My first grade daughter, Hanna has been indoctrinated into daisy scouts. They start the usual scouting stuff. Meetings, group activities etc. She is going along having a great time since last fall. Then they drop the item that every parent of a daughter who is in girl scouts for the first time has to know is coming, at least in the back of their head: Girl Scout Cookie sales.
By selling cookies, the scout troop gets to go on a field trip or have a party or some other goal they set as a group. The cookie drive is set up to encourage participation from every scout by having them setting goals tied to rewards. Hanna is interested in a water bottle. To get the Girl Scout logo water bottle, a girl has to sell 100 boxes of cookies. That’s right, 100 boxes of cookies. Never mind that plenty of water bottles are available for three bucks in every store we set foot in. She wants the Girl Scout logo bottle, so 100 boxes of cookies at four bucks each need to be sold.
Additionally, I am not of the belief that as a parent, I should be accomplishing my kids’ goals/work for them. Because of that, I was disinclined to lean on my employees to by large amounts of cookies through me on her behalf. I said to Hanna, if you want to sell 100 boxes of cookies, let’s go do it.
Now you may not be aware, but here in Chicago, 2008 had a horrible winter. We had over 40 inches of snow. The first time the temperature was over freezing during January was on the 31st when the high was 34. It’s not the best time of year to be selling cookies door to door. However, that is exactly what we did one Sunday in January.
We got our boots, parkas, mittens, gloves, hats and order form ready and headed out into the cold. We started knocking on doors, the next door neighbor, folks with kids her age down the street. We were going along fine and then it happened. We ran out of “doors we knew” and now had to start knocking on the doors of people we did not know.
Her first question was “What do I say?” So we talked about saying exactly what she said to the other neighbors. “Hi, my name is Hanna Kramer and I was wondering if you were interested in buying some Girl Scout cookies from me?” It worked with the other folks so let’s not change it.
After a few no answers and a few rejections you could see the disappointment start to develop on her face. The ease of the first few sales passed and I could see the hard reality starting do dawn on her that there was a long way to go to get that water bottle. Surprisingly though, just as she was starting to get a little discouraged, one neighbor, whom we had never met, invited us in and bought several boxes of cookies. She was as excited about our “old school” selling in the weather conditions as she was excited to meet some people from down the block that she never had met.
After completing that order and heading back into the winter afternoon, I suggested that we take a break and go in, we had been out for awhile and it was cold, snowing and we had made some progress. My suggestion was denied though by my 6 year old when she quickly and directly proceeded to remind me what selling always boils down to…
“Daddy, we can’t stop now! I need more tries”!
“More tries?” I asked?
“Yes, I need more tries to sell 100 boxes”.
So I pulled my hat down and we headed up the block. Not letting a little snow or any other obstacle get in the way of that water bottle.
