Florist Reaches Out to Funeral Director

Home

Sales, Profit Builders

Sympathy Business

Sales, Profit Builders - Sympathy Business

Here at SAF we work hard to promote positive messages to funeral directors about the role of flowers in the bereavement process. Thanks to a generous contribution to the SAF PR Fund by Asocolflores, this year's efforts focus on an "open letter" ad campaign in monthly issues of the National Funeral Director Association magazine, The Director. We do this in hopes of creating top-of-mind awareness of flowers and why the use of the "in lieu of flowers" can be a detriment to florists, but most importantly bereaved families. But we have always said that this effort will only reach its potential when local florists reach out to their local funeral directors to establish a dialogue towards a better working relationship. I am happy to report that more and more florists are doing just that -- the latest being Karl Wirth of Wirth Florist, Inc. of Merchantville, New Jersey. Karl brought it up in conversation with the funeral director who presided over a family member's service. She had "no awareness of the sensitivity [of the use of the 'in lieu of' phrase]." Karl didn't only discuss it in passing, but took the reins and followed up with a nice letter to make sure he got his point across. He found SAF's suggested letter to be a good guide but used his own words to capture the spirit of their personal conversation.

This goes to show that while some funeral directors encourage the phrase so they don't have to deal with the hassles of transporting or cleaning up after the flowers, some may not even think about the ramifications of those four words. How does your funeral director feel about the phrase? Have you asked them? Maybe it's time to find out.

Comments

Nemesis

It's a very positive and optimistic post, I should say=) But no matter what attitude we have towards such things, the problem can be distinguished even more than serious, topical and urgent. Not so long ago I downloaded an interview with a person who knew much about the business from Music Search Engine http://www.mp3hunting.com Very cognitive and gives us real food for thought!

Wednesday 28 April 2010, 04:48

Post Reply