3 Ways To Help Customers Who Are Having A Hard Time Affording A Headstone

4 April 2018
 Categories: Business, Blog

Share

In a perfect world, every person that passed away would already have their funeral and burial expenses arranged and paid for. Unfortunately, this is most often not the case, as death can often be such an unexpected thing. This usually means that the burden of carrying the costs of a funeral and burial falls on the left-behind loved ones, and this is no easy financial feat. As the owner of a memorial headstone business, you will likely have a lot of people come in who don't have a lot of funding to work with to cover the costs of a stone. Here are a few things you can do to help them out. 

Create a financing program by working with a local lender. 

If you are an established headstone business, and there are local lenders who are willing to work with you, you may be able to set up a straightforward financing program for your customers. If people come in who need financial assistance, you can help them fill out a loan application and fax the application to the lender for approval. In most cases, lenders who work with businesses like yours will keep payments conservative and interest rates low because these costs are a necessary part of life. 

Remind customers that less lettering means lower costs. 

The more ornate and detailed a memorial headstone is, the more time-consuming it is for you to make. Therefore, if there is a lot of additional lettering on a stone, it can make the costs higher than what they could be. If a customer is having a hard time with the costs for the stone, make sure to remind them that the extra lettering will make the headstone higher in the end. If you have a portable engraving setup, you could even offer to add extra lettering later if they do get the money to add more at a later date. 

Allow customers to arrange their own installation when they can. 

If you are like most companies, you offer installation of the memorial stone when a customer buys from you, and you may even offer installation at a discounted rate than usual. However, for some customers, even the additional costs associated with having the stone installed can be hard to swing financially. Therefore, it is also good to remind them that some cemeteries allow DIY stone installation if it is done so to their standards. 

For more tips, contact a company like Memorial  Art Monument.