I just finished my 3rd prospect contact of the day - actually I was talking to another engineer of mine asking for yet another fee proposal (this after he's sent me fees on 3 other proposals this week). So he says "Wow, how do you keep getting all these requests for proposals?". No big secret here, it's the reward after spending the last 4 months 'marketing'.
"marketing" can take on many forms - the key is to find the type which works best for you and your message. For me, I don't really like doing the cold-call, hand-shakie thing; I've *finally* figured out what works; and it was internal.
The 'secret' part though, is I changed my perspective when speaking with folks from "BlaBlaBla me, BlaBlaBla you" to "What do you have that's interesting for you?", sort of accepting the fact there's slim pickings for work out there. It seems the 'message' is not the end-game, but rather the dialog which occurs... DUH, I should have been able to verbalize this long ago - alas it's here now.
Carpe Diem