Reduce Your Direct Selling Expenses
- catalog creative and production;
- paper;
- print manufacturing;
- outside rented lists;
- merge/purge;
- bind-in order form insert; and
- ink-jet and mailing.
These direct selling expenses always should be grouped together and sub-totaled separately on your income statement. Often, these expenses are lumped in with general operating expenses, which isn’t a good practice. Direct selling expenses as a percentage of net sales is one of the most important and critical ratios on your income statement. It must be managed just like you monitor your returns ratio, gross profit margin ratio and operating expense ratio.
Steve Lett graduated from Indiana University in 1970 and immediately began his 50-year career in Direct Marketing; mainly catalogs.
Steve spent the first 25 years of his career in executive level positions at both consumer and business-to-business companies. The next 25 years have been with Lett Direct, Inc., the company Steve founded in early 1995. Lett Direct, Inc., is a catalog and internet consulting firm specializing in circulation planning, plan execution, analysis and digital marketing (Google Premier Partner).
Steve has served on the Ethics Committee of the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and on a number of company boards, both public and private. He served on the Board of the ACMA. He has been the subject of two Harvard Business School case studies. He is the author of a book, Strategic Catalog Marketing. Steve is a past Chairman of both the Catalog Council and Business Mail Council of the DMA. He spent a few years teaching Direct Marketing at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana.
You can contact Steve at stevelett@lettdirect.com.
