What can financial advisors learn from people who camp overnight to buy Pokémon cards? 

In this edition, I break down how to uncover the emotions behind financial goals, build trust through curiosity, create real urgency without pressure, and help prospective clients make clear decisions.

---

What Can Financial Advisors Learn About Client Acquisition From People Waiting Overnight to Buy Pokémon Cards?

This morning I was driving down La Brea Ave in Los Angeles when I saw something I couldn’t quite make sense of. Dozens of adults were sitting in folding chairs along the side of Best Buy. The line wrapped around the building, and some people had apparently been there through the night.

What were they waiting for? Pokémon cards.

I know next to nothing about Pokémon cards. But I do know a hell of a lot about why people make decisions, and those people sitting on the sidewalk were demonstrating something every financial advisor should understand about client acquisition.

People become financially invested only after they become emotionally invested.

That distinction matters enormously when you’re trying to build new client relationships.

Nobody Waits Overnight for an Investment Strategy

A Pokémon card is a little piece of printed cardboard. Yet the person waiting outside Best Buy doesn’t see it that way. They see nostalgia, identity, status, or simply the thrill of finding something rare.

The physical object carries meaning far beyond the cardboard and the pretend animal printed on it.

Now think about the way you introduce your value to a prospective client. Do you talk about your investment philosophy, service model, tax-planning capabilities, and everything else you and your firm can do?

Yeah, all of that is important, but very little of it defines what your prospective client actually wants.

Your client isn’t lying awake thinking, I desperately need a more sophisticated asset allocation.

They’re lying awake wondering whether they can retire without screwing it up. Whether their spouse will be okay if something happens to them. Whether the company they spent 30 years building will create the life they imagined. Whether they’re doing enough for their children. 

They may be terrified that their financial life has become so complicated that they no longer feel confident making important decisions on their own.

I’ll bet you’ve rarely had that conversation with a prospective client. You should, because that’s where the real client-development conversation begins.

Your Prospective Client Is Trying to Get Somewhere

When working with advisors and RIA firms, one of the central ideas I teach is simple:

People care far more about the destination than the process of getting there.

As an advisor, you need to understand the emotional side of that destination.

Retirement means something. Maybe it means waking up without an alarm clock or spending three months traveling with their spouse across the globe.

Selling a business means something. Maybe it means finally enjoying what they spent 30 years building.

Having a coordinated financial plan means something. Maybe it means the relief of knowing there’s someone they trust helping them make sense of their increasingly complicated financial life.

The technical work is the cardboard card. The destination is the meaning behind it that makes someone willing to wait in line all night.

This is where advisors easily lose people. You know a tremendous amount about what you do, so naturally you want to explain it. The more sophisticated your expertise becomes, the easier it is to spend the conversation proving how much you know.

It’s boring to them and ineffective for you in client acquisition.

By the time someone agrees to sit down with you, they already believe you are competent. The bigger question running through their mind is much more personal: Does this advisor understand me?

That’s a question far too many advisors never answer.

Curiosity Creates Better Client-Development Conversations

By the time those Pokémon collectors reached the front door, desire had already done most of the heavy lifting. Nobody needed to give them a 45-minute presentation explaining why Pokémon cards were worth wanting.

The same principle applies to prospective-client conversations.

Your job is to become curious enough about someone to fully understand the goal that already matters to them. Get to that, and you uncover the desire that does most of the heavy lifting for you.

Let me give you an example. Suppose someone tells you, “I’d like to retire at 62.”

Most advisors immediately jump into planning mode. I get it. It’s what you know how to do. It’s fun, and it feels like you’re doing a good job. But if you do that, you miss the real conversation entirely. While you’re showing off, they’re counting the seconds until the meeting is over.

Instead, stay with the human being sitting in front of you and ask: “What happens at 62?”

Then listen. Ask deeper questions. Listen some more.

Do they want to travel with their spouse? Where? Do they hate their job? What would they rather be doing? Maybe their father died at 64, and they’re terrified of spending their healthy life working. What is living with that fear like? Maybe they want to help raise their grandchildren. What do they imagine doing with them?

Suddenly, 62 means so much more than a number. It’s the beginning of a new adventure for them.

Deep listening means hearing the desire, uncertainty, fear, and hope underneath their clinical answer. People need help getting there. The only way to create the safety for them to share their truth is through genuine curiosity.

That’s central to my approach, which I call Simple Selling:

Curiosity + Validation + Understanding = Emotional Truth

Find the emotional truth, and you begin to understand what will guide their decision.

Being Understood Builds Trust

Financial relationships require an extraordinary amount of trust. You’re asking people to share information about their finances, family, fears, and future. Getting them there requires more than asking good discovery questions.

Your technical expertise matters, but the human connection you build is what lets someone trust you enough to put that expertise to work for them.

This is why prospective-client conversations can go sideways when advisors start explaining too soon. Someone reveals something emotionally important, and the advisor immediately turns it into a planning problem.

Client: “I’m worried my wife won’t know what to do financially if something happens to me.”

Advisor: “We have a comprehensive estate-planning coordination process…”

You think you just solved a problem. You actually missed an opportunity.

Instead, stay with them in that moment.

“I completely understand that. Tell me what worries you most about her in that situation.”

Now you’re having a very real conversation.

Their tension eases. They tell you something they haven’t told another advisor. Most importantly, they see you as someone interested in them, not someone waiting for an opening to close a new client.

Let Reality Create Urgency

Let’s go back to the people outside Best Buy. Another force was working on them.

They believed waiting in line mattered. Maybe it doesn’t, but they believe it does.

We all know that when people believe something they want may become scarce, they are more likely to take action. The makers of Pokémon cards rely on this fact to sell their little pieces of cardboard with fake animals on them.

Financial advisors have plenty of legitimate urgency available without manufacturing any.

A business owner approaching a transition faces real decisions with real urgency. A couple five years from retirement has to make some urgent decisions now, not later. Someone repeatedly postponing an important financial conversation is avoiding the urgent consequences that could cripple their future.

Talk about those consequences when they’re real and relevant. Guide people toward them with questions rather than dropping them on your prospective client like an anvil in a Road Runner cartoon.

Slow down. Understand their concern. Help them see their situation clearly.

Make the goal clarity, not the contract.

Five Things to Try in Your Next Prospective-Client Conversation

Becoming more salesy won’t improve your client acquisition. Becoming better at the human conversations that build trust will.

Trust is the foundation of the relationship you’re asking someone to create with you. These five Simple Selling practices will help you build it:

1. Ask about the destination first. When someone tells you what they want financially, ask, “If we got you there, what would that change for you?” Go beyond the number and uncover what it represents.
2. Get curious when emotion appears. When you hear worry, frustration, fear, or hope, stay there. Ask, “Can you tell me more about that?” Their personal truth is infinitely more useful than another explanation of your process.
3. Use reflective language and make it personal. If they say, “I want to know my wife will be okay,” use what you’ve learned about them. “I understand why Shelly’s security is so important to you. What would you want for her?” That tells them you heard them and gives them room to go deeper.
4. Identify with objections before exploring them. If they’re uncertain about moving forward, meet them there. Say, “I get it. I don’t make important decisions like this quickly either.” Then ask what still feels unresolved. It may be money, timing, trust, fit, or something they haven’t been able to articulate yet.
5. Paint the future they told you they want. Put away the charts, graphs, and spreadsheets for a moment. Help them see the life they’ve been describing. That could sound like, “Imagine calling me from the cabin someday. The grandkids are swimming in the lake, Gail is making lunch, and you call me and say two words: Thanks, Mike. That would be my greatest pleasure.”

One Last Thing

Those people sitting outside Best Buy waiting to buy Pokémon cards reminded me of something easy to forget when you work in a sophisticated profession: The only thing that moves people is meaning.

To them, little pictures of pretend animals on cards mean so much that they were willing to camp out all night to get them. Does that make them foolish? No, it makes them human.

You need to bring that humanity into every conversation you have with every prospective client. Sure, your investment knowledge, planning expertise, and experience matter. But the real opportunity is discovering what all of that expertise could mean in the life of the person sitting across from you. 

That’s your Pokémon card.

Find that, and you’ll have a much more valuable conversation. And probably a much better chance of earning the relationship.

Want to Practice With Me?

If client acquisition feels uncomfortable because you don’t want to pressure people, manipulate them, or sound pushy, join me for the free weekly Simple Selling Roundtable.

We practice leading conversations with courage, honesty, humor, and real humanity.

Join here: https://gordon.coach/roundtable