For the past few weeks, girls across this great land have been laying on their best sales lines and showing their cutest faces to family members, neighbors, and friends....all in the name of selling delightfully simple and satisfying Girl Scout sugary swag. Perhaps, it's more like Mom and Dad have been bugging family members, co-workers, neighbors, and friends to buy up their kid's cookies. Sure, there may be a few rogue girls and parents who sit outside grocery stores hustling their tasty girl scout treats, but I'd guesstimate that 90% of the sales are done by the parental units alone.
My wife, Holly, assists with Desi's girl scout troop (Daisies - a collection of 5 & 6 year olds). In January, each girl had to establish their cookie quota. Daisy #1 comes from a long line of girl scouts and "she's been there, done that", so she declared that she would sell 500 boxes (that's an aggressive goal but she just may do it!) Daisy #2 is quite analytical and spent a few minutes doing calculations. She stood up and stated "I will sell 103 boxes....and that's it". Daisy #3, our own beloved Desi, jumped up in haste and shouted "I will sell 7000 boxes!" Des is a little competitive. Fortunately, Holly was there to jump in and bring that number down to a more reasonable 100 boxes, knowing that there is NO WAY that Desi, I mean WE, will be able to unload 7000 boxes to the people in our circle. Perhaps if there was a strong commission structure, I'd find a way to sell $24,500 worth of GSC (in the biz, that's short for Girl Scout Cookies). Sadly, there are no commissions but, there is an incentive. If Desi, I mean WE, can sell 2000 boxes, we could get 3 tickets to Disney OR $200 in cookie dough & a patch. It's a pretty sweet patch, so I'm selling my little girl scout heart out.
I've yet to understand why the girls sell cookies. Sure, they are free, tiny salespeople, who can prey on & guilt their grandparents to spend their entire retirement fund on Lemon Creme Chalets....but, here's a concept: people like a GSC, so why not sign a deal with Keebler & sell them year round for a nice percentage of the profits? Then again, maybe it's like Christmas...if we had Christmas every month, it wouldn't be special. If we had access to a Thin Mint (extra thin, extra minty) everyday instead of once a year, sells could plummet. Then Keebler corporate would analyze the brand, slash the production of the weaker selling cookies like Trefoils or the new Thank U Berry Munch, cut the marketing and discount the prices, stop putting real coconut in the Samaos, use 20% less chocolaty coating on the Tagalongs, and add some artificial flavors to the Do-Si-Dos to lengthen their shelf life. My bad for bringing up that thought. Keebler, keep your grubby mitts off my Samaos!!!!
One thing the Girl Scout should consider - let people buy with debit/credit cards! I'm more likely to buy a few extra boxes if I could put it on the plastic. The girl scouts have twitter, facebook, myspace, youtube, etc. but no way for me to buy 13 boxes of yummy snacks online? Are drug dealers and the Girl Scouts the only people operating with CASH ONLY? How about ordering by phone? Nope. Come on, girl scouts! Playing hard to get has somehow worked for you, but if I had to jump through hoops like this to buy Oreos, I'd be one crazy Hydrox eating dude. What about Girl Scout Cookie gift cards? I could redeem them on the Girl Scout website and plug in the numbers from the gift cards instead of entering my debit/credit card numbers....oh wait. Nevermind.
Until next time, buh bye.
Buying from the little girl and her mom posted outside Walgreens with a card table artfully stacked with pyramids of Thin Mint Goodness was certainly convenient and held me to two boxes, which pretty much took care of the cash that was in my wallet ...
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