So my daughter had her first Girl Scout meeting today. And I’m (sort of) surprised to learn that we’re (mostly) ahead of the curve on this cookie thing. That my daughter is an overachiever comes as no surprise to me. As I’ve mentioned before, she is single-mindedly obsessive about anything she chooses to focus upon. What surprised me was that as novice scouts go, she’s gotten out of the gate with record speed. What also surprised me is that she’ll have plenty of opportunities between now and the end of February to sell cookies on her own. I would have thought that they’d have group activities scheduled for every weekend between now and the Girl Scouts equivalent of D-Day. (C-Day?) But they don’t. That’s good, in that she’ll have some time to be able learn something about sales and marketing on her own (with my supervision). That’s bad, in that it’s going to make it harder, I would think, for her to sell the number of cookies she wants to move. She has her sights set on a Nintendo Wii, which will take moving some 2,000 boxes to earn.

That’s a LOT of cookies.

I’ve pointed out to my little starry-eyed dreamer that to sell 2,000 boxes in a month comes down to 500 per week, which is about 80 boxes each and every day. Given that she’s sold about 40 in two days, I’m thinking she’s going to need some huge marketing ideas or some Divine intervention to reach her goal.

Frankly, I’m not too worried about her making her goal. It’s not winning the Wii that I care about for her. It’s that she’s setting her sights high, and is enthusiastically looking for every way she can find to achieve her goal. THAT’S cool…and regardless of how far she gets, it will be a valuable lesson learned for her. And, yes, for you cynics out there, I’ve already informed the lass that I will not be buying major quantities of cookies to pad her performance stats, under any circumstances. (If she gets to 1,990, I won’t have any problem buying the last ten boxes, though.)

I’m busy thinking up ideas for her. Unfortunately, my go-to idea – sell ‘em over the Internet – is a no-no, according to the Girl Scout rules. (Sigh…) So I’m going to have to come up with other ideas that play within the rules, and will help her meet her goals.

So the cookie saga continues. Oh, and if any of you readers have any great ideas for my daughter to sell her Girl Scout cookies (without, of course breaking the GS rules), please share.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 12th, 2009 at 9:54 pm and is filed under marketing.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.