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Does anyone really take on teaching girl scouts how to be little business women?

Sting was rolling on the floor laughing at me talking to a friend's neighbor kid while I ordered cookies from her. She didn't know jack about selling.

Sting was rolling on the floor laughing at me talking to a friend's neighbor kid while I ordered cookies from her. She didn't know jack about selling.

lol - I'll bet she does now.

t.

maybe she should check out these sales techniques....

http://youtube.com/watch?v=xJviuZidsXg

LOL

or

She thinks I am a crazy lady.

LOL

or

She thinks I am a crazy lady.

You mean Henry (?) hasn't warned all the other children about what to expect and what is 'acceptable'?


t.

Poor Henry - I think he is just so afraid of me he can not speak my name.

I told this little girl I wanted 2 boxes of Thanks-A-Lot. She says "Um...... we don't have them."

I say "They are listed as the 2008 flavors"

She says "Uh oh."

I tell her what the Thanks-aLot are.

She tells me what she has.

She has the Thanks-a-Lot under a different name.

I ask how much do I owe you.

She says they are $3.50 a box.

I wait

She says "I am not good at multiplying."

I say "I'll wait."

It went down hill from there.

and

What Henry did was:


totally unacceptable

They really should do some training if they are going to pimp these girls out. I was an excellent girl scout sales girl. What's a Thanks-A-Lot? Is it as good as a Samoa? I don't share my Samoas.


t.

peacock2121 wrote:Does anyone really take on teaching girl scouts how to be little business women?

Sting was rolling on the floor laughing at me talking to a friend's neighbor kid while I ordered cookies from her. She didn't know jack about selling.

You bet!!! I was a hard ass troop leader (for juniors) the last 3 years when it came to this very thing. I had a similar experience to yours w/ a little girl who was selling them to me, so perhaps that is why I felt so strongly about it. I think that ultimately the girls felt better about themselves when they could answer the questions thrown their way, and also do the math that came along with selling.

Did she climb that hill all by herself? Two boxes of cookies is good payback for that.

peacock2121 wrote:Does anyone really take on teaching girl scouts how to be little business women?

Sting was rolling on the floor laughing at me talking to a friend's neighbor kid while I ordered cookies from her. She didn't know jack about selling.

When I was the cookie manager of the girls' troops, I did teach them how to sell. We also practiced what do to if people were mean to them.

peacock2121 wrote:Poor Henry - I think he is just so afraid of me he can not speak my name.

I told this little girl I wanted 2 boxes of Thanks-A-Lot. She says "Um...... we don't have them."

I say "They are listed as the 2008 flavors"

She says "Uh oh."

I tell her what the Thanks-aLot are.

She tells me what she has.

She has the Thanks-a-Lot under a different name.

I ask how much do I owe you.

She says they are $3.50 a box.

I wait

She says "I am not good at multiplying."

I say "I'll wait."

It went down hill from there.

This year, the names of the cookies changed. Thanks A Lot cookies used to be All Abouts if she was used to the other name, she might not have realized what was going on.

Still she should know her business.

As part of my cookie training, those kids knew what each cookie was called and they also knew what they tasted like.

Do girls scouts still sell cookies? Mostly what I see is the parents selling them for them.

I don't buy any when I see that. So mostly I don't buy any.

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:
As part of my cookie training, those kids knew what each cookie was called and they also knew what they tasted like.

This would the good part of the training. The tasting part.

psm:

When I was the cookie manager of the girls' troops,

Hey, maybe you can answer this. I heard that the GSoA get 10% of the selling price of GS Cookies. Is there any truth to this? Thanks.

ne1410s wrote:psm:

When I was the cookie manager of the girls' troops,

Hey, maybe you can answer this. I heard that the GSoA get 10% of the selling price of GS Cookies. Is there any truth to this? Thanks.

The girls selling the cookies usually get about 15% of the profits, so on a $4.00 box of cookies, our troop received $.60. The actual cost of the cookies was about $2.25, so the local and national councils got the rest.

The amount that the council gets compared to the troop really upset me. The girls put in a lot of work selling and it always bugged me when we had to send most of the money to council.

Ritterskoop wrote:

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:
As part of my cookie training, those kids knew what each cookie was called and they also knew what they tasted like.

This would the good part of the training. The tasting part.

Cookies managers were always given samples of the cookies. Some kept the cookies for themselves, but I would always use the cookies as training tools.

I haven't been a manager in two years.

One of my neighbors is the manager for her daughter's troop. She went and picked up the delivery and had the cookies in her garage. Emma went over and taught her the best way to sort the cookies.

She only had to deal with a troop of 10 girls.

At my peak, I had to deal with the cookies for a troop of 24 and a troop of 15. Most of the girls sold an average of 125 boxes of cookies.

tanstaafl2 wrote:Do girls scouts still sell cookies? Mostly what I see is the parents selling them for them.

I don't buy any when I see that. So mostly I don't buy any.

Jeff sold some for the girls, but mostly my kids went door to door. Maddie was the only Girl Scout in the neighborhood for a while and really was able to sell a lot. She had a lot of repeat business because she wrote thank you notes to her customers and told them what the profits would be used for.

Although we had already ordered 4 boxes from our neighbor up the street (actually, her mother called and asked us), I bought another box from another MOM, while her daughter was playing soccer.

At least when my girls sold, I took them house to house and waited at the curb while they went up the driveway to the door and rang it.

Another MOM sold many boxes last year by emailing all her friends and getting orders that way. The kid didnt do much of the selling.

tanstaafl2 wrote:Do girls scouts still sell cookies? Mostly what I see is the parents selling them for them.

I don't buy any when I see that. So mostly I don't buy any.

Mostly around here the girls sell to their parents' co-workers. SteelersFan is under strict orders to buy only the mints, and I don't buy any. My boss would probably choke before he ate a GS cookie, being a fitness nut, but he buys them anyway to help the girls. I suspect the cookies end up at the homeless shelter.

I too deplore how little stays to help the local girls. The daughter of one of my favorite former co-workers was selling cookie dough or something to raise funds for a 4-H trip, and I gave her $10 with the proviso that I didn't have to take the item. That way ALL the money went to the trip, none to the cookie dough maker and none to the 4-H hierarchy.

Pea is right, for the most part the girls are terrible at selling, unless they've got somebody like PSM to coach them.

tlynn78 wrote:They really should do some training if they are going to pimp these girls out. I was an excellent girl scout sales girl. What's a Thanks-A-Lot? Is it as good as a Samoa? I don't share my Samoas.


t.

I don't know this for sure, and I think Samoas are gone. They have Carmel DeLite - Delicate vanilla cookies drenched in caramel, sprinkled with toasted coconut and laced with dark cocoa stripes.

That is from the web-site. My little girl says they still have Samoas.

cindy.wellman wrote:

peacock2121 wrote:Does anyone really take on teaching girl scouts how to be little business women?

Sting was rolling on the floor laughing at me talking to a friend's neighbor kid while I ordered cookies from her. She didn't know jack about selling.

You bet!!! I was a hard ass troop leader (for juniors) the last 3 years when it came to this very thing. I had a similar experience to yours w/ a little girl who was selling them to me, so perhaps that is why I felt so strongly about it. I think that ultimately the girls felt better about themselves when they could answer the questions thrown their way, and also do the math that came along with selling.

After I finished my order, I asked "When do I pay you?"

She said "When the cookies come in."

I said "When will that be?"

She said "I don't know."

I said "Do you have an idea?"

She said "My leader said soon."

sigh

Ritterskoop wrote:Did she climb that hill all by herself? Two boxes of cookies is good payback for that.

LOL - The hill is even harder to climb since we moved the driveway.

I did not see the little girl. She was selling to a friend and the friend called and asked if we wanted cookies.

I insisted the little girl call me.

She did call when I asked her to call.

I ordered 6 boxes.

Seemed like easy math to me.

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:

peacock2121 wrote:Does anyone really take on teaching girl scouts how to be little business women?

Sting was rolling on the floor laughing at me talking to a friend's neighbor kid while I ordered cookies from her. She didn't know jack about selling.

When I was the cookie manager of the girls' troops, I did teach them how to sell. We also practiced what do to if people were mean to them.

What did you teach them to do?

PlacentiaSoccerMom wrote:

peacock2121 wrote:Poor Henry - I think he is just so afraid of me he can not speak my name.

I told this little girl I wanted 2 boxes of Thanks-A-Lot. She says "Um...... we don't have them."

I say "They are listed as the 2008 flavors"

She says "Uh oh."

I tell her what the Thanks-aLot are.

She tells me what she has.

She has the Thanks-a-Lot under a different name.

I ask how much do I owe you.

She says they are $3.50 a box.

I wait

She says "I am not good at multiplying."

I say "I'll wait."

It went down hill from there.

This year, the names of the cookies changed. Thanks A Lot cookies used to be All Abouts if she was used to the other name, she might not have realized what was going on.

Still she should know her business.

As part of my cookie training, those kids knew what each cookie was called and they also knew what they tasted like.

Seems to me the little girls should have had the 2008 descriptions. She was reading the descriptions to me, that did not match the ones on the web-site.

What are they teaching these girls?

Of course, I say this and I am not a troop leader.