April 2017

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Page A8 APRI L 2017 FUNERAL HOME & CEMETERY NEWS S ec t i on A
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By Kristan Dean
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Chat
In 2000 Kristan Dean began working with her family to bring
Merry Christmas From Heaven® to all who need the gifts’ mes-
sage of Comfort, Love, and Faith. Today she is the Vice President
of Marketing and one of the primary members of her family’s
Bereavement Ministry.
Thanks, in great part, to the thousands of funeral directors and
retailers nationwide who make Merry Christmas From Heaven® a
part of their communities, countless numbers of families reach out
to their family every year. Their bereavement ministry helps families
realize that those in Heaven live forever in our hearts. Their love is
with us always.
Prior to Mooney TunCo, Inc. Kristan worked with companies nation-
wide helping them build revenues by creating greater sales opportuni-
ties through the use of sales intelligence and marketing alignment.
What happens when you have pain that others can-
not see? Do you push through and pray healing will
happen or do you slow down and pray that you will
find peace in the quiet? I ask because I see many paral-
lels between the pain of grief and the pain that my ac-
cident brings to my life.
No one can see the pain that shatters my head. Peo-
ple may notice my unsteady gait or that my words are
slower. You might even remember that my last few col-
umns are repeats and realize now that this is because of
my word issues and headaches that prevent me from
using a computer. Still you are not inside my body and
you cannot see my pain.
Just like no one can see the pain that grief creates in
the families you serve. People may see the sad face, of-
fer a tissue when the tears come, and hear the pain in
a person’s voice when they talk about how much they
miss the person they are grieving. They may even know
the pain of grief themselves.
We might believe that we know the pain of grief be-
cause of the many families that we help heal. Still, even
with all our experience, there is no way anyone can un-
derstand the absolute pain grief creates in another per-
son. Grief, like the pain from my accident, is invisible.
We can offer our shoulders, hearts, and expertise and
they will help, but we cannot know the pain another
person has. We can only empathize and pray our expe-
rience helps them find their path to healing.
Realizing that we do not know what pain is doing to
another person may be the key in helping them express
it and hopefully let it out. There is a breathing exercise
in meditation where you breathe in the positive and
breathe out the negative that no longer serves you. As I
breathe out the pain I find myself breathing in the gifts
that my injuries bring me.
Not being able to think or communicate at my speed
before the accident allows me to slow down and let
people express their thoughts more fully. My lack of
memory and inability to do anything for more than an
hour or two lets me see how much my sister Jacquelyn
supports me and how hard she tries to pick up the slack
my injuries create. Nomis giving me months to write
a new column that would take a day or two before the
accident lets me know that the words are in me even
when I cannot find them. The pain that brings me to
an all stop more times than I can count leaves me with
more than no TV, no computer, light, or movement.
My all stops give me the quiet that I need to find the
peace in between my breaths and the perspective to be
able to see the gifts within my pain’s challenge.
Grief brings a person to their own all stop, because
when a heart breaks a mind is unable to process and
when a mind is unable to process words are difficult
to express. When we realize that we cannot know the
pain of another person we begin to understand how
important our compassion, empathy, and caring are.
I pray that your support is one of the gifts your fam-
ilies realize and that your expertise helps everyone
you serve find the peace in between their breaths. I
look forward to hearing about the gifts you help your
families find as they heal their broken hearts. Please
join in our conversation on the Let’s Chat Blog at
email
me at or give me a ring at
781-331-5308.
Time may be only a
moment so keep a
memory
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CREMATION KEEPSAKES
According to the National Funeral Directors Associa-
tion, 86 percent of funeral homes in the United States
are privately-owned by families or individuals, and
only 14 percent are publicly held. This makes the in-
dustry ripe for further consolidation. Experts say that
funeral home owners, who are either planning to exit
the business and move on to the next phase in their
lives or want to stay involved but diversify their as-
sets, should avoid these six all too common mistakes
that can lead to leaving money on the table at close.
Not Knowing the Value of the Business
There is no such thing as a list price or formula to
fully evaluate a specific funeral home. Some buyers
will pay a premium over the economic value (base-
Funeral Home Owners Should Avoid These Costly
Mistakes When Selling Their Businesses By Carl Doerksen
line value solely based on earnings) if they value oth-
er intangibles such as reputation, location, ability to
expand or consolidate operations with nearby facil-
ities; while at the same time other buyers may pay
a discount if there is heavy customer concentration,
lack of a strong management team, stalled revenue
growth, or inconsistent earnings. It is a good idea to
hire a professional mergers and acquisitions team to
accurately complete an evaluation of your business so
that you have a good idea of what the current market
may offer for the company.
Not Recasting Earnings
Buyers are paying for your company’s profitability
now, and in the future. The only way to accurately
highlight your profitability is by recasting your histor-
ical financials. This can be done by removing discre-
tionary personal expenses, and non-recurring or one-
time expenses and related items, or even accelerated
depreciation expenses. This is especially important in
the funeral industry where many companies employ
multiple family members who may not be fully active
in the daily operation of the business. Use accounting
professionals to make sure that the items recast are ad-
equately documented and are realistic.
Failing to Cast a Wide Net for Buyers
It is our experience that the best way to approach
the market is to cast a wide net. Most sellers believe
that a local or regional competitor is the optimal buy-
er. Recently, we found that a publicly traded com-
pany was the best candidate to purchase one of our
clients. The deal included keeping the current owner
on as a consultant to further enhance the value of the
deal for the seller.
Not Having Your Documents in Order
You only get one chance to attract and hold a buy-
er’s attention. If your documentation is spotty or, worse
yet, full of errors, chances are good you will lose most
interested buyers. At a minimum you will need to pre-
pare three key documents: The Confidential Business
Review (CBR) – also called the Offering Memorandum
(OM), a Profile Letter – also known as the “teaser” and
a rock-solid Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA).
An Offering Memorandum is quite simply a sani-
tized version of the evaluation process we discussed
under the first mistake. However, it is more than sim-
ply your financials, (clean financials are vital) it con-
tains a full description of your business and its poten-
tial growth. And a word of advice: Never mention the
price you are after for your business in the OM, let
the buyer tell you what they will pay.
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