The Story behind Performance Tracker

Lori Salberg, Director of J3Tech Solutions, joins Jake and Rob for the story behind Performance Tracker. Rob asks Jake about the system's origins and Lori shares where Performance Tracker is now and how it can assist Funeral Homes and Cemeteries track and improve the customer experience for their client families. To book a demonstration with Lori, select a time in her calendar that is convenient for you: https://meetings.hubspot.com/lori123 See the complete transcript here: Rob Heppell: Welcome to the Funeral X Podcast. I am Rob Heppell, and I'm joined with my Funeral Results Marketing business partner, Jake Johnson, and our special guest, Lori Salberg. Hey, Lori. Hey, Jake. Jake Johnson: Hey there, what's up? Lori Salberg: Hey. Rob Heppell: Hey, this is going to be exciting. So, today, we're going to be talking about Performance Tracker and its origin. And I think Jake, I'll just start with you, and tell us the backstory about why Performance Tracker was created. Was it named something else in the beginning? How was it started? Who was involved? And what did you use to get going? Jake Johnson: Absolutely. So, my role before coming on to Johnson Consulting was working at Palm Mortuaries, we were a very busy organization, with thousands of calls basically, and a large market share within Las Vegas, Nevada. And one of the things that you did as an arranger, or at least I did, is I would look at what the arrangement scores were. If we're doing surveying, looking at sales averages, and had an impact on how we're compensated, and it's tied to receivables as well. But I always thought that was very valuable. And so, when I moved to Phoenix to work at Johnson Consoling with my father, it just started off as my father and I, he has had two funeral homes here. And they had done surveying, but he had just acquired those funeral homes back. So, they had stopped it, and I wanted to see if I could implement a survey program within our own funeral homes, and see if I could scale it. So, I did. It was a Word document, mail merge. And quickly from there, with the clients that we were starting to build with Johnson Consulting, they had an interest in it. And the same thing, they were acquiring firms that had been used to doing surveying for accountability of the arrangement they have, and total overall performance of the business, or that location. And so, they were interested in starting it up, where they could outsource that. So, we started doing surveys that way. And it wasn't just surveys, those sales analyses as well. Data aggregation, all that kind of stuff. And so, we're doing that in Excel and Microsoft Word. And then, as the volume got too large, quite honestly, and a good problem to have, we gravitated to an Access database. And then, that was short-lived, because we were growing quickly. So, it was my first venture into software development, and having a data aggregation software that we would build that would then be known to be called the Performance Tracker. And so, the origins of that actually were through a gentleman by the name of Bill Bischoff in the industry. He had been around a long time. We're just talking about what does this thing does. And then, we settled on that name. So, it's evolved into what it is today, which we'll get into, but in very humble beginnings, for sure. Rob Heppell: So, it was more than just a survey tool of what, I think, a lot of funeral homes would think of is surveying the families after the service. This would also then look at, or get the information about the arrangements themselves, correct? Jake Johnson: Absolutely. Everybody would say, and they should say that they do surveys at one level or another. But this one takes it to another level with the way it aggregates data, the benchmarking. There are clear metrics that we've identified with why we ask questions on what a high-performing, average-performing,