It's Girl Scout Cookie time, so I took my daughter out for her first door-to-door selling experience on Saturday, spending three-and-a-half wonderful hours with her. Her personal goal (set by her!) for the campaign is to sell 200 boxes, and on our first outing she made it two-thirds of the way to her goal.
I spent a lot of time in street waiting for my daughter to do her thing at the front door of each house we visited. Seeing that I'm obsessed with sales improvement, I couldn't help but spend that time identifying what we can learn about selling from the Girl Scout Cookie experience.
1. Prospects lie.
I don't know for sure, but I estimate close to 100% of the twenty people who told my daughter "We already bought cookies" were lying. After all, we were out first thing on Saturday, the first day of the Girl Scout Cookie sale. The entire time we were out, we didn't see anybody else in the neighborhood selling GSCs, so unless everybody rushed to buy them at work before the sales started, at least some (most?) were lying.
2. Some people avoid salespeople.
There were a handful of people who saw us coming or drove into their garage minutes before we arrived at their home to sell GSCs. But they didn't answer their door. Could they have been in the shower or using their toilet at the exact same time my daughter approached their front door and rang their doorbell? Yes. Is that likely? No. They were avoiding my daughter the salesperson. Some people will go out of their way, perhaps huddling behind the living room sofa, just to avoid a salesperson.
3. Enthusiasm counts.
My daughter knows both my wife and I are salespeople, so sales is a common topic at our dinner table. She was excited to get out on the street and sell GSCs just like the big girls she saw come to our door when she was little, but she was also excited to be a salesperson like Mom and Dad. That enthusiasm showed, and some people bought cookies because of it (and her irresistible smile...thanks to her mother's genes). Enthusiasm and smiles work for sales professionals of all ages.
4. Sometimes you have to ask for the sale more than once.
Surprisingly to me, many people in our neighborhood said "no" to my daughter. But if you follow-up with, "are you sure you don't want to buy just one box," some customers will do just that. Sometimes it takes more than one closing action to make the sale.
5. Get to the emotion.
If a cute eight-year-old girl bundled up for the Minnesota winter with her adorable little gloves and scarf and coat traipsing through the wintery Minnesota neighborhood with her dad isn't enough to tweak your emotions enough to invest $3.50 in a box of GSCs, I feel sorry for you. Yet, I understand that their just wasn't enough emotional octane for some to get them to open their wallet. You just need to ramp up the emotional component of interaction in order to entice some to go ahead and buy. When prospects said no to the cookies, following up with, "Would you like to buy just one box to donate to the food shelf to help a local family in need?" gets some people over that emotional tipping point. To the people who still wouldn't buy, I feel really sorry for you.
Find a Girl Scout Council in your neighborhood who is selling cookies right now. Order some!
If you like this post (or don't) please leave a comment. Skip Anderson is the Founder and President of Selling to Consumers Sales Training. He works with companies and individuals who sell to consumers in B2C, retail, in-home selling, and the financial, real estate, and insurance markets.
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