Networking or referral marketing is one of the lowest-cost, most effective ways you can market yourself and your business. But, if you're used to quick results, then networking could be very frustrating for you. Relationship building takes time.

Similarly, you may be cultivating referral sources, writing articles, getting good publicity in the press, giving presentations, cold-calling and sending direct mail pieces and engaging in all of the Personal marketing Plan activities you set out for yourself and still be frustrated by seemingly "slow" results. So how do you ever know when "enough" is "good enough?"

I've talked to some professional marketers, and here's what they had to say.

"If the phone stops ringing, you're not doing enough."

The phone calls coming in to your business are a reliable indication of whether you are doing enough personal marketing, according to Chris Reinhardt. Chris, who runs an insurance company and several offices in the region, says that persistence is the key.

It takes a lot of introductions, a lot of calls...it takes a while for the market to know you, in the beginning. Now, I’ve been in the business so long that almost all my new clients come by referrals, he says.

In many ways, selling is more fundamental to being a professional than doing or managing the work that follows. Marketing is a numbers game that requires working through many small losses to win later. If you can establish the discipline needed to keep yourself in the market, if you can keep yourself "up" until you succeed (or "get back up" after a rejection or dead end), then you can be successful.

It isn’t easy. Steven Covey, the author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Successful People," says successful people are the ones who do the things that nobody likes to do.

Long hours, and a determined focus are key ingredients to financial success, according to Doug Jacobs, owner of Jacobs Development Company. "It helps to love what you do," Doug points out. "Get up earlier, and stay later, and stay at it," he emphasizes.

"You have to stick with it, and set goals and rewards for yourself," says Keith Butler, owner of Empire Expansion Management, a consulting firm that helps employers expand and relocate, and assists municipalities with attraction and retention of employers. Keith says that when he investigates a networking group, for example, he will attend at least three meetings before he decides whether it is a good tool for his marketing program.

When I asked him how he would know when he was successfully marketing enough, Keith said: "When you hear I’ve gone fly fishing in Montana for a week!" When he achieves short-term goals in the interim, he rewards himself with smaller incentives--for example, a mountain bicycle ride.

"When you’re so busy that you’re turning away assignments."

This is how Eugene Valdez, a financing consultant who also does marketing and sales for GYL Decauwer CPAs, measures his success in marketing.

"You know you’re doing well when you are cherry-picking and deciding who you want to workwith, "Eugene says. He cautions, however, that when you’re busiest is precisely the time that you should also be marketing the most: "You need to replenish your supply of work before its starts to diminish, expecially if your service doesn’t encourage repeat business right away."