Your door bells will soon be ringing and little girls in blue and brown and green will be sweetly asking you to buy some Girl Scout cookies from them. Please say yes! (Especially to my two!) Here are my tips on how to pump up your Girl Scout cookie sales, from my years of experience selling with my two little Daisies, Brownies and Scouts.

If you have Girl Scouts of your own, here a few ways to get you ready for cookie selling.

Pump Up the Cute Factor

I pulled out my scrapbooking stash and embellished clipboards for the girls to use while selling. They get a little shy about asking for orders, so I thought “COOKIES” might help get them over the hump. The clipboards are conversation starters with our neighbors.

I styled this for Daisies, but you could easily make yours for Brownies or Girl Scouts. (The Daisy embellishments are from the K and Company line that I found at Hobby Lobby.)

Practice Your Talking Points

If you ring the doorbell and a former Girl Scout answers, I promise she’ll ask what your goals are. So your daughter should have her answer handy. And while the Girl Scouts provide forms and brochures, the content is overwhelming. Help your daughter condense all that to just what she needs.

Missy of Crafty Carnival created this Cookies Sales Goal Sheet for her daughter’s troop. I love that it helps them keep their goals in mind and reminds them of their manners. This is the perfect way to keep your girl focused.

Cookie Sales Goal Sheet

Practice Gratitude

Missy also created these thank you notes. They are meant to be colored in by your girls and then presented with the cookie deliveries. Mine really had fun making these last year. They made pink girls, green girls, purple girls!

We wrapped each customer’s batch of cookies with green curling ribbon and taped on one of these notes. It made deliveries more efficient. And, I’m guessing the thank you notes stick in our customer’s minds, helping us with repeat sales in future years.

Girl Scout Thank You Tags

Here are more thank you tag options from Spotgirl. These would work for Girl Scouts or Daisys. Love the option for girls who wear glasses!

Cookie Sales With Twins

With two girls selling, we have to work on our technique a bit to make it all fair.

• My two take turns ringing the doorbells and speaking first. If no one is home, then the bell ringer gets to try the next house until they get someone who is home.
• If we have to skip a house, I jot down the house number, so we remember to go back later.
• Usually people will ask if both girls are selling, and I prompt the girls to say yes. Each girl has her own cookie form and we ask the buyers to fill out each form.
• What happens is that each girl winds up with less boxes sold than if they were selling on their own. Most buyers don’t double their purchase; they split their purchase. That’s just the way it is. We’re not pushy sellers.

Tips for Husbands

And finally, my plea to the husbands of America: You do not need to wait for your wife to come home to make a decision about which cookies to buy. Man up. Buy some cookies. If the wife doesn’t like your choices, she’ll buy some from the Girl Scouts outside the grocery store. Or, buy for the troops. I’d rather you buy just two boxes than ask us to come back at some specific time. We are not selling around the clock, guys.

And, perhaps most importantly, men: if you are not fully dressed, do not come to the door. Yes, it’s happened, and we won’t go back to that house. No cookies for you!