Here’s Chuck Newton’s post: Referral Clients are Simply Cheaper to Obtain, Easier to Close, Pay Better, and are More Profitable. I second the sentiment. I’ve done both and there’s no comparison. I did some print advertising in a senior citizen focused publication and also through a large church bulletin with very little payoff from either of those two avenues. I also used a for profit online legal matching service which brought in a lot of feelers but it was expensive and you had to sift through a lot of bad prospects to find the few golden nuggets so to speak.
Compare that to someone who calls us upon a reference from a former client or say a financial planner or other professional type referral source. That person almost always gets retained because they’re not shopping, they’ve discussed a need with a someone else who says you’re the go to person. I’d suggest the conversion rate on these referrals is somewhere around 70%. And there’s not much guesswork, these people are simple everyone listed in your Outlook or whatever contact package you use. Call/email them, have lunch with them, start a e-mail newsletter…it’s a very captive and easy to reach audience.
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