Strategy How to Use Selling Expense Ratios

Typically, direct selling expenses range from 25 percent to 35 percent for consumer catalog companies and 15 percent to 22 percent for business-to-business catalogers. In order to best manage this critical ratio from an expense standpoint, it's important to know what exactly is driving it. For example, we know the more prospecting that's done in relation to what the housefile can support will affect it. But, mailings deep to our own housefile will cause the ratio to increase, too. The gold at the end of the rainbow is finding the proper balance between housefile circulation and prospecting to optimize the direct selling expense to sales ratio.