Yes - most of the people who ask me this are new to consulting/freelancing, so this is meant to be an intro for them.

Once you're established, I find that people don't think about "finding new clients" so much as "winning new contracts" - which (as you point out) - is entirely different.

If you're trying to win big projects (vs "find clients"), you probably have a small team already, and then yes, that's when you really get into RFPs, etc.

In the beginning though - I would advise against going after big projects that need multiple rounds of selection, etc - and instead focus just on relationships. Then, once you have a small base of clients, you can decide to go bigger from there.