Every day after school for three months in 2006, seven-year-old Victoria Rose Meek would don her Brownie Girl Scout uniform and open her cookie stand for business in the front yard of her home in Coronado, California. If her hand-lettered neon green sign — which read “Girl Scout Cookies, $4” — or free cookie samples failed to catch her neighbors’ attention, then Victoria would bring out the maracas to lure passersby with her own cookie siren song: “I want cookies/Girl Scout cookies/Samoas for Mommy/Tagalongs for Daddy.”

It would be easy to mistake Victoria for just another adorable pixie in pigtails. But in fact, she’s a pint-size sales dynamo who sold 200 boxes on her first day and kept on charging. With her cookie-marketing portfolio tucked under her arm, she braved a rainstorm in order to canvass an unsolicited neighborhood. She wrote and called corporations for contributions. She even coached her fellow Troop 5329 Brownies to set higher sales goals as she herself reached, and surpassed, her ultimate goal — selling 2,006 boxes — to clinch the last of six winners’ seats on a helicopter ride over San Diego. “I just kept saying to myself, ‘You can do it! You can do it!’ ” Victoria says.

Thanks in part to its highly motivated pixie-cute sales force of 2.8 million girls, Girl Scouts of the USA makes a mint with its annual cookie sale. The Cookie Program, as the organization calls it, sells about 200 million boxes per year. At an average price of $3.50 per box, that adds up to $700 million in proceeds each year.

But it’s also the Scouts’ razor-sharp business acumen that has made the cookie sale as cherished and anticipated a winter tradition as the Super Bowl. The Cookie Program is far more than a fund-raiser; it’s a highly successful business and economic-literacy program. Girl Scouts hone lifetime skills such as teamwork, goal setting, and money management; they also learn and practice many of the same strategies used by corporate executives in order to market and sell their cookies and to provide service to their customers.

“Americans love the Girl Scout cookie sale, but what they think of first is the product,” says Kathy Cloninger, CEO of Girl Scouts of the USA. “They don’t realize the sophisticated underpinnings of the business of running the sale. Every troop that runs the Girl Scout cookie sale literally runs a business enterprise.”

THE EARLIEST MENTION of a cookie sale in the Girl Scouts’ archives dates to 1917 — just five years after the organization was founded — when the Mistletoe Troop in Muskogee, Oklahoma, baked cookies and sold them in the high school cafeteria as a service project. Those girls wouldn’t recognize today’s cookie sale.

What was a simple snack back then must now take into consideration such contemporary concerns as free-trade chocolate, kosher certification, trans fat, union labor, and American-made ingredients and packaging — issues that are all addressed on the official Girl Scouts website (www.girlscouts.org).

Instead of the home-baked goodies of 90 years ago, the cookies that today’s Scouts sell are made by two commercial bakers licensed by the national Girl Scouts office: Little Brownie Bakers and ABC Bakers. These companies may have cutesy images and names, but they’re actually subsidiaries of industry giants Keebler and Interbake Foods, respectively. They compete for business, in part, by providing a wide array of marketing materials, from cookie costumes to car magnets to Going Places with Cookies Sales, a career-exploration web tool offered by ABC Bakers to help older Scouts translate cookie-sale skills into career goals.

The bakers provide the all-important cookie slate (see “How the Cookie Crumbles,” below) and national marketing themes each year, but all other aspects of the sale are determined by the 300-plus councils, the regional bodies that govern groups of 600 to 65,000 members. Each council independently sets its sales period (usually January through March) and the per-box sales price. That’s why the Thin Mints that Victoria sells for $4 in Coronado cost only $3 in St. Louis.

Whatever the sales price, local Scouts, troops, and councils receive 100 percent of the proceeds, which are used to maintain camp facilities, train volunteers, and put on programs. Every penny is prized and long planned for.

ONE WORD POPS up repeatedly throughout the cookie sale: goals. Each Girl Scout writes her personal and troop goals on her cookie order form so that she can keep them in front of herself and her customers. “Research shows that girls who set goals and share them [with their customers] sell more cookies,” says Mona Sullivan, communications manager for Tres Condados Council in Santa Barbara, California.

For many Scouts, their individual goal and a particular sales level are one and the same. Each council offers different incentive prizes at sales levels ranging from 12 boxes (participation patch) to 2,000-plus boxes. The prizes are cumulative and create a push-pull effect; as the girls earn progressively more valuable prizes, they often push themselves harder to reach an even higher sales goal.

For example, on her climb up the sales ladder, Victoria collected stuffed animals (350 boxes), a sleepover at SeaWorld (500 boxes), a photo caravan at a wild-animal park (1,000 boxes), and a sleepover and $100 council bucks to spend on Girl Scout merchandise (1,500 boxes). When the helicopter ride was within arm’s reach, she made a last-minute push and took on unsold boxes from another troop to close the gap and reach her final goal, selling 2,006 boxes. “I just kept going until I got that helicopter ride,” she says.

The trinkets offered at the lower sales levels don’t appeal much to older Girl Scouts. Instead, they opt to earn more for each box sold in order to fund troop and individual activities such as camps and trips. Girl Scouts 11 to 17 often set a multiyear sales goal and bank their earnings to underwrite a trip that’s planned for two or three years later. “The multiyear sales goal is one of the most successful retention tools we’ve found for girls of that age level,” Cloninger says.

But as the ABC Bakers’ Catch Goals campaign at their website (www.abcsmartcookies.com) reminds Scouts, a goal without a plan is just a wish. “The Cookie Program is a year-round effort,” says Lisa Johnson, chief marketing and development officer for Girl Scouts of Palm Glades Council in Jupiter, Florida. “The girls work with their leaders to plan the activities they want to do throughout the year, develop budgets and plans of action, determine how many boxes they need to sell [to fund those activities], and develop sales strategies.”

LIKE ITS CORPORATE counterparts, the Girl Scouts organization knows that proper training is critical in order for its sales staff to work effectively. For Brownie Girl Scouts, ages six to eight, the Smart Cookie badge equips them with the basic skills and the script they need to get past the first nervous knock on a neighbor’s door. In addition to instruction on time management, making change, and safety (adults accompany the girls at all times), the exercises include a role-playing activity called “What Do You Say?” as well as “Making Your Sales Pitch,” which challenges the Brownies to come up with descriptions for each cookie that “sound so yummy that your customer can’t help but buy at least one box,” Victoria says. “You have to know the right thing to say, but it’s easy once you get the hang of it and memorize it.”

For Junior Girl Scouts, ages eight to 11, the Cookie Biz badge emphasizes career exploration. What kind of suggested sells would a marketer create for cookies that aren’t moving well? What steps would an event manager follow for a successful booth sale on a college campus or at a sporting event? How would a project manager attract new customers or increase sales per hour? The Scout presents her ideas to her troop, which then might use them during the sale.

For the Girl Scouts ages 11 to 17, the Cookie Program takes on a different dimension than the traditional door-to-door sales. “It is harder to do outside sales and compete with the cute Brownies; people don’t understand there are older Scouts too,” says Sarah Cain, 16, a Girl Scout in Arlington, Washington. Enter the CEO in Training program, in which participants tap new markets and strive for bulk sales by making sales presentations directly to local business owners. “As girls get older, they get more sophisticated in their sales plan,” Cloninger says. Some create PowerPoint presentations; others might map their sales to identify repeat customers as well as overlooked prospects.

Tiondra Flynn, a 16-year-old Girl Scout in Carpinteria, California, was already a consistent top seller in the Tres Condados Council when she entered the CEO in Training program. Her skills served her well during her pitch to the Pacifica Hotel Company. The company purchased 120 cases — 1,440 boxes — to present to guests checking in at the chain’s 18 hotels. “My cookie-selling days were done for the year,” she says.

EVERY COUNCIL STARTS off the year with a grand Cookie Kick-Off celebration, but then each one must come up with its own creative ideas for maintaining enthusiasm and sales throughout the remaining three months.

Some councils call in experts to rally the troops. The Trillium Council in Pittsburgh piloted Win-Win: How to Get What You Want, a badge developed by negotiation expert Linda Babcock that’s based on her recent book Women Don’t Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide. “It’s the same concept as in my college courses,” says Babcock, an economics professor at Carnegie Mellon University. “When you go into a negotiation, you need to think of an alternative for if you don’t agree, think about the other side’s perspective, and develop a strategy for what you’re trying to get.”

Other councils turn to technology. Because of safety and security concerns, Scouts are prohibited from selling cookies online. Still, cyberspace is transforming what was traditionally a very low-tech, paperwork-intensive cookie program. The national Girl Scouts office has launched a cyberspace cookie headquarters — GirlScoutCookies.org— where consumers can enter their zip codes to find out when and where to purchase cookies in their area. And on the ever-popular MySpace.com, the Scouts’ new page tempts taste buds with cookie photos and vintage Girl Scout cookie ads, which also can be viewed on YouTube.com and found through search engines such as Yahoo! and Google.

The Patriots’ Trail Council, in Boston, has revolutionized its cookie sale by adopting QuickBase for Corporate Workgroups, an online database program. “QuickBase allows us to look at our data on a daily or weekly basis and make decisions that impact the sale as it is going on,” says Barbara Fortier, COO of the Patriots’ Trail Council.

For example, after analyzing individual Girl Scout sales records, the council added additional sales incentives at 25 and 50 boxes in order to encourage Scouts to raise their sales goals. It worked: The average sales level has risen from the mid-60s to 72 per girl over the past five years, and between 2005 and 2006, the number of girls reaching the 500 Club (as in boxes sold) rose 70 percent, to 57.

Still other councils have found sales success with creative partnerships. In Oakland, California, the Scouts teamed up with the California Milk Processor Board on a “Got Milk?” billboard featuring Girl Scout cookies. In Hawaii, the state’s Macadamia Nut Association partnered with the Girl Scouts to launch a new cookie, Aloha Chips, in conjunction with the grower organization’s own public-awareness push.

Without a doubt, the most successful recent partnership has been Operation Thin Mint. Over the past six years, the Girl Scouts San Diego–Imperial Council has teamed with APL shipping company and naval logisticians in the U.S. Pacific Fleet to send more than a million donated boxes of Girl Scout cookies to servicemen and servicewomen overseas. Dozens of councils nationwide have since copied the program successfully, but it was in San Diego that the concept for “a taste of home and a note to show we care” started and blossomed.

“Everyone in San Diego has either a family member or a neighbor who serves in the military,” says Jo Dee Jacob, CEO of Girl Scouts San Diego–Imperial Council. “Everyone is touched by what is happening overseas. That is why Operation Thin Mint is uniquely successful.”

And that’s why Victoria was so successful as well. For when she sang “Tagalongs for Daddy,” she spoke the truth: Her father received Operation Thin Mint cookies while serving overseas in the Navy. If prospective cookie customers declined to purchase cookies for themselves, Victoria could usually persuade them to buy a box for Operation Thin Mint because of her guarantee that they would reach their target. When Victoria finally reached her target, her father was there, in uniform, on the deck of the USS Midway, watching proudly as the helicopter lifted off.