For an industry historically dominated by small businesses, funeral service is fairly capital-intensive. Most independent funeral home owning families still have the bulk of their net worth tied up in the value of the business and real estate. But what is it worth? It is fairly easy to set up a brokerage account to buy or sell stocks. You can instantly know the exact value of your holdings and sell some or all of your positions in a few key strokes. Selling your house is a little trickier. You can get a pretty good estimate of value from recent comparables and complete a transaction in 15-60 days depending upon the pricing, financing, and market conditions. Valuing a funeral service business is trickier still, and the pool of legitimate potential buyers for a particular business is often limited to a half a dozen or less.


If you own a funeral service business, it is crucial that you understand and monitor the value. It is even more important to have a business succession plan in place, even if you are decades away from retirement. Chris and Kevin founded Memorial Consulting Partners because they saw that business owners needed an independent resource to help them understand their options in succession planning and selling their businesses.