Buy leads only if the price works with your own numbers. The most a lead is worth to you is the most you’d pay for a client times your close rate. Kitces Research put the typical firm’s cost per new client at $2,551 in 2026, and Kitces has described 1 in 20 as a typical close rate on SmartAsset’s shared leads, even for advisors who do well with them. That makes a shared lead worth about $128, below the $150 to $300 or more that advisors report paying. The answer can still be yes for your firm, if your clients pay more or you close more. Here’s how to check, step by step, for all three ways of paying.
Current prices for every service are in How much financial advisor leads cost. This guide is about deciding.
Three ways to pay, three formulas
| Model | You pay | Your cost per client |
|---|---|---|
| Per lead | A fixed price for each name, whether or not they hire you | Price per lead ÷ share of leads that become clients |
| Per appointment | A fixed price for each meeting booked | Price per meeting ÷ share of meetings that become clients |
| Share of fees | A percentage of what the client pays, only if they sign | Share × yearly fee × years it runs |
The first two put the risk on you: you pay for the misses. The third puts the risk on the service but costs more the longer a client stays. That’s the whole trade.
Step 1: set your ceiling
Decide the most you’d spend to win one client. Three reasonable ceilings:
- What a firm your size typically spends. Kitces found a median $815 per client for firms under $250,000 of revenue, the $2,551 median overall, and $4,896 for firms with $1 million to $2 million.
- One year of the client’s fee. If a channel costs more than a year’s fee, it needs a reason beyond growth. A planning client at the fee-only median pays $4,500; a $1 million client at 1% pays $10,000.
- What the rest of your marketing costs. If directories and referrals bring clients for less, a lead has to beat them.
Then multiply by your close rate to get the most you can pay per lead:
| Your ceiling per client | At 3% close | At 5% close | At 10% close |
|---|---|---|---|
| $815 (firms under $250K revenue) | $24 | $41 | $82 |
| $2,551 (typical firm) | $77 | $128 | $255 |
| $4,500 (one year, median planning fee) | $135 | $225 | $450 |
| $10,000 (one year, $1M at 1%) | $300 | $500 | $1,000 |
Ceilings use Kitces’ 2026 medians and the Wellspent fee report. Set a reported price next to the row that matches your firm. Shared leads at $150 to $300 work for a firm with $1 million clients at 5%. They don’t for a new planning firm at any realistic close rate.
Step 2: use your close rate, not the brochure’s
Close rates on bought leads are low and vary widely.
- Shared leads: Kitces wrote in April 2024 that 20 leads, 3 meetings, 1 client (5%) was typical even for advisors “very successful with SmartAsset”. SmartAsset’s CEO modeled 3% in 2023.
- Meetings: in that same funnel, about 1 in 3 meetings became a client.
If you’ve never bought leads, plan on 3% to 5%, and track it from the first one. Every rate we could source is in Shared leads vs exclusive leads vs referrals: close rates.
Step 3: count your time
Kitces’ marketing study counts the advisor’s time because it was more than two-thirds of all marketing costs. Lead services make that worse: each shared prospect also goes to other advisors, so you call fast, call often, and chase people who never answer.
Put a number on it. Suppose each lead takes an hour to call, qualify and follow up. At a 5% close rate that’s 20 hours per client, and at the median fee-only hourly rate of $300 it’s $6,000 of your time on top of the lead bill. Kitces found SmartAsset suits firms with staff to respond to and qualify leads without relying on the lead advisor’s time, for exactly this reason. If you’re the only person who can pick up the phone, double your cost per client before you decide.
Step 4: for a fee share, model ten years
A fee share looks cheap because the first year is small. Model the client staying.
Wealthramp’s standard terms are 25% of the first year’s fees and up to 15% after. Zoe’s disclosure lists 15% to 35%, for the life of an asset-management client or the first five years of a flat-fee planning client. Here’s how those compare with $5,000 of per-lead spending, on one planning client paying the fee-only median:
Cumulative cost for a client paying $4,500 a year, fee held flat
Source: Wealthramp fee share disclosure (2025); Zoe disclosure (March 2025), top of its range; Kitces (2024) and Financial Planning (2023) for lead price and close rate; Wellspent fee report
Data
| Years the client stays | Per lead: $250 a lead, 1 in 20 | Fee share: 25% year 1, 15% after | Fee share: 35% for 5 years |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | $5,000 | $0 | $0 |
| 1 | $5,000 | $1,125 | $1,575 |
| 2 | $5,000 | $1,800 | $3,150 |
| 3 | $5,000 | $2,475 | $4,725 |
| 4 | $5,000 | $3,150 | $6,300 |
| 5 | $5,000 | $3,825 | $7,875 |
| 6 | $5,000 | $4,500 | $7,875 |
| 7 | $5,000 | $5,175 | $7,875 |
| 8 | $5,000 | $5,850 | $7,875 |
| 9 | $5,000 | $6,525 | $7,875 |
| 10 | $5,000 | $7,200 | $7,875 |
On a $1 million client paying $10,000 a year, the same 25% then 15% share costs $2,500 in year one and $16,000 over ten years, passing $5,000 of lead spending in year three. At Zoe’s 15% to 35% for life, ten years costs $15,000 to $35,000.
Kitces’ 2026 report makes the same point: fee-share services cost $1.96 per $1 of first-year revenue in its data, and that figure “will substantively understate the cumulative lifetime cost” because payments keep running. In their favor, Kitces notes they’re paid only on success and scale with your budget, which makes them easier to fund for a firm with cash and no time.
Step 5: for appointments, the meeting close rate decides
Appointment-setting services sell booked meetings. Published prices are rare; one marketing vendor puts the common range at $200 to $300 per appointment. Your cost per client depends entirely on how many of those meetings close:
| Meetings per client | At $200 a meeting | At $300 a meeting |
|---|---|---|
| 3 (the lead-service funnel Kitces described) | $600 | $900 |
| 10 (Granum’s 10/3/1, from referred leads) | $2,000 | $3,000 |
| 35 (one advisor’s year of cold meetings) | $7,000 | $10,500 |
The last row comes from one first-year advisor on r/CFP who reported about 10 clients from roughly 350 cold meetings (thread). Ask any appointment vendor how its meetings are sourced, and what share of them advisors close.
What advisors who’ve paid report
Kitces’ 2026 survey asked advisors to rate each source:
- SmartAsset scored 7.3 out of 10 for lead quantity, the highest of any directory, but 4.1 for lead quality and 4.2 for overall value. NAPFA’s listing scored 3.7, 5.2 and 5.2.
- Fee-share services had high success rates (80% of firms using them won at least one client) but scored lower on lead quality than custodian programs and traditional solicitors.
- Per-lead pricing is a minority choice. About 9% of firms using directory listings paid per lead, at about $250 per referral.
The pattern holds across the data: advisors get volume from paid leads, and fewer good clients from that volume than from channels where the prospect picked them.
The decision in five questions
Buying leads is likely to pay if you can answer yes to all five:
- Is the lead price below your ceiling × your close rate, from Step 1?
- Does someone other than you have time to call every lead within minutes?
- Can you fund six to twelve months before the wins add up?
- For a fee share, does the ten-year cost still beat your other channels?
- Can you stop when your tracked close rate falls below break-even?
If any answer is no, put the money into the channels at the cheap end of Kitces’ table first: directories at $0.28 per $1 of new revenue, client referrals at $0.34 and SEO at $0.45. See Client acquisition cost by channel, and for one vendor in detail, Is SmartAsset worth it?.
Where Wellspent fits
Wellspent isn’t a lead service. Members pay $89 a month for a verified record in the public graph at find.wellspent.co, which AI assistants and search read. Prospects who find you write to you directly: no price per lead, no fee per meeting, and no share of any client’s fees. Membership also includes a monthly report on who AI assistants recommend and quarterly press placement with media partners. The trade-off is honest: it costs the same in a month when no one writes, and it can’t promise a number of introductions. See How it works.