Shared leads close at about 1 in 20. Kitces wrote in April 2024 that 20 leads, 3 meetings and 1 client was typical even among advisors “very successful with SmartAsset”, a 5% close rate. Exclusive leads close better, though the only figure we found is a company’s own, and by assets: Datalign reported converting about a fifth of the assets it referred in 2023. Client referrals close best, almost every time in advisors’ own accounts, but no study we found measures that rate directly. Here’s every sourced rate, who reported it, and what it actually counts.
The short version
| Source of the prospect | Reported close rate | Counted per | Who reports it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shared leads (SmartAsset) | About 5% | Lead | Kitces, April 2024 |
| Shared leads, SmartAsset’s own model | 3% | Lead | SmartAsset’s CEO, 2023 |
| Shared leads, one long-time user | About 5% | Lead | Financial Planning, 2023 |
| Phone transfers (SmartAsset Live Connections) | “Upwards of 20%“ | Transferred call | SmartAsset pilot, 2020 |
| Exclusive auction leads (Datalign) | About 20% | Dollar of referred assets | Datalign figures via Kitces, March 2024 |
| Referred leads, historical | About 1 in 10 | Lead met in person | Granum’s 10/3/1, via Kitces, April 2024 |
| Qualified prospects, any source | 50% to 80% is good | Qualified prospect | Kitces benchmark, Feb 2024 |
| Client referrals | ”Almost 100%“ | Referral | Advisor reports, r/CFP |
Why the rates don’t line up
Before comparing any two numbers, check what’s underneath them.
- The denominator. A close rate per lead includes every name that never answered. A rate per meeting starts after the hardest part. A rate per qualified prospect starts after you’ve screened out people who can’t hire you. Kitces’ 50% to 80% benchmark is the last kind, so it isn’t comparable with a 5% lead rate.
- Count or dollars. Datalign’s 20% is by assets, not by clients. A few large wins can carry it.
- Who’s reporting. Company figures come from the company selling the leads. Advisor figures on Reddit come from one firm each, with their own niche and sales process.
Shared leads: about 1 in 20
Shared leads are sold to more than one advisor. Kitces reported in March 2024 that SmartAsset provides each prospect to about three advisors, and SmartAsset’s CEO said the same in 2023.
Three sources land in the same place:
- Kitces, April 2024: 20/3/1 was typical among advisors very successful with SmartAsset, which is 5% of leads and 1 in 3 meetings.
- SmartAsset’s CEO, 2023: his own example assumed 33 leads per client, a 3% rate.
- One long-time user, 2023: Michael Collins told Financial Planning that about 60% of his SmartAsset prospects showed “signs of life”, a quarter of those met him, and one in three of those hired him. That’s also about 5%.
Phone transfers are the exception. SmartAsset reported a 100% contact rate and “upwards of a 20% close / conversion rate” from its 2019 pilot of Live Connections, where it puts the prospect on the line before transferring the call. That’s a company figure from a pilot, and the price isn’t published.
Exclusive leads: better, by the one figure available
An exclusive lead is sold to one firm. Datalign sells each lead once, to the highest bidder in an auction. Kitces reported in March 2024 that Datalign had referred almost $15 billion of prospect assets in 2023, with almost $3 billion converted, which Kitces read as a 20% conversion rate. That’s Datalign’s figure and it’s by assets. We found no published client-count close rate for an exclusive lead service.
Fee-share matching services, which pick one or a few advisors and take a share of the client’s fees, publish no close rates either. One advisor’s experience with Zoe Financial: “I’ve received probably 20 referrals and closed one” (thread). That’s one firm’s result, not a rate for the service.
Referrals: close to every time, in advisors’ own words
Referred prospects arrive already trusting you, because someone they know vouched for you. Advisors’ own numbers reflect that. One firm on r/CFP: “For a client referral, our close rate is almost 100%… For a cold lead from a seminar, our close rate is about 10%” (thread). Another advisor, in April 2026, said nearly all their new clients come from referrals because they close almost every time, while marketing leads are hit or miss (thread). Both are one advisor’s experience.
The best-known historical figure is lower. Al Granum’s 10/3/1 rule, built from more than 50,000 referred leads at a Northwestern Mutual agency over a decade, found about 1 in 10 referred leads met in person became a client (Kitces, April 2024). Those were referred leads at a life insurance agency decades ago, so treat the figure as history rather than a benchmark for a fee-only firm.
Kitces’ 2026 survey doesn’t measure close rates, but its success rates point the same way: 97% of firms using client referrals won at least one client from them in the past year, the highest of any tactic. The limit is volume, not close rate. Referrals run dry as clients exhaust their networks: see Referrals for fee-only advisors: why they slow down.
Inbound prospects: somewhere in between
People who find you on their own, through your website, a directory or search, haven’t been vouched for but did choose you. One fee-only firm on r/CFP, with about 80% of its inquiries from its web presence, said: “Those 60 prospects usually end up being around 15 or 20 new clients per year” (thread). That’s 25% to 33% of all inquiries, and the advisor said about 90% of those who reached the written proposal became clients. About half of the web inquiries wanted hourly advice the firm doesn’t offer, which is why screening matters.
In the same thread, a first-year advisor reported about 10 clients from roughly 350 cold-called meetings, about 3%.
What advisors say about lead quality
Kitces’ 2026 survey asked advisors to rate lead quality from each directory and lead source they use, on a 1 to 10 scale.
SmartAsset scored highest by far on lead quantity, 7.3, and in the middle on quality. Fee-share services as a group scored lower on lead quality than custodian programs and traditional solicitors. Across tactics, Kitces found advisors’ satisfaction followed lead quality more than lead quantity.
How to use these numbers
- Track your own rate by source, per inquiry and per qualified prospect. Kitces suggests at least 75% of inquiries should be a fit.
- Divide price by your rate before buying anything. At 5%, a $250 lead is a $5,000 client. See Should you buy financial advisor leads?.
- Compare channels on cost per client, not close rate alone. A cheap channel with a lower close rate can still win. See Client acquisition cost by channel.
- Publish fees and minimums so the prospects who reach you are already a fit.
Where Wellspent fits
A prospect who writes to you through Wellspent found your record in the public graph at find.wellspent.co, read your fees and specialties, and chose to contact you. No one else got their name, and there’s no lead fee or share of fees. Membership is $89 a month and includes a verified record that AI assistants and search read, a monthly report on who those assistants recommend, and quarterly press placement with media partners. See How it works.