If you look at the church closely you will realise that the whole operation and activities of the church has the resemblance of a business organisation, although it is not a business. Now if as an entrepreneur or business person you take time to study these operations and activities with the intent of using it in your business, you will be doing yourself and your business a lot of good. I’ll be using some case studies in this article, including RCCG, Living Faith Church, Dunamis, COZA, Christ Embassy, etc. Now let’s take a look at some of these lessons.

1. Mission
Every entrepreneur and business starts with a mission. The mission guides the overall operations of the business. Now when you look at the church, all churches have their missions. These missions are usually in two folds – the first is the sole mission or purpose of preaching the Gospel, and the second is the specific mission of the founding pastor. For instance Dunamis will tell you that “they exist for the restoration of human destinies and dignities”. They now go further by saying “no matter how battered or shattered your life is, God will gather it together at Dunamis”. This is their core mandate or mission. At COZA their mission is “to raise the take-over generation which have been called to re-establish God’s kingdom on earth”. The mission is to raise men and women who would take over in every sector and sphere of life, this is why a lot of entrepreneurs find their place in COZA.

The importance of mission to any organisation or business cannot be overemphasized. In fact one of the first things you learn in a business school is the importance of having a mission and craft it into a statement (mission statement).

The mission is very necessary for strategic direction; it defines the business, products or services, and the customers. Your business’ mission defines what your business is and why it exist. Take a look at Facbook’s mission “to give people the power to share and make the world more connected. People use Facebook to stay connected with friends and family, to discover what’s going on in the world, and to share and express what matters to them”. There is no business without a mission. So the question I’ll ask you is what is your business’ mission?

2. Team building
Having a team is one of the most important considerations for any business or organisation. In fact one of the things investors look out for in startups is the team behind the idea. They don’t just invest in the business, but they invest in the team – the team fuels their investment decisions. The church has been able to succeed because of its ability to build teams that will carry the pioneer’s mission forward. Even Jesus Christ who is the head of the church, had a team while he was on earth – he had disciples who followed him and believed in his mission. The mission of Christ was carried forward by his team until the people called them ‘Christians’ because they behaved like Christ. No organisation can succeed without a team.

A good product with a poor team will eventually fail in the market because the team will run the business down, but an average product with a great team will find its place in the market. My advice to you is never to run solo. I looked at startups that have become great businesses today and understood the power of teams. Most successful startups had partners. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin; Facebook had Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskovitz, Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, and Chris Hughes; Jumia was founded by Tunde Kehinde and Raphael Afaedor; iROKO TV has Jason Njoku and Bastian Gotter.

3. Marketing
Marketing is the core of every business. It is the lifeblood of every business. The church is not a business yet it has a very aggressive marketing strategy and plan. Marketing is a communication between a business and its customers with the goal of selling its products or service. A major aspect of marketing is the communication of the value of an organisation’s product or service. The church understands this and does it very well. The church’s product is the Gospel and it is able to communicate this product and its value to unbelievers and even believers through evangelism, church programmes, tracks and flyers, etc. These tools help them to reach and communicate with the people.

Being an entrepreneur or a business person is not about siting in an office and drinking tea. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves and step out into the field.

That’s where the game is played. For your business to be successful you must find a way to reach out and communicate with potential customers. It is the customers that sustains the business. Get out of that office and enter the field. And while marketing you must go out with marketing communication tools as done by churches. Most times churches go for evangelism with tracks and flyers. These are communication tools that contains information about the church and what they stand for. Do same for your business; go out with your brochure, catalogue, flyer, business card, etc.

4. Branding
The church has been very successful in building brands. Branding is the process of creating a unique name and image for a product in the customers’ mind, with a consistent theme. Branding is aimed at establishing a significant and differentiated presence in the market that attracts and retains loyal customers. An effective brand strategy gives a business an edge in a competitive market. The name, logo, slogan, design scheme, colours, etc. are all associated with brands and branding.

Branding helps your business to be recognized by customers and creates an identity in their minds. Branding tools must be consistent, you can’t be changing your company’s logo every month and expect to build an identity. Everything must be consistent – from the logo to the colours, slogan, etc. Although it is possible to rebrand (changing identity), but it is cheaper to maintain a successful brand than trying to build a new identity. Ask Airtel.

Churches are very successful at this – they’ve been able to build unique identities. These identities have imprinted images in the minds of their followers. Their logos and slogans are easily recognizable, and their colours are consistent. A member of Dunamis doesn’t need to think much to identity the logo of the church with the fire, bible and globe; a winner can easily identify the church’s logo of a Globe and red fire; a redeemer can never miss the green write-up in a circle with a white dove in a blue background; the love-shaped Globe with the inscription Love world is easily recognized by members and even nonmembers of Christ Embassy. That’s branding.

You must do same for your business. Have an identity that differentiates you from others and be consistent with it. Dunamis Church took the matter of branding to another level by ensuring all its branch buildings use the same colour of roof – blue. You need to take your branding serious. Why do you think Zenith bank went to the extent of ensuring their buildings have the same design and colours? It’s about branding. And don’t say your business is too small to brand; in fact that’s enough reason to brand so that you can create an image and identity in the minds of your target customers. If you don’t brand you get lost in the market.

An effective brand strategy leads to brand loyalty or what I call ‘brand hook’. Brand hook is a situation where customers get attached to your brand and will find it hard patronising your competitor. I’ve realised that members of some churches find it hard attending church programmes in other churches. Most times it’s not like they have anything against those churches, but it’s just that they’ve become hooked to their church and missing one service is just too much for them. That’s the power of branding.

5. Lead Management
When you meet a potential customer who doesn’t make the buy decision at that time what do you do? You follow up on them until you are able to convert them fully from leads into customers, and then to loyal or repeat customers. Let’s see how it’s done in the church. In the church, after the message an altar call is made for those who want to give their lives to Christ. After they are led to say the prayer of salvation and prayed for by the pastor, they are then taken aside by the counselors and given a form to fill, containing their names and contacts.

This information enables the counselors to follow up on the new converts through phone calls and possibly physical visits. After much follow-ups, the new converts goes through the membership class of the church and becomes a full member and possibly a worker in the church. Can you see the processes?

In your business you must learn to follow-up on leads. Just like the new converts they are not yet customers (members) until you close the sale. This means that you must always ensure you have a system of collecting the contacts of leads. When you or your staff go out for marketing, ensure you collect a phone number of a contact person and follow-up.

6. Excellence
This one is hot. It’s the core of most big churches, but some churches have taken the matter to another level. A case study is COZA (commonwealth of Zion assembly). I was privileged to attend a number of services in COZA, Abuja and I must say that church has built excellence into its organisational culture. From the premises, to the décor, the well-dressed ushers welcoming you to church and thanking you for coming after the service, the well suited protocol officers, the sound system in the church and the coordination of the service all exudes excellence.

Excellence is one factor that differentiates brands from commodities. When you see a Mercedes Benz car what comes to mind is excellent engineering and quality. That image positions it well in the market and gives it a competitive advantage. You can’t say you want to build a brand and be mediocre in your operations and service delivery.

To build a successful business and brand you must inculcate excellence into your organisational culture.

You can’t just package your proposals anyhow. What does your business card look like? No doubt Excellence cost money but mediocrity is expensive. I’ve had to reprint proposals at some point because of some very little errors that many people will overlook. Excellence in itself is a marketing tool. It’s better not to do it at all than to do it anyhow. In Dunamis they will tell you that God is an excellent God so it’s an abomination for you his product to be mediocre in your operations and activities. Excellence makes marketing easy.

7. Publicity
If you have the best product and nobody knows about it, then you are just wasting your time. You must blow your trumpet. One of the most effective strategies of the church is publicity. They don’t play with it. When a church is planning for a programme, they spend money publicizing it on various media – radio, TV, cable, digital media, flyers, billboards, etc. these media help create visibility for the church.

When COZA came into Abuja, they spent lots of money raising billboards across the city (and they still do). This helped to create visibility, and with visibility comes patronage.

Business is about visibility. The more visible you are the more patronage you can get, and the more patronage you get, the more your revenue and profitability. Even established brands continue to create visibility through adverts, just to remind us that they are still around. The internet and digital media has even made it easy for businesses to create visibility.

Don’t hide your business; create a business page on Facebook, have an account for your business on Twitter, LinkedIn and other platforms. For instance, a fashion designer who ignores the power of social media (especially Instagram and Facebook) to create visibility for his or her products is missing a lot.

The popular and award winning comedienne, Emmanuella and her promoter Mark Angel used the power of social media, especially YouTube to create visibility for their product. When Jumia launched their service in 2012 they carried out an aggressive visibility creation strategy, TECNO mobile did it, Globacom did it, and Konga did it with the Infinix Zero campaign. Coca Cola did it and is still doing it. Why shouldn’t you? Put your business there in the faces of customers and potential customers.

In summary, when next you are in church, be open to learn things that can be used to grow your business. Aside the spiritual benefits enjoyed as a result of spending time in God’s presence, a lot can be gotten from the church to address every area of life including business.

Source: http://businessideas.com.ng/7-business-lessons-learn-church/

Having a niche
what I noticed about all top Nigerian pastors is that they have a niche market meaning they are known to preach a out a particular thing
eg winners: prosperity
tb jousha: miracle signs nd wonders

mfm: pray your way out

Christ embassy: come as u are

lord chosen: enemies are chasing u.

this method attracts the particular kind of people that agree to the pastor or the church ideology. in business too u must have a niche for your product. you must have a target market as an entrepreneur.
most pastors not having members are pastors that have not carve a niche for themselves.

@ op ur head too correct, thanks for that beautiful writeup, i appreciate it.

To the poster above me , u re right.