Church AV Trends: Unusual Aspect Ratio Video Walls

August 30, 2019

As multi-site churches expand their reach with additional locations into retail areas and school buildings to accommodate a larger attendance at these remote ‘satellite’ campuses, the needs for AVL shift away from so-called ‘big box’ venues with high ceilings and ample room to venues with lower ceilings and limited sightlines. The opportunity for audiovisual (AV) […]

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What Churches Want and Need from AV Sales

August 21, 2019

In seven years of sharing practical insights on how to sell audiovisual (AV) to churches, we’ve posted over 70 articles focusing specifically on the opportunities and challenges of selling to buyers and influencers in the house of worship market. During that same time, the church AV market has gone from hundreds of millions of dollars […]

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Church Online: Pro AV for Streaming Church Services

June 6, 2019

The dramatic growth of churches using online streaming and on-demand options to extend the reach of their audience offers a steady stream of upgrades and innovations for Pro AV technology solutions. With the increase in both accessibility and adoption of high-speed broadband internet access worldwide has come a massive increase in users taking advantage of […]

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Mobile Micro-Controls for Big AV in Churches

April 24, 2019

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 […]

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When Your Brand’s Email Is Noise

February 27, 2019

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 […]

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The Wholesale Replacement of Projectors in Churches

September 24, 2018

LED video technology will begin to surpass projection technology, spurring a wholesale replacement of projectors in the house of worship market when audiovisual (AV) manufacturers and integration firms realize the path of least resistance for churches is in modularity. The end of video projection for large venue churches is now in sight. Indeed, the wholesale […]

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Ask Powerful Questions to Increase Sales to Churches

July 26, 2018

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 […]

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The AV Industry Future Is Digital Value Optimization

June 28, 2018

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 […]

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Create Agreement When Selling to Churches

June 22, 2018

When an audiovisual (AV) solution aligns perfectly with the needs of a potential client, the opportunity just about sells itself. In the house of worship market, local churches across the gamut of denominations have similar challenges and opportunities when it comes to AV technology. This should make selling a simple process for manufacturers and systems […]

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Customer Service Is the New Marketing for AV

May 22, 2018

“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? […]

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Alexa, Manage My Church AV System

May 15, 2018

“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. […]

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Laser Projection in Churches

March 20, 2018

Every single time I get asked about laser projection, I think of the Austin Powers movie franchise villain, Dr. Evil, and his obsession with putting lasers on sharks. While the audiovisual industry has yet to rise to that dubious challenge, the addition of lasers in projectors is an important innovation. I further submit that it’s […]

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Audio and Video Missing from AV Social Media

February 23, 2018

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 […]

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Where’s the Total Cost of Ownership?

February 23, 2018

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 […]

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Solve the Pain, Then Introduce Strategy

January 18, 2018

‘Solve their technology pain, then introduce them to a technology strategy.’ That should be the mantra for consultants, systems integrators, and manufacturers selling to the church market. The House of Worship (HOW) market is not without strategy. In fact, they’re some of the most focused organizations around when it comes to their strategic purpose. However, they […]

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The Future Intersection of AV and Churches

January 16, 2018

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. […]

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The Future of Selling Service to Churches

December 18, 2017

It’s all in the fine print. Most people won’t open up new gear and grab the owner’s manual and warranty information and spend the next two hours pouring over that fascinating documentation. For those of us who do, we will find myriad legal terms that outline our options should we need technical support or have […]

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Three Major Technology Shifts Coming for Churches

November 14, 2017

In the not-too-distant future, three major technology shifts will happen in the house of worship market: wholesale lighting replacement, the micro-portable church and Video as a Service (VaaS). To be ready for these shifts, the AV industry needs to prepare for how this could play out and align their offerings to anticipate these needs. As […]

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Brand Management: Reliability, Value and Support

October 31, 2017

Your brand is not what you say it is. Your brand is what others say about you. For the audiovisual industry, identifying what others say about your organization is easier to know now than it has ever been thanks in large part to social media and online comment streams. In each vertical market, there exist groups […]

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To the Pastors of the Future

October 16, 2017

This is an open letter to the future church pastors who will have grown up with the Internet, mobile devices and real-time social media their entire lives so that they can leverage future technology to serve the local church effectively. The local church you’ll lead will not look much like the churches of today because […]

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Money, Price and Budget in the Church Market

September 18, 2017

Money. Price. Budget. These nouns tend to put the emphasis on the bottom line instead of where the emphasis has the most effect: the desired outcome. A dollar amount will always be a sum of the outcomes and needs of a church, so why do salespeople in the House of Worship vertical tend towards the […]

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Heroes Amidst the Floods

September 12, 2017

There are stories of heroism and sacrifice, bravery and suffering and the rediscovering of the word ‘neighbor’ in the wake of what may be the worst flooding disaster in the history of the United States. Beyond the dramatic news coverage of dramatic aerial shots of Houston’s unprecedented floods are the social media feeds of cell […]

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Hiring Sales for Church Market AV

August 9, 2017

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 […]

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Solve Three Problems to Increase Sales in Churches

July 17, 2017

“Can you come and fix our church AV?” This singular question is rife with implications for the audio, video and lighting (AVL) industry and one that needs to be addressed by manufacturers, systems integrators and rep firms serving the $1 billion (annual) church AVL market so that the pain experienced by all involved is properly […]

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Christmas Church Tech in the Summer

June 22, 2017

The dog days of summer are upon us and much of the commercial and education vertical markets have slowed to a crawl, but the house of worship market is heating up seemingly in proportion to the high temps of the season. That’s because, for churches, summertime is the time when the planning for the big […]

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The Overlooked Attendees of InfoComm – Church Tech Leaders

June 21, 2017

In the sweltering humidity of Orlando in June, InfoComm hosts tens of thousands of attendees, each traversing the exhibit hall floor to find technological inspiration and an air-conditioned respite from the sticky Florida air. Among these roaming masses are the nondescript technical directors, front-of-house engineers, video production staff and volunteers sent by their church leaders […]

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The Rise of Business Intelligence for AVL in Churches

May 30, 2017

Churches deal in large inventories of complex Audio, Video and Lighting (AVL) technology across multiple venues and increasingly across multiple campuses. The advent of the church technical director in the 1970s has become a standard role in even medium-sized churches where the ubiquitous presence of AVL is the norm, not the exception. What these churches […]

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Cost Depreciation and the Amortization of Church AVL Technology

May 30, 2017

How do you make that large technology investment look approachable? Sell the cost-per-service value. To help churches invest wisely in their Audio, Video and Lighting (AVL) technologies, start with defining value before price is discussed. The price should be what something is after the church buyers have determined the value they can expect to meet […]

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What Are You Giving Away to Churches?

April 18, 2017

Mobile-first is a term used to describe the 2017 statistic where people begin their internet searches, browsing and application usage on their mobile device more than on a desktop or laptop computer. They’re searching for social proof (what others say about a brand, service or product), helpful knowledge-building and early research to educate their decision-making […]

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Vendors, Market Development Funds and the Faith Market

February 28, 2017

Manufacturers want to help systems integrators sell their products so they provide funds to help co-promote the equipment with the vendor. It’s been this way for as long as I can remember, whether it is called “co-op funds” or “market development funds” (MDF) or “channel funding,” the idea is to influence the sale towards the […]

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Top House of Worship Ads of 2016

December 30, 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 […]

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Four Future Trends for the House of Worship Market

November 28, 2016

By aggregating trends from the past, we have a significant indicator of future trends and shifts in the House of Worship market. The word cloud graphic for this article lists the top 25 recurring words from all of the previous columns written here about the church market on rAVE, and they are an excellent look […]

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