I discovered a lot of business and life lessons in movies. While I dont get out much these days, and I rarely have occasion to kick back and watch them at home, I value the nuggets of wisdom that I take away from them. One night I actually put my feet up and watched Queen Latifahs movie beauty Shop. I missed about 20 minutes of the movie, between her walking out on her old job and starting her own business.

If this sounds familiar to you, it is time to change your mindset. To knock the dust off your current sales crack, here are some easy but helpful tips to move you into a proactive selling mode:

Copy-catting doesnt work. be true to YOU. No one said this would be easy. When Gina walked out, she jumped without a net. She knew she had the skills, she just had no plan. By staying unvarnished to herself, she worked it out. She set up shop in an area where the canyon was more affordable than the uber-salon she left. Even when the overhead and costs at opportunisms felt as rather it would all bury her, support from friends and family helped her to soldier on. She never, never, never evacuate. And neither should you.

Seek out internal elders for yourself and your team. If you are in a relatively large organization, there are probably people that you have heard of or have watched from a distance in admiration. Why not approach them to be a mentor to you and/or members of your team? be a silo buster. If your organization operates in a fragmented, highly departmentalized, siloed way, decide to be the silo buster. All these ideas can help you do this, but the point here is to make a conscious decision to network with the purpose of building relationships that will begin to break down these barriers. Create “lunch and learns”. Invite people from other departments with expertise your team or beat doesn`t have to come and share that information over lunch. This creates new learning opportunities for both sides and gives people a chance to get to know new people at the same time.

This ties back into Lesson #1 about being your authentic self. Gina knew that clients come and clients go, but her staff would stick by her through thick and thin, as long as she was prepared to do the same for them. If sticking to your determinate values costs you a customer, then trust me you are FAR better off without them. dont sweat the competition ” just keep your radar on. Gina focused on her family and her business. She didnt give a sniff as to what her old boss was up to, or how his business was doing. She didnt call up his customers and steal them even though he accused her of doing so. Even so, Gina kept her radar tuned in. She took note of THINGs that were said. She kept her ducks in a row and kept good records.

Start a league. It could be bridge, basketball, golf, croquet or any of a hundred other things. Find something of common interest to a broad number of people and get them playing after work or at cookout. When you`re playing you are getting to know people for more than just their position or knowledge, you are really “getting to know” them. This one may gain more time to form and maintain, but the networking value is tremendous.

Create bearings that snap your customers and fulfill their needs. Gina cooked up some homemade conditioner in her kitchen and seemly used it on her customers. She never made a fuss about her conditioner; she simply believed that her product would help her customers. THAT was what mattered to her. The ladies at her salon affectionately called it Hair Crack because customers kept coming back for more! They were addicted to it because they too believed in its ability to help their damaged hair. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we strive for as entrepreneurs having happy customers who keep coming back for more ” because they LOVE it and beLIEVE it can help them.

Create internal networking events. The Chamber of Commerce and other organizations everywhere have been doing this for years. Why can`t you create an internal event with the specific goal of getting people to know each other better?

Many of the other ideas on this list may be the platform or the “excuse” for such an contingency – but you can come up with many more that will harrow within your organization now that you are thinking about it! All of these ideas may not apply to your situation, but some of them will. For every idea I`ve shared I would guess you can think of five more. In the end, the most powerful key to implicit networking is to perfectly start doing it! As you build your internal network you will create benefits and opportunities for you, those you`re networking with, and for your team and colleagues. When you look at it this way you hopefully realize what a valuable investment time spent on building a larger and broader set of combinations inside of your company can be. Potential Pointer: The most overlooked opportunity to network is not out in the world, but right inside your organization. As a leader, or aspiring leader, when you mine the network and combinations within your company you help both yourself and your team create greater success!

The first and most self-important thing you can do to upgrade your sales results is very simple: make your sales effort a priority. It seems obvious, but sometimes with all the ins and outs of running a Business, especially when you are looking at having an effective Marketing campaign such as your postcard printing, you get caught up in other activities that do not put you directly on the path to growth. over time, this can become a rhythm that sticks you in the status quo, slowly stagnating.

Still, I noticed lessons that we entrepreneurs can keep in mind as we build our own businesses and our brands. be your Attestative self. Queen Latifahs character, Gina was an honest, down-to-earth, tell-it-like-it-is woman. And while her pretentious boss (Jorge, played by Kevin Bacon) did not appreciate this, her customers certainly did. So when Gina walked out the door, many of her customers went with her. This genuine nature carried through to her new business. because it was not an act, because she was true to herself first, customers got exactly what they expected, their Gina. Had she tried to emulate Jorge, its doubtful that level of loyalty would have followed her out his door.

Invest one picnic a week. One great way to build relationships is over food. And since everyone has to eat, you can likely get on people`s calendars relatively easily. Why not invite someone from another department or someone you don`t know well to lunch? focus the lunch on getting to know them, which means you want to do less talking and more listening.

Seek out internal elders for yourself and your team. If you are in a relatively large organization, there are probably people that you have heard of or have watched from a distance in admiration. Why not approach them to be a mentor to you and/or members of your team? be a silo buster. If your organization operates in a fragmented, highly departmentalized, siloed way, decide to be the silo buster. All these ideas can help you do this, but the point here is to make a conscious decision to network with the purpose of building relationships that will begin to break down these barriers. Create “lunch and learns”. Invite people from other departments with expertise your team or beat doesn`t have to come and share that information over lunch. This creates new learning opportunities for both sides and gives people a chance to get to know new people at the same time.

This ties back into Lesson #1 about being your authentic self. Gina knew that clients come and clients go, but her staff would stick by her through thick and thin, as long as she was prepared to do the same for them. If sticking to your determinate values costs you a customer, then trust me you are FAR better off without them. dont sweat the competition ” just keep your radar on. Gina focused on her family and her business. She didnt give a sniff as to what her old boss was up to, or how his business was doing. She didnt call up his customers and steal them even though he accused her of doing so. Even so, Gina kept her radar tuned in. She took note of THINGs that were said. She kept her ducks in a row and kept good records.

Start a league. It could be bridge, basketball, golf, croquet or any of a hundred other things. Find something of common interest to a broad number of people and get them playing after work or at cookout. When you`re playing you are getting to know people for more than just their position or knowledge, you are really “getting to know” them. This one may gain more time to form and maintain, but the networking value is tremendous.

Create bearings that snap your customers and fulfill their needs. Gina cooked up some homemade conditioner in her kitchen and seemly used it on her customers. She never made a fuss about her conditioner; she simply believed that her product would help her customers. THAT was what mattered to her. The ladies at her salon affectionately called it Hair Crack because customers kept coming back for more! They were addicted to it because they too believed in its ability to help their damaged hair. That, ladies and gentlemen, is what we strive for as entrepreneurs having happy customers who keep coming back for more ” because they LOVE it and beLIEVE it can help them.

The bottom line is to get yourself so into it that you will infect other people in your company with your enthusiasm. get everyone involved. And talking about infecting other people with your enthusiasm is sure to have everybody share your goals and objectives for the Business. Everybody working together in a company will have good odds of closing enough sales to meet the considerations you have set for your Business.

Many of the other ideas on this list may be the platform or the “excuse” for such an contingency – but you can come up with many more that will harrow within your organization now that you are thinking about it! All of these ideas may not apply to your situation, but some of them will. For every idea I`ve shared I would guess you can think of five more. In the end, the most powerful key to implicit networking is to perfectly start doing it! As you build your internal network you will create benefits and opportunities for you, those you`re networking with, and for your team and colleagues. When you look at it this way you hopefully realize what a valuable investment time spent on building a larger and broader set of combinations inside of your company can be. Potential Pointer: The most overlooked opportunity to network is not out in the world, but right inside your organization. As a leader, or aspiring leader, when you mine the network and combinations within your company you help both yourself and your team create greater success!