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Would you rather buy cookies from RC Cookie Inc., or a cute little girl scout?

The girl scout is the overwhelming choice of chocolate chip cookie lovers all over the US. I couldn’t even tell you the name of the company that puts together the girl scout cookie formula, and had to make RC Cookie Inc. up to illustrate my point.

Now, let’s take that a step further. Would you rather buy a television from a friend of a friend of yours who happens to sell TVs, or would you rather go down to a store you haven’t been to before?

Or …

Would you rather shop at a store close to you with cold, impersonal sales people who seem like they’d just as soon spit on you as wait on you, or would you travel 10 miles out of your way, gas prices and all, to go to the store with the friendly people who remember your name, gave you department store credit, and are offering you a repeat customer discount?

Duh, right?

Which store are you?

(Sorry you said duh?)

Are you the cute and crazy blog chick, or the faceless corporation?

Are you the friendly pal of a pal who just happens to sell TVs or the unfamiliar store?

Are you the cookie cutter sales site or the personal shop who remembers your past client’s name and knows their interests? Who answered a question for them the other day?

And don’t cop out and say it’s harder to connect online.

There are autoresponders that can send out personalized messages and help you target your mailings by interest.

You can blog.

You can have a forum.

You could even *gasp* pick up the phone and call people, or have them call you.

There’s Skype, AOL, Yahoo or MSN Instant messanger. There are chat rooms, teleseminars, webinars…

Getting the idea?

And in all of these venues, even on a static web site or with the most low-tech, manually recorded streamed audio, you can tell your business story.

You can share the origins of your company. You can share a customer testimonial. You could even use an embarrassing incident to show how you came up with some bright idea. If you’re a blogger, you could take a tip from the J Peterman catalog and write fiction stories starring your products. You’d have material for years.

It’s just one of the plethora of techniques you can use to connect, but it’s one that is universal to every business.

We all have interesting stories somewhere. In Blog About This, I come back to the story idea more than once. I talk about ways to get blog material out of fellow staff, employees, clients, events - there’s years of material just hanging around in the minutes of your life, waiting to make your entity real to your clients.

You can buy car insurance from anyone. The State Farm commercials on television give their prospective buyers the impression that they’re part of their business story.

You can do this too - in addition to cutting and pasting customer thoughts & testimonials, try writing about the experience (with their permission) in your blog.

Other readers will identify and say “That’s just like the problem I had. I wonder what they can do for me.”

Be different. Find your story. Then tell it.

Later on, I’ll tell you what I read in Forbes that can make a difference to your business story.