During rehearsals before Sunday services, the monitor mix (A2) guy walks onto the stage and approaches each of the vocalists one at a time and has a brief conversation while looking between the singer and the iPad tablet in the A2’s hand. During these brief 15 to 30 second chats, the vocalist removes one of […]
Your business may have the coolest AVL product or service on the market, but amassing more emails in your prospect’s Inbox isn’t helping you sell even one of those great new products. Why? As decision-makers and consumers, we’re inundated and overloaded with information and emails. We’re deluged by data. What we don’t need to know is […]
How much budget should AV industry companies allocate towards marketing to the house of worship vertical? The answer is likely a surprise for any company that’s not spending on this >$1B annual spend segment of the overall AV industry. In 2018, the American Marketing Association, in partnership with Deloitte and Duke University, published the bi-annual […]
Five years of highlighting the best, touching on the worst and recommending some serious advertising changes for the audiovisual industry around the House of Worship (HoW) market has a few companies embracing the church market, but most manufacturers and systems integrators still have a lot to learn about reaching church buyers. The top House of […]
Pastors don’t need high-pressure sales, slick marketing or churchy language. In fact, these three are red flag warnings to a vertical market used to being sold what they do not need. Instead, the three essential soft skills for selling AV to churches are a helpful challenger, intentional communication and value-as-a-service. All three of these lean […]
Question: How do you lead prospects from unique markets and industries down a buyer’s path to a purchase? Answer: You reverse-engineer the customer’s journey. It’s actually a straightforward process of delivering value along the customer’s path when you position your brand, products and services according to their vertical market. In a previous article, I shared […]
Automation isn’t new to the audiovisual industry, but a new kind of automation for this technology-focused trade will be centered around automating the customer’s buying journey. As innovation has led the consumer markets to automate the discovery process for buyers, so too has the time come for the long-established AV industry to adapt and embrace […]
Helping prospects and clients inform themselves during their customer buying journey is not a one-size-fits-most process due to the exponential growth of online search. Instead of manufacturers and systems integrators publishing generic product features, benefits and specifications, today’s influencers and decision-makers are searching for how products work in their unique vertical markets and applications. To […]
When does selling audiovisual technology shift away from the outdated features and benefits sales model and transform into something entirely different? Something so radically divergent that it actually makes sense to an AV industry in transition? 2018’s technology stack is here with the answer: when vendors leverage the social, marketing and sales technologies to go […]
When selling to churches long enough, a pattern becomes patently obvious: Some church volunteer teams are better than others, regardless of size or budget. Why is it that some church volunteer teams ‘just get it’ and/or are more effective than others? If you’ve sold to, trained or been involved with church AV volunteerism, chances are you’ve […]
Audiovisual (AV) vendors often see themselves as the expert and church buyers as wanting their expertise. This leads to the slippery slope of blurred differentiators, which reduces the vendor’s position as a solution provider down to a commodity sales provider amidst the mass of competing vendors. Instead, AV vendors who will be most successful in […]
There are over 1 billion reasons for audiovisual (AV) vendors to sell to over 300,000 churches in the United States alone; those reasons all have President George Washington on the front. And those billions of reasons are spent every single year by churches. This represents an opportunity of taking responsibility for church AV sales. With so […]
People are people, so how people make decisions is a mix of intellectual and emotional thought patterns. This is true for the audiovisual industry and every other industry. In a sense, therefore, it may seem that business-as-usual for promoting, educating and selling audio visual systems and equipment means that your business doesn’t need to change […]
“Brand is not what you say it is. It’s what they say it is.” That’s the observation from renowned brand thought-leader and master storyteller, Marty Neumeier, author of almost a dozen books on the subject of brands. So if they have such sway over your brand reputation, how important is customer service for your brand? […]
“Alexa, turn on the church audiovisual system.” Clever voice-activated connectivity? Maybe. But practical? Not really. “Alexa, show me the upcoming maintenance on all of my audiovisual components, listing them in descending order by date.” Clever? Maybe. But practical? Absolutely. In the house of worship market, convenience isn’t a key driver for upgrades or new purchases. […]
After a week-long intensive at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB), it may feel too soon to start thinking about another conference. Then again, a major reason your firm goes to these conferences is to connect with potential buyers, reconnect with existing clients and see for yourself what others in the audio, video and […]
I’m an extrovert. Most people assume this means I love to talk all the time, I’m energized by social situations, I like to solve problems by discussing them, I’m extremely friendly and imminently approachable and I am easy to get to know. Those are all generally true, but being married to an introvert has enlightened […]
The future of reaching each vertical, including the House of Worship (HOW) market, has a big stake in social media advertising, engagement and user-generated stories. Like the social media landscape, the audiovisual space often looks like a nascent, promising industry on the verge of something significant. Unlike the social media brands, the audiovisual industry is […]
Where’s the Total Cost of Ownership? If you want buyers to make your brand their choice, manufacturers and systems integrators have got to help decision-makers understand not only the up-front costs but the long-term investment of any technology solution. Want to know the perfect place to start? The House of Worship (H.O.W.) market. Here’s what’s […]
More impressive than the shifts in the audiovisual (AV) landscape during 2017 is the sheer rate of change that continues to accelerate with no hint of anyone applying the brakes. A year of change in this industry has brought some key trends to the forefront of 2018 and promised more changes in the near future. […]
In the previous rAVe HOW article, we discussed the value and application of acoustical treatment(s) to almost any existing house of worship (HOW) facility. Unless acoustics was considered and incorporated when the building was created, it is very likely that acoustical issues were not properly dealt with or solved. This is especially true for the […]
I’ll never forget standing behind the best salesperson in the online sales department as he watched the timer tick down from three minutes on his monitor during a phone call with a prospect. The VP of sales at a large systems integration firm had stopped my tour of the firm’s headquarters within the sea of […]
The reaction from the senior pastor — interrupted mid-sentence by the unmistakable, squealing shriek of audio feedback — was immediate. As he stood who staring up from the stage below to where I stood behind the audio console above, his backlash was swift and sharp. An audible sigh, amplified for all 2,000 seats to hear, […]
Churches have needs for audio, video and lighting (AVL) technology far more often than most manufacturers or systems integrators know. From changing sermon series with new scenic stage designs every few weeks to the addition or renovation of multi-site venues to production tech upgrades, churches utilize AVL tech week in and week out. It is […]
Amazing new product? Check. Great fit for a church installation? Check. The dissonance between who you say you are and who your church prospects say you are? Ummmm. To complete this checklist, it begs the question: What is your brand known for? Your brand is not what you say it is; it is what your prospects […]
Reaching the house of worship market with your marketing message requires a new set of marketing skills and tools that have been widely adopted by software technology companies, but relatively few that I’m aware of in the Audio, Video, Lighting (AVL) manufacturing and distribution firms. To take full advantage of the combination of social, search, […]
To prepare for the future trends in the house of worship market as it pertains to Audio/Video/Lighting (AVL) technology, one must glean insights from the past. There may be no better way to do that than to survey the technical staff of churches actively involved in AVL technical production, which was done earlier in 2016 […]
In the third year of this round up of my pick for the Top House of Worship Ads, 2016’s contenders were few and set far apart from the white noise of bland and ineffective advertising that continues to saturate the church technology vertical market. If anything, it seemed to me that there might have been […]
I made a prediction in 2014 here at rAVe that 4K video would start to become the normative in large, multi-site churches by 2020. I think I’ll still be accurate with that prediction, though I’m now dividing that future-glance into current realities and applications where 4K — at least in part — can be a […]
Compared to huge government contracts or big commercial deals, the church market may not seem nearly as compelling for manufacturers and systems integrators selling audio, video, and lighting technology. And while there won’t be $50MM dollar AVL deals in the House of Worship space, there also won’t be the massive complexity and low margins of […]
In even the smallest of churches, the decision to purchase complex solutions is handled by a small group. In some denominations, this is a leadership staff, in others, a volunteer committee. Aware of this truth, vendors often try to bring consensus to these groups through price, benefits or a crisp value proposition. But time and […]
According to respondents in TFCinfo’s latest market research study, more than half of U.S. churches are looking to purchase and expand upon their projection and video display systems. With over 350,000 churches and houses of worship (HOW) in the US, many of them already heavy users of audiovisual equipment, it is clear to see the […]
