Legend has it that you find a well hidden Wamp, rub it a few times, and a fellow dressed in your mother’s underwear gives you three wishes. Today, as I write this, I am clad in diaphanous leggings because last week I promised a few words about how to get your way freely with the most most important person in your life. Which brings me to Aladdin’s Wamp.
(Nope, not a spelling error!) Since most of us use Windows, it’s a WAMP. (The Linux users – both of them – get the LAMP. And those of us lucky enough to use Apple get a XAMP.)
Peter Drucker once said: A business exists to create clients. And the easiest and cheapest way to create them is to develop relationships with strangers. (Preferably strangers that have the problems that you specialise in solving.)
But who can remember all these people? Or what we promised them? Or when their car next needs a service?
I am glad you asked, because I am going to tell you how to develop such an incredible memory, without even breaking into a sweat.
At Business Warriors we run our entire customer relationship management system – keeping track of 2500 current Warriors – on free software. It keeps track of what we’ve committed to, and when it’s due. And it can do the same for you.
A simple example of a guaranteed way to get business: If I buy flowers from you for my wedding/anniversary this year – put in a reminder to call me (phone/ mail/ fax/ email) this time next year to remind me, and suggest some more flowers. (That adds value to me, and you.) And you can do it for free.
The world’s websites are run on racks of little PCs – mostly a little less powerful than the one you’re looking at right now. These PCs run a combination of software that allows them to think that they are webservers.
The software they run is the following: (Stick with me, we’ll get to the money shortly.)
Apache (free software that makes your PC the equal of any webserver)
mySQL (free software that lets you store and find information very quickly)
PHP (a programming language that connects your screen to my database on my website)
Once this is running on your PC, it instantly becomes a webserver – for itself, for any PC in your office, or for any PC anywhere in the world (if you want the world squatting on your digital doorstep).
As soon as it is a webserver, you can download a bunch of incredibly powerful free software – like the customer relationship management database (SugarCRM) that we use at Warrior Central that ensures that you will never lose a client again. And helps you find many more.
WAMP – Windows, Apache, mySQL, PHP
LAMP – Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP
XAMP – Apple OS X, Apache, mySQL, PHP
Both my desktop machines (Windows and Apple) run WAMP in background, and there is no noticeable difference in performance.
So, the freebie du jour is as follows:
- Get WAMP now from www.wampserver.com
- Install it on a PC somewhere (even on your own one), and rub it a little to excite the genie.
- Get SugarCRM from www.sugarcrm.com
- Install it.
- Point every PC in the firm at it.
And nobody will ever fall into your cracks again, and your clients will be eternally grateful and will bury you in treasure. (The more modern word would be profit.)
Whenever a customer buys something, and needs a reminder (service, guarantee expiring, anniversary, payment, renewal, new model, …) tell your new system to remind you – or Janet in Accounts, or Jeremy in Sales – and then use it to send the email, or phone them, or…
And when Jeremy in Sales absconds to the competition, all your information about the most important people in your life stays in your system, not in Jeremy’s Filofax.
Stern warning: If you struggle to remember where the on/off switch on your PC hides away each night, then do not try this at home.
Disclaimer: The only place I will discuss implementation, installation, and any other issues regarding SugarCRM, genies, LAMPs, WAMPs, XAMPs or my mother’s underwear is on the Warrior forum. It’s impossible to manage the load otherwise. You’re welcome to join us there by clicking here.
Seriously, your business and financial success depends on just one thing: finding more and better clients. I have used technology like this to help keep track of my clients and my commitments to them since 1985. It used to be hugely expensive. Now it can be free. And if you install it on a real webserver (a small PC in somebody else’s big warehouse) your team can access client information from anywhere – like my team does.