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Where do we start this?
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An answer doesn t matter.
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We re having a good time, right?
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He couldn t wait to get in here.
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You need sales balls to make sales calls.
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I m tweeting that puppy.
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Okay.
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Welcome to the Sell or Die podcast.
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We re your hosts, Jeffrey.
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And Jen Gittimer.
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I m the author of The Little Red Book of Selling and 15 other best-selling books and the creator of the seven-figure sales formula program.
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I grew up in Philadelphia, sold in New York City, but was smart enough to move to Charlotte, North Carolina.
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And I m the author of Sales in a New York Minute and creator of Breakthrough Business Babe Community.
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Fun fact, I m obsessed with our dogs and consider them humans.
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If you have a dog, you know exactly what I m talking about.
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SellerDai is for sales professionals, sales people, sales managers, entrepreneurs, and business owners who want to sell more at full price
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earn loyalty, and have an unlimited stream of referrals.
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Every single episode is going to give you real world, easy to implement solutions so that you can get your calls returned, your proposals read and acted on, all while creating relationships that you can take all the way to the bank.
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It s time to sell or die.
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Almost everybody in this world owns a little giant ladder.
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Wouldn t it be cool if you knew the story and the background to how that ladder happened?
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On today s episode, we have a very special guest, Doug Wang, and he s going to be talking about his family s business, the little giant ladder, and how they grew their sales and grew their success.
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from 400 ladders a day to 7,000 ladders a day with one infomercial.
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Oh man, it s such a good story.
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And just so you know, we recorded this on Facebook Live, but it was so good that we had to share it with you here.
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Take a listen.
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Hello, wherever you are in the world.
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We are officially live in an unscheduled special event
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where Jen and I will be going live and interviewing the great Doug Wang.
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Oh my God, it s going to be amazing.
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If you re joining us and you already know who Doug Wang is, put in a one.
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If you don t, you re about to be mind blown.
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Yeah, all three of you.
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Now, more will join, but I think it s important right now for the sake of the video, at least.
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Yeah.
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to introduce Doug informally by saying that he is the son of the late great Hal Wing.
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Hal Wing invented and founded the little giant ladder company where Doug Wing worked for about four decades and made millions of dollars worth of sales during that period of time, literally millions.
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And we re gonna discover today the secret
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The secrets, the deep hidden secrets of how Doug Wain failed to manipulate anybody and still made tens of millions of dollars worth of sales.
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Please help me welcome the great Doug Wain.
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Wait a minute.
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Is that you don t have to manipulate to be good at sales?
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Correct.
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I love it.
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Doug, welcome to the show.
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I will admit that when I sold in New York City, I may have added a little manipulation to what I said and did, I may have.
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But Doug grew up in a different environment.
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What did your dad teach you about your, when you started selling, he goes, son, I want you to do this.
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What did he tell you?
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Well, I would say, hello, Jeffrey and Jen again today, but good to see you.
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But I would say two things.
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I would say the first one that he used to say to all the salespeople, and he taught me this lesson as well, is he said, you can tell the customer anything you want to,
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as long as it s the truth.
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So the first one was we are going to sell and always be ethical and honest and never stretch the truth.
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So that was number one.
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It s kind of good in today s world.
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Exactly.
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Yeah.
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Yeah.
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I mean, it s just people are it s competitive and there s a lot of, you know, bashing and trashing the other person, your competitors and things like that.
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And that s one thing that my dad did teach me is, you know, he s you know, people would kind of get upset when we had knockoffs and people would bad mouth us and he would just say, hey, you know what?
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we ve got the quality product, we have the name, we re gonna do business the ethical way, and it will always come back to us in spades, and it did.
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The only people who exaggerated were your competitors.
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Exactly, yeah, correct.
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So, how did, I mean, you were telling me a story at dinner once about how Little Giant took off, and I d love, can you give us like a quick little history of what was that defining moment
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The other thing I was going to mention was the other thing that my dad taught me was he would say when we were in meetings with distributors or vendors or anyone, he would say, if it s not a good deal for everyone around the table in this room, then it s not a good deal.
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And he would even say,
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to them, if I get the lion s share, it s not a good deal.
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And so he was concerned that everyone that was there working with him got an equal portion of the business and made good money.
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And so he was very fair.
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I mean, more than fair.
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But yeah, those were the two.
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things that I think I really took into sales were, you know, be honest and then, you know, make sure that everybody gets a good deal and, and, and is, you know, gets their fair share.
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So I would use this as closing the sale as opening the sale.
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Correct.
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Correct.
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So did you have a closing special way?
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Uh, no, I, um, you know, honestly, I developed relationships with people and, uh, and then they ended up buying product from me.
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And, and what I did, Jeffrey was I would develop a friendship with people.
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I d get to know them and, and, and find out about them, uh, and the things that they liked where they grew up.
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And then I would, you know, take an interest in what they did.
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And then I would listen to their needs.
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And I think listening is very, very important in sales.
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And then I would help them solve the problem they were having.
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And if I didn t have the product or service that they needed, I would find, even if it was a competitor or another company, I would help them find the answer to their issue they were having.
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That s rare.
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That s really rare.
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No one does that in business these days.
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Well, yeah, I agree with that.
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It s funny.
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You call a hotel, and they say, we re, you know, sorry, we re full.
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And what does that mean?
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I don t need a room.
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No, I need a room.
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So once you say we re full, but here s five places or let me make a phone call for you.
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Yeah, that s good.
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Well, yeah, and I know as a guy who s traveled 2 million miles, maybe you ve probably got 3 million Jeffrey flying, but I ve been to hotels before and I ve had very rarely, but there s been a few people that I ve gone in and they re full and they ve actually picked up the phone and said, hey, let me call these two hotels down the street and they actually got a room for me.
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So that s pretty rare, but that s great service, right?
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Yeah, and then you remember those hotels forever.
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Exactly.
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A thousand hotels, you remember it too.
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Yeah, for sure.
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But again, going back to your question, I guess we need to answer.
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Yeah, let s get some background, because not everyone s the same.
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Yeah, so 1972, my dad, we were all living in Germany.
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My dad was selling life insurance for a company called Beneficial Life in Salt Lake City, Utah.
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And since my dad spoke German, they decided to open an office.
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And since he was a veteran from the army, they said, OK, let s open up an office in Germany.
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You know how to get on base.
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You know how to speak German.
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and why don t you go you know we want you to go there and do this so my dad moves his whole family now keep in mind my mom and dad had um at the time they had seven kids
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And my dad was...
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27 years old, and was doing very well selling life insurance.
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He was a good salesman.
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And then a business partner of his saw the original little giant ladder, which was invented by a guy named Walter Kummelin.
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And he saw this ladder, and the guy was a house painter and designed this original design.
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And he said, Hal, you ve got to see this ladder.
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And my dad said, Richard, you re crazy.
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We re here selling insurance.
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I don t want to know about a ladder.
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partner, his Richard wouldn t give up and give up.
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You know, he just kept bugging my dad, bothering him about it.
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And so eventually my dad saw that the latter met the owner and said, wow, this is incredible.
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And he thought I could sell these things.
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And so that s kind of how things got started.
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We went back to Utah and my dad quit his job and ordered a container full of ladders, went around and met all of these friends.
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I think it was probably 40 or 50 ladders, probably met friends and family and pre-sold them all.
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Then when the ladders came in, everybody had an excuse and said, oh, this came up or that came up.
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He had all these ladders and he couldn t sell them.
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So anyway, because he pre-sold these.
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And so what happened was he decided, well, this product has to be shown.
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And so he started going to home and garden and shows and selling these things toe to toe.
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Now, keep in mind, this is in the 70s when the economy was starting to tank.
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Interest rates were very high.
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And here my dad was trying to sell these ladders that he had brought in from Germany.
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And there was no internet.
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Yeah, there was no internet.
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There was nothing.
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He had a printed little flyer he made at some copy place.
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And he sold these literally door-to-door, toe-to-toe.
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And he would tell us, hey, if I don t come home today and sell five ladders, we re busted, we re broke.
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He would literally stay out till sometimes 10, 11 o clock at night and sell the ladders he needed to stay back in business.
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Wow.
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Yep.
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I wonder how many of the people that are listening right now, whether you re an insider or a diehard or just a 959er, I wonder if you re willing to stay out till 10 o clock and not to make your sales.
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You know, I always hearken the mantra of Steve Prefontaine, the runner who said, somebody may beat me, but they re going to have to bleed to do it.
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And I wonder if you re willing to go out and bleed to get a sale, or you just want to go home and drink a beer and watch Netflix.
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Yeah, exactly.
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And people don t realize that my dad was traveling around over 300 days a year in an old Gran Torino station wagon, a woody wagon type of thing, anyway.
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And he would sleep.
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He would have ladders in there, foam pads.
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He would sleep in on his ladders, because he could only afford to stay in a hotel about every three to four nights.
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So he would sleep in a car.
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and, you know, eat out of an ice box and, you know, use the bathroom and in gas stations.
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And in the morning, he would get up and shave in like a gas station restroom and brush his teeth.
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And, you know, I m sure by the time it was, you know, that he could go to another hotel, I m sure he smelled pretty ripe, you know, because he, but I mean, how many of us today would sleep in our car and go out on the road over 300 days a year and do this?
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You know, nobody.
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Yeah, that is not just dedication, but it is drive to succeed.
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And I guess when you have seven kids at home, that s part of the drive.
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But the other part is the desire to succeed because you believe in something that you know is going to be the best.
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And I think your job as salesperson was facilitated, not made easy, but facilitated by the fact that you had the best product in the market and still do.
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Mm-hmm.
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Yeah, and quality was big.
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I mean, at the beginning of Little Giant, the two Warner brothers from the biggest ladder company in the world came up to my dad and laughed right in his face at a show.
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And they said, Wing, you re an idiot.
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You are a complete idiot.
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You will never take this anywhere.
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And you are going to fall flat on your face.
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And my dad that day said, those guys really motivated me.
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He said, in fact, they did.
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They ticked me off.
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He said, I was ticked.
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And he says, I was going to prove those guys wrong.
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And the irony of that was those two guys tried to buy our company probably three or four times, and my dad would never sell it to them.
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Oh, man.
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That s a classic.
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Your dad definitely had the last laugh on that one.
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And the balls to be able to pull them off.
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Yeah, but you know that that my dad has this story about you know, just his drive and his Never give up attitude.
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He said one day he was out and he had to sell one more ladder and he s like, man I couldn t find anybody I was going asking people for referrals.
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I m going to people s houses their businesses and he says I get referred to a one-armed man
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Now, if you ve ever seen the little giant ladder, you know, I mean, it s got all these buttons and you got to push and pull things.
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And he says, this guy starts listening to me and he s got one arm and my dad s like, how am I going to show this guy that this ladder is for him?
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And the guy says, if you can convince me.
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Mr. Wing, that I can operate this ladder with one arm, I will buy it.
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And so, my dad tells this funny story where he s down, he goes, we re both down on the ground, because my dad put one hand behind his back, and he s trying to show the guy how to do it.
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And he says, we are literally wrestling with this ladder, using our chins, our feet, you know, one arm, our shoulders.
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And he says, somehow, someway, I convinced the guy, and he goes, I made the sale, so I could go home that night.
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And I m like, man, I don t know if I could have convinced a one-armed guy to buy a little giant ladder.
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Oh man.
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Should have started selling wallpaper.
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In the meantime, there s an amazing business history behind the Little Giant Ladder Company.
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It privately owned.
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I m sure we had offers from all kinds of people, but there was a turning point in the Little Giant Ladders that defied everybody at that moment in time.
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when Hal Wing decided that it was TV time and not just hardware store time or going through distributors.
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Talk about that a little bit.
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Well, the story that people don t realize is that the company had hit an all-time low.
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I mean, the patents were running out, and sales had dropped down to a very, very crazy low level.
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And I will say this, that everybody, there were a lot of people panicking at Little Giant, and there was one guy that never panicked or never showed fear, and that was Hal Wing.
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So someone came up with the idea.
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They said, hey, maybe we should go on an infomercial.
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We know that this works going toe-to-toe.
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When we do the presentation and show people, they buy.
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And so here s the only problem, is that we didn t have the money at that time to do an infomercial, and they were about a million dollars.
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And so here s my dad, again, being the gambler that he was, he said, all right, I ll make you guys a deal.
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I ll mortgage my farm, I ll give you the million dollars, but I want that money.
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Howling the farm He bet the farm but what happened was is he said I want that money back In uh, I think he said three three to six.
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I think three months.
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He said I want my money back in three months and I want um, I don t want to be paid but I do want
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I think it was $20 for every ladder we sell on the infomercial.
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So what happened was is, you know, they filmed the infomercial.
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And of course, Hal was the star of the infomercial, because he had passion for the product.
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We did have a million dollars riding on it.
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Come on.
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Yeah, exactly.
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So anyway, the infomercial practically overnight was a huge success.
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And another amazing story was we went from producing about 400 ladders a day to 7,000 in one day.
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So we had to go quickly from one shift to three shifts, 24 hours a day, six days a week.
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Wow.
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Yeah, the amazing thing was there was so much cash that we were able to do all of this debt-free.
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We didn t have to finance any of this stuff and it just went crazy and it was absolutely successful.
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The good news is my dad got his money back and then some.
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I love that.
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So we have a book that s going to be coming out.
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I want to tease the people that are on this thing right now.
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We re doing the story of Hal Wing, but we re also talking about his success principles and his ideas for how he made sales.
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Telling the truth is part of the equation, but certainly not the only one.
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And when Doug is finished with this project,
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It s going to be major.
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I mean, this is going to be a book that will last literally a lifetime, because the
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Lowe s and the Home Depots of the world and the Ace Hardwares and the True Value Hardwares, trying to sell ladders, hammers, angles, and barbecues, and don t do a very good job of it.
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There s no passion to it.
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It s on aisle six.
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I don t want to go to aisle six.
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I want somebody to say, follow me.
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That s what I want somebody to say.
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That s part of how I win.
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Doug, I want to know on a personal note,
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Because you worked with your dad for decades, right?
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When did you realize, was there a moment, like, when did you realize what an amazing business person he was?
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Well, that came with time.
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I did notice very early on that whatever my father chose to do, he did 110%, and he had a drive and a determination and a self-belief that I ve never seen in anyone ever since.
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The kind of passion and the work ethic and the drive he had, and he showed no fear.
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He believed in himself, absolute belief in himself, and he always came through.
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And so that confidence really helped me, not in arrogance, there was no arrogance with Hal Wing.
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He really loved people and he was genuine with people, but he had this drive and confidence that always carried him through.
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And I mean, with banks, the bankers trusted him.
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Customers trusted him, vendors trusted him, and there s just so many stories of him and his integrity.
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There was a story, he lost the company once and he walked into a bank and said, I need a million dollars.
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I have no money.
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I ve always paid you back.
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Will you give me the money?
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And on the handshake, the banker stood up and said, Hal, we believe in you.
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You ve always kept your word.
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And, you know, I mean, shakes his hand and says, we ll give you the money.
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Now try to go to a bank today and do that.
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There s no way they d laugh.
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Right.
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I want your grandmother to put up her secure safety deposit box key.
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Yeah.
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I asked him about that.
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I said, wasn t it hard to do it again?
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And he looked at me and he goes, no, it wasn t.
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It was easier because I remembered the mistakes I made the first time and I eliminated those the second time.
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And it came so much quicker.
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I mean, the guy was just unbelievable.
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Oh, my God.
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Where can they get information?
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DougWang.com?
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Yeah, so the book is going to be called Giant Success and it s going to talk about the core principles and values of HowlWing and that can be found, the information to that can be found on DougWing.com and you know really the thing that really made HowlWing special I think above
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above all else was the way he treated his employees.
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That s going to be a big part of this book.
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Jeffrey and I have talked about this, that we re both givers.
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I learned to be a giver from my father, who was the ultimate giver.
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And he loved his employees.
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He gave back to them.
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He built people.
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And when he passed away, the governor of Utah spoke and said, Hal Wing always told people he was in the ladder business, but that s not true.
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Hal Wing was in the people business.
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And so that s one thing about my dad was he built people, and those people helped him build ladders.
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And he was very successful because
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He built people and helped people grow as individuals.
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So you guys, this is part one of the podcast.
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Yeah, we need a part two.
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SPEAKER_01
Oh, yeah.
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When the book comes out, we re going to have part two, and we re going to talk about how you can get involved and get the course.
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Thank you so much for listening to Sell or Die.
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We hope that this episode has helped you transform the way you think, giving you new ideas, and provided you a new perspective on the sales and business challenges that you face every day, so you can get out there and win the customer all the way to the bank.
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SPEAKER_03
If you enjoyed this episode, please take a second to rate and review.
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SPEAKER_03
Each review helps us help more people just like you make a difference in this world.
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SPEAKER_03
Don t forget to take a screenshot, share it in your Instagram stories and tag us at Jeffrey Gittimer and at Jen Gittimer.
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SPEAKER_03
See you next week.