing what you do best – serving your families.
The most important thing to realize is that you don't have to do it all yourself. In fact, trying to be an expert in every area of preneed usually just slows you down.
Scaling is all about having the right support. Whether it’s a dedicated preneed sales professional to help interested families or an accounting team to audit your inherited books, the right partner helps you grow your preneed backlog without the added stress.
Main takeaway: Take a look at the companies you work with today. If they only provide the "funding" (the insurance or trust) but don't help you with marketing, sales, or accounting, they might not be the right partner to help you reach the next level.
Building a successful preneed program is a huge win for your funeral home, staff, and community. And building a preneed program that can grow with you adds to your legacy.
At Funeral Directors Life, we built our entire company to be the "all-in-one" solution for growing funeral homes. We’re more than a preneed company, which is why we can provide what you need to scale every point we discussed:
Managing multiple locations: Our digital tool, DIGicon, is the funeral profession’s most advanced preneed contract sales software, designed with funeral professionals in mind, and lets you see every lead and contract across all your locations in one simple dashboard.
Finding new families: Our digital marketing packages and experts do the heavy lifting to fill your calendar with appointments so you don't have to go "hunting" for leads.
Buying a new business: Our mortgage lending team can help you check the health of inherited contracts and provide the funding you need to grow.
Tracking your success: Our accounting services handle the complicated math and paperwork so you always know exactly how much your business is worth.
Finding the right people: Our Select Producer Program finds, hires, and manages full-time preneed sales professionals for you, so your funeral directors can stay focused on at-need families.
Fill out the form below to learn more about all the ways we can help you grow your funeral home!