📘 What You'll Learn
The Death & Dying Ecosystem: Why the internet isn't your only lead source and how hospice workers, hospital social workers, SNF staff, coroners, and clergy already sit between you and your next case.
Why Hospice Is the Starting Point: With 1.7 million Americans receiving hospice care annually (over 50% of all U.S. deaths) and an average patient stay of about 20 days, hospice organizations are the single largest concentration of families about to need your services.
Education Over Sales. What Actually Gets You in the Door: Why leading with educational content (powers of attorney, VA benefits, Social Security, death certificate guidance) earns trust and repeat invitations, while branded sales pitches get your flyers thrown away.
The Step-by-Step Relationship Building Process: A repeatable five-step playbook; Identify hospice providers, Connect with the administrator or social worker, Offer an educational in-service, Host a facility tour, and Repeat on a consistent cadence.
Materials That Stick vs. Materials That Get Tossed: The difference between branded flyers (quickly discarded) and educational resources like checklists and guides (photocopied and pinned to cubicle walls).
Competing on Value When You're Not the Cheapest: How to handle price-driven hospice referrals, differentiate yourself from online-only and corporate-owned competitors, and use consumer-advocacy flyers to educate hospice teams about who's really behind the brand names in your market.
🌟 AMA Summary
Our May AMA kicked off a new topic with "The Referral Factory”. The premise is simple: your customers aren't just the families Googling "direct cremation" at midnight. They're also the hospice workers, hospital social workers, SNF staff, and clergy who talk to those families every day before a funeral provider is ever chosen. The session made the case for investing in these relationships alongside digital ads, not instead of them, with hospice as the primary focus since over 50% of all U.S. deaths involve hospice care and the average patient stay is only about 20 days. Will broke down the cost-per-acquisition math: digital ads run roughly $200 per case every time, but a single in-service visit costs about $200 in catering and printed materials pays for itself on the first referral and gets cheaper with every one after that. Ten referrals from one visit? That's $20 each. The team walked through exactly how to get in the door, starting with the administrator or lead social worker (not the receptionist) and requesting time in their IDT or IDG meeting. The biggest takeaway on approach: don't sell, educate. Leading with useful content guides on powers of attorney, VA benefits, Social Security, death certificates is what earns trust, gets you invited back, and produces materials that hospice workers actually keep and share rather than toss. The Q&A brought standout contributions from attendees. One provider from California shared a decade of experience doing this work and offered detailed tips on presentation setup, from branded cookies to logo'd flower cards to trifold flyers that walk families through the arrangement process. The session wrapped with a clear action plan: map your local hospices, find the decision-makers, draft one educational resource, and schedule your first visit within 30 days. The approach compounds over time, so starting is more important than being perfect.
📹 Full Video
Download the Sample Family Resource Handout 👇