I had a really interesting idea coming back from the Ohio Funeral Directors Association this year about how funeral services can think about which vendors to bring on.

When you go to a show floor, you see a bunch of really cool services, lots of new interesting ideas. But you can’t implement everything. So how do you pick those one or two or three things that are actually worth incorporating into your program that year?

I recently had a talk with a funeral home owner in Ohio who I think is a really smart businessman as a funeral director.

And what he said  when I asked him how he decides between all these products and services coming in, he said he really looks at product market fit.

That’s a term we hear in a lot of other businesses, but I don’t think we hear enough in the funeral industry. For him, it’s about fitting what the family’s needs are to the products and services he’s offering.

Because the problem is you can’t offer everything. If you try to, it just overwhelms families. And that creates a bad experience.

So instead of trying to add more and more, the goal becomes clear. What actually fits?

And you can even start to think about it in terms of your actual mix. If you’re a funeral home that focuses on funerals and you have a 60% direct cremation rate, then in a way you have 40% product market fit for traditional funerals and 60% for something else.

The question here is, what are those “something else” needs, and are you actually built for them?

Understanding Product Market Fit

This idea shows up a lot in entrepreneurship and startups. Product market fit is one of those core ideas where, when you actually have it, growth feels effortless. Things just work. You don’t have to force it.

But you don’t really get there by guessing.

You can’t just throw spaghetti at the wall and hope something sticks. That might give you some signals, but it’s not a strategy. The better way is deeply understanding your market. And that’s going to be different for every funeral home.

And honestly, competitors are probably not going to tell you what’s working for them either.

So the question becomes, how do you actually understand your market?

Start ups used to do something called customer discovery interviews. You talk to customers, but you don’t pitch anything. You just try to understand their pain, how they think about problems, how they make decisions.

In funeral service, one of the most interesting places that insight already exists is in pre-need conversations.

Because those conversations are already happening with families. They’re already thinking through wishes, preferences, and decisions. Sometimes in high pressure situations, sometimes not, and what’s interesting is a lot of the feedback is not about big services. It’s small things. Music choices. Personal touches. Simple options like standard versus upgraded experiences.

Those details actually tell you a lot about what matters.

What the Market Says

If you look closely at your own data, it often becomes very clear.

I talked to one funeral home that had a big, beautiful legacy building with a chapel. But when they actually looked at usage, only about 5% to 10% of families were using it. Most families were holding services in churches they already belonged to.

So the question becomes very practical. If almost no one is using this, what is it actually doing for your business?

In that case, they even started thinking differently about space. Instead of maintaining a chapel that wasn’t being used, they considered converting it into something more aligned with what families actually want, like a gathering space or catering area where families can still come together after a service.

That is really what product market fit starts to look like. It’s what people are actually choosing.

And you can start to simplify it even further. If something is under 20%  usage, you should probably question whether it belongs.

If it’s above 30% it’s worth refining and understanding.

If it’s 50%, 60%, or 70%, that should probably be a core part of your identity.

Aftercare is a great example of this.

Because every family, regardless of whether it’s direct cremation or a full service funeral, still has to deal with what happens next. Closing accounts, calling government agencies, handling credit cards, fraud protection, estate tasks.

Every family gets that checklist. But most families are not actually prepared for how much is on it.

So when you offer real support there, you’re not just offering a service. You’re giving peace of mind. That’s why aftercare hits such a strong product market fit. Almost everyone needs it, even if they don’t fully realize it at the beginning.

And when you see it done poorly or cheaply, the problem shows up fast. I’ve seen cases where a lower cost aftercare solution only gets 12% to 15% usage. So even though it looks cheaper upfront, it’s actually not delivering value at scale.

In fact, in some cases it would have been more cost effective to just do a full service model that actually gets used.

One funeral home we knew had 3 chapels, what made one of those 3 stand out was that they installed a digital back wall in their viewing room, where instead of a single slideshow, you have a full wall of screens showing photos and videos of someone’s life.

It became the focal point of the room and families responded strongly to it. In some cases, they said people even delay services just to be able to have that experience.

This allowed them to discover what actually matches how people process memory and grief. It turns the experience into something more meaningful and immersive instead of just procedural.

Designing around what Fits

Funeral service is changing. Culture is changing. Family expectations are changing.

And the funeral homes that are going to do well in 10 or 20 years are the ones that understand what their market actually wants and build around that.

Not just continuing to do things the way they’ve always been done, assuming everything still fits the same way it did decades ago. Even people who still want traditional or religious services often want them expressed differently than before.

So the real work becomes continuously testing and adjusting. Not locking into assumptions.

Try things with a group of families. See what actually gets used. Ask if it helped. Look at what people respond to. Because at the end of the day, product market fit in funeral service is not about what sounds good in theory.

It’s about whether, in the moments that matter most, families feel like this actually fits what they needed.