The company that knows, understands and cares about its customers wields the ultimate competitive advantage: loyalty. Customer loyalty in turn creates one of the most important business benefits: positive word of mouth. More than any claim by a company or industry analyst, positive word of mouth from customers influences people to buy. This kind of validation also creates belief, the kind that persuades media that a company is genuinely newsworthy. It’s a very simple formula: Got customers? You get media coverage. No customers? No coverage. Unfortunately, the vast majority of companies still don’t know who their customers are, let alone if they are referenceable. It’s often a complex, frustrating and sometimes impossible task to acquire a handful of customers willing and responsive enough to talk to the media.

For this reason, Beaupre & Co. created Customer Goldmining™ in 1995 to consistently transform customers into great media placements. Customer Goldmining is a trademarked methodology centered on creating “active references,” i.e., customers who will freely and positively speak to media on a company’s behalf. It is focused on convincing customers to go to bat for a company at a moment’s notice in an on-the-record media interview. This differs sharply from “passive customers” that only provide pre-approved quotes for news releases and brochures. There’s a vast chasm between the two. Active references lend credibility to the benefits of a company’s products and services and create belief with the press, industry analysts and potential customers.
 
Uncovering and cultivating active customer references is a full-time effort with many challenges. Customers are busy with their own jobs. Sometimes they can’t be a reference. Sometimes they don’t know if they can even speak publicly about another company or product. Sometimes corporate PR policies prevent them from doing interviews, even if they’re willing. Customer Goldmining has the magic to break through most customer and client roadblocks with a proven 21-step methodology that combines research, intensive interviewing and negotiation to get the maximum value from every reference.
 
What can be done when customers don’t exist? Create them. How? With a supporting Customer Goldmining methodology called Prospecting^SM. As the name implies, prospecting is focused on targeted customer prospects, i.e. people in companies who could buy and/or might use a company’s products and services. Prospecting identifies likely targets and negotiates their participation in specific opportunities.

If active customers are the gold nuggets in Customer Goldmining, then great press hits are the freshly minted gold coins. At Beaupre & Co. we have consistently turned customer references into major coverage in national business publications like The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, USA Today, The New York Times, Forbes and Fortune; broadcast and cable networks like CNN, CNBC, NBC and CBS and major technology industry publications like CIO, Network World and InformationWeek. We’ve done it for huge multi-national corporations like Oracle, IBM and Sun Microsystems and for early stage companies.
 
Just as miners sift through tons of rock and gravel to find elusive gold nuggets, Beaupre & Co.’s Customer Goldmining professionals plow through hundreds of rough leads to locate active references with great stories. Through Customer Goldmining, we not only separate the gold from the gravel, we figure out where to dig for the nuggets that will help create credibility and belief in a company and its products.