getting enough deals...how do I do it now?

[N.A N.A]

I am in the mortgage business - 8 years running. Ohio from 2001 to April '07, Maryland since then. The company I worked for in Ohio used to provide leads...from which I developed a heck of a referral base and I got to a point that in 2005, when leads were done away with, I pretty much maintained the same level of business, and in fact increased it a bit.

My specialty is really two main areas: First-time FHA buyers, and investors. I also do some vanilla refinances and purchases, and used to be relatively competent with subprime back in "the day" but never messed with the shady stuff that some people did.

Now, I'm with a company that provides very little leads aside from general advertising. Through cold-calling of realtors, financial advisors, etc. I've managed to do enough business to get by, and make enough money to not want to bolt the business, but I need to do a lot better to be successful long-term. My goal is to end up doing 12-14 transactions a month and let's just say I'm doing under half that at the moment.

For a guy who is still relatively new to the area, what is the best way to get out there? I've found that buying leads is normally worthless - half the names/numbers/addresses are bogus. Realtors are OK but so many of them aren't doing any business themselves, so there's only so much blood you can squeeze out of a turnip.

Mailers? Insert ads in Gold Clipper, Value Pak, etc?

What do you guys do? I feel that what I do works but I need to do something to do a lot more of it more efficiently, as right now the ratios of calls to business are VERY low and there are only so many hours in a day!