Case Histories

Reduced return rates by over 20%

Issue: RTV rate was extremely high, especially as compared to a normal return rate as a percentage of sales. The stores and customers were taking advantage of a couple of "loop-holes" that existed in the RTV policy.

Solution: Rheem hired Pro Marketing Sales as their field inspection team as a test in one area of the country. We trained our field force to recognize the otherwise difficult to catch identifying factors that would determine a legitimate RTV. We set the team up on a rotating service call, hitting the stores with the highest return rate more often. We were able to put a 'win/win' plan in place that put Rheem in a 'risk free' position while allowing Pro Marketing Sales to benefit directly from the work we did in the field.

Outcome: Within 30 days of the program starting, we were able to reduce the overall return rate by over 20%, saving Rheem over $100,000 per month in returns in just one BYO. The return rate overall has been reduced as the stores (and in turn, the customers) learn that there is a trained force of people in the field who will enforce the policies in place.

Weekend emergency work

Issue: The Home Depot POG (Plan-O-Gram) team was faced with emergency weekend work that involved updates to 78 Faucet POGs. The time sensitive project would need to begin on Thursday evening and be completed by mid-day the following Monday.

Solution: The Home Depot reached out to the Pro Marketing Sales POG Team for help. Pro Marketing Sales POG experts worked through the weekend to successfully complete the updates and submitted the completed packet to Home Depot at 11:29 AM on Monday.

Outcome: The POGs were completed on time and distributed to the appropriate parties in time for the monthly product change-out to take place in The Home Depot stores.

Created 1,969 compliant POGs in a 6 week period

Issue: Underperforming sales on several new SKUs. 6 new SKUs of tape rolled out to the stores. These SKUs were supposed to be set by MET, but after several weeks of seeing stores with little to no sales, 3M needed to do something to correct the situation.

Solution: 3M came to Pro Marketing Sales to utilize our sales force to ensure their SKUs were packed down, priced and set according to the new POG. We worked with each store to ensure they were aware of the new SKUs and the POG changes so that after we left, things didn't go back to the way they were prior to our visit. We packed down the new SKU's, priced each and updated the POG hanging in the bay.

Outcome: Sales and Turns increased dramatically almost immediately. Orders started rolling in and inventory levels came back down to where they need to be.