What Your customers should know before buying a headstone
What's going on guys? My name is Mike Allen Wade. I help people in the monument business traverse the modernization of our industry.
I want to talk about the things I think all customers need to know before they buy a headstone from you.
Be aware of what color they're actually wanting, what they have in mind, because you know, for us in the industry we can easily tell the difference between different colors. If someone just wants gray, they come in wanting gray.
You know, there's a difference between Elberton gray or if you get gray from Vermont or any of the different quarries because every quarry's a little different. And then not to even mention like the import, so China gray and stuff like that. A customer coming in has no idea about that. They just know they want gray and it, and they might have something in mind whether it's to match an existing stone that's already in the cemetery or they just want it to fit in better, in the row that they're in, in the cemetery. So I think there are a lot of monument companies that don't have examples Of the gray or any of the colors from the quarries that they're using. So I think it's, it's good to make sure you're on the exact same page with your customer and they're getting the color and the marbling within that stone that they're wanting from you. Even with American black, you have American black from Elberton and you have Pennsylvania black, that's got more of that marbling throughout it. When someone comes in just saying black, we need to like clarify and get on the same page as far as color.
You need to prepare them to be patient right now. I think it's a common mistake in customer service that you want to give them the good news, even if it's not always exactly a hundred percent true But we need to be preparing them for what we already know that the granite industry, the quarries, the wholesalers are very far behind right now. So you don't wanna say, oh, I can do a four to six-week turnaround when it’s gonna be more like four to six months. So we need to prep them to be patient with what's coming, and I think in that same vein, we need to tell the people who are running our front offices, who are answering the phone calls, and who's doing the customer service that transparency is king right now. So you don't want to just be limping them along saying one more week. Give me one more week. Give me one more week. I think whatever you know is exactly what you need to be conveying to your clientele. So if a quarry calls you and says, oh I'm not sure it's looking more like one or two months behind, don't call your customer and tell them four weeks and it'll be out. Tell them exactly.
Another thing is don't rush. Don't rush or make them feel like they can't take their time in the design process. This is something that's memorializing a loved one for them. Sometimes people come in too early and they need to take that time. They need to do a preliminary drawing, take it home, sit with it, and think on it. People feel like it's the last piece of the puzzle before they get the closure that they need. I just don't want anyone to ever feel rushed and end up with a monument that they have to replace later on because it wasn't what they wanted or they don't feel like it necessarily fit all their needs. So let people know during the design process to take it home, sit with it, and come back in a week or so.
Don't let them be overwhelmed with the choice. it's easy for customers to get overwhelmed quickly with all the different choices, all the different books, all the different specialty stones, colors, everything there's a lot out there. What I always say is if you have a customer that's getting overwhelmed, or if you're feeling like they're getting overwhelmed with the choices that are out. My best suggestion is to tell them to go to the cemetery where they're placing their Memorial and just walk around the cemetery, you want what's best for the loved one that passed away, but you want something that fits seamlessly into that cemetery where their loved one's going. So. My, go-to move is to just say, walk through the cemetery we're placing it in and see what's out there. If anything catches your eye design-wise, colorwise stone, take a picture and then bring it all back and then we'll sit down and come up.
Another thing that's very important for your customers to know is if they're getting a double stone, please know where the placement is. If you're standing at the foot of the grave, looking at the head of the grave, typically it's laid out man on the left woman on the right. But sometimes whoever passes away first will want to be buried next to someone in their family. So then they'll have to switch it to put them where they wanted to be. This happens so much so make sure they know the placement of the plots before you start etching the stone because once it's etched, there's no going back.
