2006, June 21

Well I sent off the final revision of the business plan for the position at El Camino.  Sharing the idea with a couple of friends they looked at me like I was nuts when mentioning that I may not be interested in taking the position.  I probably am.  Even if I have to supplement the household for a couple of years and don't net as much money I will still likely net more money and from then on I will be setting at a higher income level.  Waiting sure isn't going to improve anything, so then the only thing I have left to consider is Jacob and Kari.  They'll be ok, I just hope Kari relocates and starts acquiring new friends and makes the move rather than just being tied to the friend out here.  Anyway here is the final draft of the business plan:

Business Plan for El Camino Memorial Park

General State of affairs

• Approximately 1400 interments with similar mortuary case load

• Quota based primarily on new heritage with a large portion coming from higher end properties (properties over 50k).

• FS structure

1.      3 teams each with 6 to 7 counselors per team

2.      Rotating team schedule each team gets an opportunity on schedule and the ASD of the team makes up that schedule and runs their team.

Short-term business plan

• Go through the business process with each of the ASD’s as a trainee.

• Start ASD weekly review meetings based on tracking data.

• There is currently no obvious division in the office or the daily board volume report on how each of the individual teams are doing in addition to separating the main board into teams or at least have a team board.  Additionally rating some of the underlying priorities should be helpful.

• Follow through with the tracking system that Jerry has already started to put in place and start compiling numbers for counselor evaluations where they will be judged on the following categories.
• In Home/Office family follow up
• AN family to Heritage ratio’s
• Referral Development

• This process should be given to the ASD’s to do with subsequent group reviews done by me with each of the ASD’s.  I think this become the weekly ASD’s meeting where we focus on what their team is doing and then individually I can then review the counselors data and meet with the ASD and counselor on an individual basis.

• Additionally, in each team there are people who have community contacts that are probably not being utilized to their fullest extent.  If nothing else through the job of FS we come in contact with a community leader from time to time.  From there each team should be able to develop at least one community outreach event per quarter.  That would give us 12 community outreach events per quarter that would significantly impact the parks exposure.

• On this idea I was thinking an exemplary volunteer award or other iconic community leader award that could be given to community leaders through a special park presentation.

• Finally, the protection plan.  This must be simplified.  It’s not my goal to go through and change everything, which can easily backfire.  But the idea that there are options available to counselors who just want to take credit for someone else’s work is beyond me (based on what I’ve learned surely this is happening).  A good counselor does not worry about their families coming in and buying from other people they simply serve their families well and expect to be rewarded.  I don’t have a direct timeframe for making this change since it requires additional investigation into it’s merit’s but I’m sure it’s crap.

Goals for business plan

1. A refocus of activity on days that a counselor is not on schedule.  I figure that there are 30 days in a month and 3 teams, so each team gets only 10 days of up days and each counselor in the team may see about 8 out of each of those days.  So out of a 30 days work month each counselor is only up on schedule for 8 out of 22 to 26 working days.
2. Get the sales back up to 950,000 per month, with at least 110% of that being board volume
3. Have a solid activity plan for the other 14 days a month for each counselor.
4. At least 80% of in office or in home family follow up.