the top 40 sales tips that work!

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1. Create business cards. Use resources from the CEO Tools webpage at LittleBrownieBakers.com to create business cards with your name. (For safety's sake, don't include a personal address, phone number or last name.)
   
   
2. Set a huge goal. Work with your troop to set the most fabulous goal you can imagine. Will it take more than one cookie sale to save enough money to achieve your dream? Invite a financial planner to visit your troop and discuss saving and investing. Take it a step further and create a plan to increase your personal financial savvy and success each year!
   
   
3. Dress for success. Dress to represent your future career when you sell cookies, and add your vest or sash to show that you're a Girl Scout. It will make the point that today's teens are tomorrow's leaders. The future starts here!
   
   
4. Double up for charity. When you have a cookie shop, work out a deal with the business you're in front of to donate a box to a local homeless shelter for every box you sell. Then advertise that challenge to customers.
   
   
5. Promote big. Create a campaign asking people to buy an extra box of cookies from a teen. Use the spotlight to publicize your goals for the sale and your progress so far.
   
   
6. Sponsor fun. Work with your council to sponsor a "Community Girl Scout Cookie Moment" -- a specific time in which everyone in the community is asked to eat a Girl Scout Cookie. As you work to promote this idea, you are sure to discover new ways and places to sell cookies.
   
   
7. Think beyond the box. Market desserts like Thin Mint Pizzas or Trefoil Ice Cream Sandwiches. Be creative. Promote your project with flyers in your community and school. Take orders or serve at local events. Be sure to have boxes of cookies available, too. The Thin Mint Pizza recipe is at gsnc.org.You can even print it out for customers. (Be sure to follow all local health and sales ordinances and council guidelines.)
   
   
8. Learn from a pro. Ask professional women to present workshops on important career skills, dressing for success,presentation skills, public speaking, etc. Then use your cookie activities to practice what you learn.
   
   
9. Know your goal. What is your personal goal for the year? Your experiences in the Girl Scout Cookie Sale may help you achieve it. Decide how you can enhance your career or leadership path by working toward your cookie-selling goal, then go for it!
   
   
10. Be a role model. As a team, take an active role in the lives of girls around you. Serve as mentors for younger Girl Scouts during cookie activities. Adopt a Brownie troop!
    
    
11. Pass it on. Create a cookie training skit and offer to perform it for the Girl Scout and Junior troops in your service unit or neighborhood.
    
    
12. Plan a strategy. With adult support, locate women leaders in your community and meet with them to discuss marketing strategies. Ask one of these women to be the mentor for your troop and make her honorary chairwoman of your cookie activities.
    
    
13. Make it a family affair. Enlist the support of your team families. Do any own businesses where you could sell? Are any involved in civic groups? Consider each adult – each will have some unique way of helping your group directly or indirectly. Create a list of strategic contacts from your team's families. Be sure to thank them when they come through!
    
    
14. Target companies. Ask your council to approve a list of partner corporations. Choose some to contact and make appointments. Plan ahead with a sales pitch explaining why they should buy cookies to use as customer or employee gifts, for serving in the company cafeteria, etc. Offer cookies for sale by the case!
    
    
15. Slam dunk. With council and adult help, contact local coffee shops and ask them to buy cases of cookies to serve with coffee drinks during Girl Scout Cookie time. Get their permission topost a sign promoting other cookie booth locations.
    
    
16. Go for rush hour. With your council's help, arrange for large office buildings to allow your teen troop to set up cookie shops in the lobby at lunch or closing time.
    
    
17. Speak out. Contact service organizations in your community and offer to speak at a meeting about the value of Girl Scouting. After the speech,your team can sell cookies to people at the meeting.
    
    
18. Develop public service announcements(PSAs) with the guidance of your P.R. group at the council. These can be aired through a public access channel or local commercial television. If you have a college or university in your area, ask their communications department for guidance.
    
    
19. Go to the mall. In addition to selling boxes, you can offer special occasion gift baskets for birthdays, anniversaries, even Valentine’s or Presidents day -- you name it. If you can dream it, you can do it!
    
    
20. Take it on the road. Hold a rolling cookie shop or cookie caravan. With an adult at the wheel, cruise through neighborhoods selling direct door-to-door with cookies in hand. Decorate your van or car with Cookie Mobile Magnets that you can print out from our website to let everyone know it's cookie time!
    
    
21. Hold a bake-off. Sponsor a Girl Scout Cookie recipe contest.
    
    
22. Build PR. Create news releases about your troop's planned activities or about how the Girl Scout Cookie activities in general support your team's goals. With council approval, provide them to anyone who disseminates news -- TV and radio stations, newspaper.
    
    
23. Distribute to places your families frequent-- clubs, shops, places of worship, etc.
    
    
24. Dress it up. Use clip art and guidelines from Cookies Inc. to promote all of your super sales strategies!
    
    
25. Rally for success. Help your council plan and conduct a rally for Brownie and Junior Girl Scouts to prepare them for safe, exciting and successful sales.
    
    
26. Share ideas. Help your council host a–100 Girl Approved–workshop in cooperation with Little Brownie Bakers to prepare teen girls for new approaches to the cookie sale
    
    
27. Go to college. Set up a cookie shop at your local college or university campus. College kids love Girl Scout Cookies, and they don't get a chance to buy them on- or off-campus very often. Ask local campus Girl Scouts to show you the ropes
    
    
28. Meet and greet. Seems obvious, but don't forget to go face-to-face and greet people at their homes! Nine out of ten consumers will buy Girl Scout Cookies if you just ask. Wear your Cookies Inc. button to show that teens take a different approach to cookie sales.
    
    
29. Take your cookies to work. If family members work for local businesses or offices, get permission to post an order card in their break rooms. Attach a note or create a poster asking employees to buy cookies and detailing your goals.
    
    
30. Show progress. Make a giant thermometer poster to show your progress toward your troop or group cookie sale goal, and color it in as you move closer to the goal. Include pictures of the activities you plan to use proceeds for. Post it at every cookie shop!
    
    
31. Get out there. Work with your council to attend sporting and community events like baseball games, high school football games, and local fairs to set up cookie shops.
    
    
32. Wait for the bell. Ask the administration at your school if you can hold a cookie shop before school, during lunch, or after school. Make posters to advertise when you'll be selling so your classmates will know to bring money.
    
    
33. Take it outdoors. Hold a Girl Scout Cookie "yard sale" in your neighborhood!
    
    
34. Go corporate. Find a corporate sponsor in the community. Ask them to let you have booth sales on their property, advertise your sale in their own ads, etc.
    
    
35. Show good form. Design a fax cookie order form. Call local businesses and ask permission to fax an order card to them. In a cover page, include your teams learning goals and what you plan to do with cookie proceeds.You can provide a troop adult's fax number to return the form, or offer to stop by to pick it up with a buddy. For a special touch, include a thank you card when you drop off the cookies.
    
    
36. Start with whom you know. Use your family and friends contacts at local businesses. Mail them an order card with a cover letter explaining your troop's goals. Include a troop adult's phone number so business contacts may call if they have questions. Be sure to include instructions for how to place orders by phone, fax, or mail.
    
    
37. Call it out. Hold a cookie telethon at your council's headquarters or a local business that has a phone bank.. Gather contact lists, recruit your friends and hit the phones!
    
    
38. Help Operation Cookie. Support our Military Troops by asking customers to buy extra packages of Girl Scout Cookies to be donated to your cause.
    
    
39. Swap for it. Make buttons or stickers or other swappables and give them to customers who buy a certain number of boxes.
    
    
40. Show it off. Take digital photos or video of your Girl Scout activities and display while selling at corporate events, cookie shops, etc.
    
    
41. Add it up. Reference dietary exchange information for the cookies when you sell to help customers enjoy Girl Scout Cookies in a way that supports their health needs. Nutrition information is also available on the order card.
    
    
42. Go Hollywood. Create a Cookies Inc. show for public access TV. Interview teen Girl Scouts and grown-up Girl Scouts about how their experiences selling cookies has helped them achieve success in other areas of their lives.