My phone isn"t ringing

After taking a sales engineer job several years ago, I had to learn the hard way. You cannot expect potential customers to come to you. You must go to them.
Every now and then you would get a new customer the easy way "They called me". But that was the exception.
Get out there and meet potential customers. Call and set up appt's with general contractors, industrial plants. Put your business card on every board you see. Go to city, county and state government and inquire about upcomming projects. Put your name in the hat.
Subscribe to local business news papers. Sometimes you get a heads up on future projects. Attend public meetings and meet the leaders of your community. Give everyone you meet a business card and tell them about your company. Also, contact other contractors and see if they need to sub out some jobs they don't want or cannot meet schedule on. The key to selling your business is to sell yourself first. Try not to worry, things will turn for you....Good Luck and get out there.

Subliminal Advertising

I have been in your position and know exactly how you feel. Firstly you need to decide what type of work and how big you want to be, because going with some of the other advice you really can come unstuck. I found that advertising in most forms to be be a waste of money. For me I wanted commercial work, so I found the builders I wanted to work for and got their phone and fax number. Upon calling I would ask for the estimator and would get a reply like "sorry they are out of the office" etc so I would reply " can I send a fax with my details, if so who should I attention it to?" they would then give me the estimators name. So I done a full A4 page with my company logo, with the estimators name on it. He would receive the fax and throw it out straight away without looking at it properly, but my name and logo is burnt in his mind, so upon calling the next day he would hear my name and company name and instead of getting the cold shoulder I would get a cheerful and helpful estimator willing to let me quote up and coming work. This is called subliminal advertising and is the only form of advertising that works. The other form of advertising which is useful is making up coreflute signs from your sign writer and stick them up everywhere, on street poles, fences, EVERYWHERE! This also produces great results for when you approach new builders etc.... GOOD LUCK BUT JUST REMEMBER THIS INFORMATION MUST BE USED IN CONJUNCTION WITH A STRONG HEAD AND BUSINESS MIND, BECAUSE THINGS WILL HAPPEN THAT FAST FOR YOU, YOU WONT KNOW WHATS HAPPENING!