By: Andrea Mac | January 4, 2024

If you can only handle me in small doses:

Sayonara 2023 and Welcome 2024: This year, I will focus on increasing profit, scaling impact, finishing book #1, and securing a TedX talk.

Some things that I am going to try: Both social and search ads (yes, there’s a difference) and creating variations of partnerships, collaborations, or affiliate relationships. I am doubling down on my passive revenue streams.

Personally: I remain focused on inventorying what brings me absolute, unbridled joy, repeating it, and attending a few Macklemore concerts. That was the most fun I had in 2023.

Building Prequal Vol. 22 – Beaux’s Go-To-Market Cookie Strategy

Girl Scout cookie season is officially underway. As I mentioned in my last edition of Building Prequal, I want to show you how I'm applying Prequal's sales methodologies to help my daughter sell the most cookies in her troop. She did it last year, and we have a solid plan to help her do it again.

Girl Scouts start selling cookies once they are in first grade. So even though my daughter Beaux has been in Girl Scout since Kindergarten. Last year was her first cookie-selling season. She approached it with determination and intensity, unlike anything I had seen.

I am not a go-with-the-flow person. I'm competitive. I plan. I strategize. I am always thinking about and preparing for what's to come. My daughter, Beaux, did not inherit this gene from me. She's understated (not a word people use to describe me). She's not my center-of-attention kid. She's content to fly below the radar and blend in, but not when it comes to Girl Scout cookies. (It’s funny what’s genetic.)

Beaux understood how important cookie sales were to her troop. $1.05 of every $6.00 box sold goes back to a scout's troop. Cookies sales fund many of the troop's activities throughout the year. So, while there was an incentive to sell the most cookies and win prizes like dolphin keychains and other trinkets, that wasn't Beaux's motivation. She was in it to win it, but only because it would help her troop.

And she steered the ship for the most part. She did the planning and prep work. She even recorded a video that I shared on my social media feed. She drove this thing, and it made me beyond proud.

That brings us to this year.

Beaux is not resting on her laurels. She's approaching cookie season with the same tenacity she did last year. But this year, she's armed with experience and new strategies to ensure she comes out on top once again.

When preparing her go-to-market strategy, the first thing we did was survey our network. If you've worked with me in any capacity, you know one of the first exercises I often have my clients do is a network audit. This audit uncovers active opportunities within their network and helps them assess if they need to meet more people to make more opportunities.

In Beaux’s case, we know plenty of people. Our network is extensive, but we have a geography problem. She is in a troop with 30 other girls who all live in our same neighborhood, so our market is very saturated. Because of that, she’s getting more creative with her outreach.

She will first reach out to the people who bought cookies from her last year. These are her “existing clients,” which is a great first place to look if you want more sales.

She’s also exploring a new market that has the potential to be huge. Beaux's older sister is a college freshman this year, so Beaux wants to target the college crowd. We want to collaborate with a college near our home where if someone orders dinner, they can add a box of Girl Scout cookies to their order. I'm also active in a parent group for my oldest daughter's college, and we plan to post there and allow parents to send their college kids boxes of Girl Scout cookies. I don't know a single college kid who isn't excited about receiving food from home, especially Girl Scout cookies.

Beaux has another advantage in her network that we plan to utilize, and that's her top superfan – me. I'm here not only to help Beaux set up her online presence and audit her network, but I'm also in her corner, ready to tell everyone I know how amazing my daughter is and why they want to buy her cookies. That's what a good superfan does, and you better believe I will go above and beyond to help spread the word about my favorite Girl Scout.

-A.

P.S. Speaking of spreading the word about my favorite Girl Scout, here’s the link to buy cookies directly from Beaux.