Girl Scout Cookies and Best-Selling Lines of Insurance

Recently, the granddaughter of one our partners came into our office to sell Girl Scout Cookies. While her sale’s pitch may need a little improvement, she did fantastic for a 7-year-old, and sold a fair amount of girl scout cookies. (I am down for 8 boxes so far).

Soon after her visit, I did some google searching and found that annually over 200 million boxes of Girl Scout Cookies are sold each season. (that’s 200 billion calories worth of cookies).

The best-selling Girl Scout cookies are:

• 25% - Thin Mints

• 19% - Samoas

• 13% - Peanut Butter Patties/Tagalongs

• 11% - Peanut Butter Sandwich/Do-si-dos

• 9% - Shortbread/Trefoils

• 23% - Other assorted other varieties combine to account for the remaining

I think that I have purchased girl scout cookies every year for about 30 years. I know I have eaten them for at least 35 years straight. In that time, the salesperson has changed probably 45 times (yes, I have used multiple buyers some years, I may have an addiction).

Of course, that led me down a rabbit hole, and brought me to the stats below.

The best-selling lines of insurance (as a percentage of total policy premium) in 2021 were:

• 33.5% - Private Passenger Auto Insurance

• 14.8% - Homeowners Insurance

• 12.4% - Commercial Liability

• 7.2% - Workers Compensation

• 6.6% - Commercial Auto

• 6.3% - Commercial Mutli-Perils

I am not sure what any of this means, or what it has to do with Girl Scout Cookies. I have been a Peanut Butter Patty man most of my life. Pretty much my go to Girl Scout Cookie. However, looking at these numbers, maybe I am not giving thin mints a chance.

Just like the girl scouts, our agency sets goals. We look to market and make sales where the opportunity is greatest. Personally, I had no idea that personal auto insurance accounted for such a large portion of our industry. My next project will be to analyze the breakdown of my office and see where the opportunities lie within our book of business.

For the month of February, I will continue to talk in code. My sales staff has no idea what I mean when I tell them that our Thin Mint only clients need Samoas as well. But dammit they do.

My book of the month is a recommendation by the girl scout’s grandpa, a Patrick Wyman book called The Verge, Reformation, Renaissance, And Forty Years That Shook the World 1490-1530.