They may be sporting pigtails and green uniforms instead of three piece suits, but make no mistake, Girl Scouts are the Fortune Five Hundred of the cookie world. They sell thousands of boxes per year. “I have no doubt my top sellers will become very successful business women someday,” says Kim Lasden, a troop “cookie mom” in Chicago. “These girls could teach Wall Street a thing or two.”
Shannon Leary, the fifteen year old top seller last year in Quincy, Massachusettes (2,254 boxes sold) says she does it by ditching her friends. “Cookies are my life from early January through mid-March,” she boasts. “But it’s worth it.”
Leary is also a master at the art of suggestion. “If someone seems unsure about buying cookies, [I] engage them by asking what their favorite cookie is. Once they start thinking about the cookies, they often buy them.”
Erica Kendrick, now thirty-five, remembers her top cookie seller days fondly. She was the first African American girl in the Chicago area to wear the top seller crown. Kendrick succeeded by using her superior networking skills: “I made a pyramid with my grandma at the top, and her marketing/distribution arm was something fierce.” One can only imagine that Kendricks, even at age nine, was just as fierce as her grandmother, putting networking contacts all over her neighborhood to good use.
Kendrick also suggests keeping samples on hand, she “kept cookies from the year before in the freezer and brought them back to life when cookie season rolled around the following year and beat out [her] competition” because no one else had samples. Everyone knows, one Girl Scout cookie is never enough, so this technique works like a charm.
But for every fancy trick these cookie sharps can use to trick, cajole or convince you to give up your diet and your money, there’s one that never fails – a good smile. Being polite and sweet is good manners, and good business.
