C is for Cookie and Captivity, Constraint, and Chains of Repression
Really. This is a for-real article from the good folks at CBS MoneyWatch.com
The article is titled: “What selling Girl Scout cookies teaches you about business” And I found it while clicking around Yahoo. I do that when it’s too early to start drinking and too late to go back to bed. So what did this article say? I’ll save you the click and relay the highlights below.
1. The most likely sale is to an existing customer. I had one lady who bought about 20 boxes from me one year. I made sure to call her up the next year to get that order logged fast. These days, likewise, I know that people I’ve worked with before are better bets than hunting for new prospects. If I want more work, I call them first.
It’s truly insightful and ground-breaking news that someone who liked cookies last year would also like cookies this year. This is a great life lesson to learn. It helps you avoid fatties.
2. There’s no accounting for taste. I don’t particularly like Thin Mints, but they were always my biggest seller, so I made sure to mention them when people asked what kinds of cookies we were selling. Likewise, I’m not particularly fond of lists like “22 Things To Do During That Boring Conference Call,” but those are always my most read posts. So I write them.
Wow, she made sure to mention that they also had cookies that she herself didn’t enjoy for sale. Because that’s a tough lesson to learn. Cookies come in many shapes, colors, flavors, makes, models and with various features such as: heated seats, vibrating anal plug and intravenous Red Bull & Vodka shooters. Christ.
3. Cold calling isn’t as awful as it sounds. My best friend and I went door to door through our neighborhood, alternating who would get each sale. There were, indeed, some questionable people who answered the doors (one reason I suspect many parents don’t encourage door-to-door selling now) but in a team, and always smiling, we racked up some serious sales that way. Whenever I’m nervous about picking up the phone, I remember that it usually turns out fine.
This isn’t the same as trying to sell somebody a Craftmatic Adjustable Bed or talk them into investing in your Florida swampland lady. These are Girl Scouts. The one thing everyone knows about Girl Scouts is that they sell cookies. There is literally no other purpose for the Girl Scouts to exist than to sell cookies to fat asses like me. Period.
4. Internal motivation is great, but sales targets are motivational too. One year, as I neared sales of 200 boxes (then costing $2/each), I became incredibly fixated on crossing that mark. Seeing that neat number on my total, and counting up $400 in cash and checks, was so much nicer than counting up $396. These days, I know that setting a specific, numerical goal (a certain number of blog readers, book sales, newsletter subscribers, etc.) tends to have a focusing effect. Even if I like the work for its own sake, too.
And who wouldn’t LOVE giving up a few months of their free time to sling cookies for the bossman? I know I wouldn’t. Yessuh Missah Bossman Suh, I’s be happy ’nuff to sell dese here cookies for yuh. Jingle Bell Jesus in a Shoebox…this is forced slavery in the modern era, part of the Keebler Elves evil plans for world domination. You simply cannot trust a tree elf.
5. Connections matter, but they’re not everything. Some girls sold cookies largely by having their parents take the sign-up form to their offices. That can work, but those girls weren’t necessarily our troop’s top sellers. Smart scouts learn that customers prefer to buy directly from the girl the sale is benefiting. If you want to be well-connected, you can make your own connections.
The parents did this so they didn’t have to schlep around at the entrances to Wal Mart and go banging on doors for hours each day to try to hit some insane quota for cookie sales. In fact, I’m sure many parents just skip a mortgage payment and give the $1,500 or so directly to the Cookie Creeps so that they don’t wind up suddenly childless.
Look, if you want to romanticize the Girl Scouts, that’s fine. And if you learned something valuable while participating that’s even better, that’s exactly what that organization exists for. However, if you want to equate selling cookies to learning about life or business, you’re absolutely crazy. The only thing it teaches is that sometimes you have to do shit that you’d really rather not in order to remain employed or part of a particular group.
If the Girl Scouts of America really wanted to raise money, they would put these cookies for sale ONLINE and in stores, year round. More people would buy them because the profits would be going to the organization and the girls and their parents could go back to learning how to sew, start fires, avoid frat-party pregnancies, or whatever the hell they do.
