WHETHER YOUR BUSINESS is local or global, you can make a tremendous brand impression by telling stories – real-world stories that illustrate how your business has helped customers.

Customer stories work for you several ways. First, they're memorable, making your business and brand more memorable, too. They stick in peoples minds, especially if they strike a particular chord with readers or website visitors. For instance, a story about how your service team went the extra mile for a customer could make a lasting impression on people tired of the lousy service they get elsewhere.

Second, stories sidestep the jaded skepticism with which audiences greet empty-sounding promotional claims. We go the extra mile for you! Yeah, right. Instead of spouting slogans, stories demonstrate the underlying truth without sounding boastful. A story giving a few details about how you walked the walk for one real, live human being will do more to build your business and brand than a thousand slogans will.

Third, stories make you more credible. Stories are believable. Sometimes they even have emotional impact. Sharing real experiences of real people actually lends credibility to your business and brand. It's a classic example of the rub-off effect: The storys credibility rubs off on the wider enterprise.

Fourth, stories give you a competitive edge. Thats because most businesses dont make full use of their customers' stories to add oomph to their sales and marketing. If you do, you're probably outdoing your competitors.

Fifth, stories are endlessly flexible – a veritable Swiss Army knife for branding, sales and marketing. They can be long or short, attributed (to the real person or company) or anonymous. You can pick and choose details that may be important to different audiences. Stories can be told different ways to fit a brochure, a webpage, a web teaser ad, print advertising, a video or TV commercial, a billboard, or almost anything.

Sixth, stories can be selected and tailored to reflect attributes that most clearly reflect your business and brand. Many smart entrepreneurs create logos that reflect one key attribute of their brand – reliability, innovation, whatever. You can develop stories that demonstrate how this attribute translates into actions that make for a great customer experience.

Seventh, stories are recyclable. You get good mileage out of them because you dont have to use them just once, in one format. You can retell a story in a different way, in a variety of lengths, to suit different marketing and branding purposes.

Eighth, stories are readily available. If you have satisfied customers, you have customer stories (even if you dont realize it). And if you dont have any satisfied customers, dont worry about stories – youll be out of business any day now.

Bottom line: Customer stories are an underused business asset. If you're not pinpointing and leveraging testimonials, then your investors, partners or whomever you may be responsible to should be holding your feet to the fire. How would they react if you left a rich vein of gold ore lying in the ground beneath your feet without prospecting for it, extracting it or refining it to gain all the value you can? So you owe it to yourself, your business, your stakeholders and your brand to take your customers' stories seriously.

If you want to start using testimonials to enhance your business and brand, and go at it systematically, here are a few action steps. They pretty much follow the sequence for mining ore – prospect, extract, refine, utilize:

• Prospecting means finding stories. Create a portfolio of possibilities you may be able to develop into customer stories.
• Extracting means getting details about their experiences from customers.
• Refining means taking the raw material – customer details – and applying these facts to construct real-world stories.
• Utilizing means taking your well-researched and well-written stories, and placing them wherever you think theyll add luster to your sales, marketing and branding initiatives.

Discover the gold mine lying under your feet. Start that list of story candidates right now.

John Williams is president and founder of LogoYes.com, the worlds first and largest DIY logo website. In his 25 years in advertising, he has created brand standards for Fortune 100 companies like Mitsubishi and won numerous international awards for his design work.