  We show that in theories in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by
renormalizable perturbative interactions, it is possible to extract the soft
terms for the observable fields from wave-function renormalization. Therefore
all the information about soft terms can be obtained from anomalous dimensions
and beta functions, with no need to further compute any Feynman diagram. This
method greatly simplifies calculations which are rather involved if performed
in terms of component fields. For illustrative purposes we reproduce known
results of theories with gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking. We then use our
method to obtain new results of phenomenological importance. We calculate the
next-to-leading correction to the Higgs mass parameters, the two-loop soft
terms induced by messenger-matter superpotential couplings, and the soft terms
generated by messengers belonging to vector supermultiplets.
