Meg Pritchard.

The party game “Would You Rather?” has spawned internet memes, Buzzfeed quizzes, drinking games, brand advertisements and lists upon lists of themed questions (life questions, moral questions, food questions, dirty questions and questions for kids, to name a few). It's also a board game, a funny British quiz show and a really terrifying movie.

You know the rules. You have to pick one of the two offered options. And you can't answer “neither” or “both.”

Let's play!

Would you rather:

• Be rich or famous? (Rich—who needs fame anyway?)
• Be able to teleport anywhere or be able to read minds? (Teleport please! I really don't want to know what anyone else is thinking.)
• Eat pizza for every meal or never eat pizza again? (I'd have to go with never again. I love good pizza, but not for every meal.)

How about this one:

Would you rather get a new client or get more work from an existing client?

I know which one I would pick (read to the end of the article to find out).

What's your answer?

I can hear you grumbling from here.

“Wait, what? I have to choose? Why can't I have both?”

You absolutely can. This is real life, not a party game.

That said, this “would I rather” question (or some form of it) is something you should be asking yourself regularly as part of your business development plan. Here are some considerations for finding the right answer for you.

• It costs more to get a new client than get more work from an existing client.

And not just more money, but more of all of your resources, the most precious of which is your time, and the time of your marketing and business development professionals.

In sales, it's called the “cost of customer acquisition” and it's always higher than the “cost of customer retention.” Sometimes a lot higher. In 2015, BTI Consulting estimated the cost of acquiring a new client at eight to 12 times the cost of acquiring business from an existing client —and predicted that the cost would only increase with the tightening market.

Your cost of customer acquisition depends on your practice, the types of clients you want to attract, who their decision makers are and how they buy legal services. Notwithstanding those variables, attracting new clients (the right way) requires you to spend time, effort (and money on:

• Identifying potential new clients in your existing markets or identify new markets
• Qualifying and segmenting those leads—are they good prospects with high potential?
• Figuring out how those prospects buy legal services
• Implementing appropriate marketing and business development strategies

The process of landing a single new client can be intensely time and resource consuming. Consider the extraordinary time and effort it takes respond to an RFP, never mind the groundwork you have to lay just to get invited to participate in the process in the first place.

Conversion rates—turning prospects into clients—are typically low, so you need to market to a lot of leads to land one new client. And because the research continues to show a strong personal element in legal hiring practices, it can take years to develop enough of relationship with legal decision makers to get hired (even once you make the preferred provider list). Keeping a long pipeline filled with high-potential leads can be a drain on you and your resources—resources that might be better directed elsewhere.

• Client retention is a cost-effective way to get new work.

Nurturing existing client relationships is critical in today's ultra-competitive legal services market. Remember the estimated cost differential for acquiring versus retaining clients—eight to 12 times more costly?

That means that when you lose a client, you not only lose the revenue from that client, you also have to spend a lot more to replace the revenue.

And while it usually takes a major problem for a client to change lawyers or firm in the middle of a transaction or litigation, the more typical scenario is that the client quietly begins giving work to others. By the time you notice that the work has dried up, it's usually too late.

The good news is that the time, energy and effort you spent nurturing your existing client relationships can reap the dividend of new—and different—work.

Often getting more work from a client can be as simple as asking for it. An opportune time can be at the end of a successful representation, but if you're actively working to enhance the client experience, you'll have many “right times” to make the ask.

Good client retention efforts also give you the advantage in selling your client on the services of other lawyers or practices in your firm. Convergence—reducing the number of external law firms that a single business uses—is a real phenomenon in the legal industry. And one of the most often-repeated sentiments of general counsel and other legal services decision makers is that they want to work with lawyers and firms that really know their businesses and their industries. Counsel that understands their goals and objectives, and can proactively help them identify and address their problems and challenges.

As their current lawyer, you have a head start. You've (hopefully) ascended that steep learning curve. To get more and different work from your existing clients, you need to regularly reinforce the point that they already have legal counsel that knows their business (that's you) and to educate them about the services that your colleagues can provide.

• Focusing on your existing clients can lead to new clients. 

Despite the plethora of today's technology-enhanced marketing and business development tools (which, don't get me wrong, can play a vital role in your efforts to grow revenue), one of the biggest drivers in legal services hiring remains the personal referral. And one of your best sources of referral is your existing client base. Referrals and recommendations are especially important if you practice in a specialized area or concentrate on a specific industry market sector or geographical region. In fact, it's ultimately self-defeating to lose sight of keeping your existing clients happy in the pursuit of new clients.

•  And the answer is …

As promised, here is my answer to the question “Would you rather get a new client or get more work from an existing client?”

It depends.

Yeah, I know, that violates the basic rules. But as I said, this is real life.

I say “it depends” because, unlike the party game, seeking out new clients and getting more work from existing clients are not mutually exclusive options.

That said, because your resources—especially your time—are all limited in some way, the real (not party) trick is to know when incurring the higher cost of client acquisition is worth it.

Maybe looking for new clients is your best option for bringing in more revenue right now, given market conditions. Perhaps you've reached saturation point with your existing clients. Or, fortuitously, opportunities exist for growth in new industries or sectors that you want dedicate the resources to exploring.

In other words, no right answer exists to this “would you rather” question. As long as you are making an educated and strategic decision, either choice—or both—has the potential to be a winning move.

Meg Pritchard, the principal of CREATE: Communications—Media—Marketing, is a lawyer, writer and marketing professional who works with law firms and lawyers to develop compelling content for their marketing and business development. She can be reached at [email protected] or 215-514-3206.