Editor’s note: Chris Holman is a Master Certified Coach, executive coach to financial advisors, and author of the book “Discovery Shift: Why Talking Less and Listening More Wins Business.” He will host a Discovery Workshop on February 9–10. Find details and register here.
We’ve been studying discovery conversations for the past eight years. That includes listening to more than 100 recorded first meetings between advisors and prospective clients. Across all of them, a pattern keeps showing up.
Over 90% of these conversations are intake-focused. Closed-ended questions predominate, and the objective is clear: Gather financial data efficiently so a plan can be built. Income, accounts, taxes, insurance, time horizon. The advisor is doing what the industry trained them to do.
But here’s the thing about any conversation that’s full of closed-ended questions: You don’t get discovery. You get compliance. You get answers. You get information. And you lose something quieter. Meaning.
Closed questions create clean data, not truth
Closed-ended questions produce clean, structured material, and they make meetings feel efficient. They also shape the emotional atmosphere of the room. A person being asked question after question begins to feel interviewed, measured, processed.
People don’t announce that discomfort out loud. They simply narrow. They offer the safe version. They stay in the facts. Most prospects will give you their numbers, but far fewer will give you what the numbers are carrying.
“I’m fine, but I don’t sleep.” “We’ve never agreed about money.” “I’m terrified of making another mistake.” Those aren’t planning inputs. Those are human disclosures, and they only emerge under different conditions.
Intake is being commoditized
For decades, intake worked because advisors owned the expertise. The advisor was the only one who could gather the information, interpret it, and translate it into a plan. That model held because the expertise lived inside the professional.
Now that layer is shifting quickly. AI can already do intake. It can aggregate accounts in seconds, summarize patterns, generate recommendations. The mechanical layer of planning is being absorbed into tools.
So the edge is no longer data collection. The edge is interpretation. The edge is the moment someone says something true before they’ve figured out how to say it cleanly.
The real problem is pressure
Advisors don’t default to intake because they’re shallow or careless. They default because pressure arrives early. Pressure to sound competent, to justify the meeting, to move things forward, to prove value.
So the meeting becomes organized, efficient, productive. More questions, more structure, more explaining. Progress gets made, and the conversation stays orderly.
And the prospect stays partially hidden. Not intentionally. Nervous-system hidden. People reveal less when they feel evaluated. Most “discovery meetings” are actually polite interviews with good manners.
Discovery is restraint
Discovery is not a skill trick. It’s not a script. It’s not a better questionnaire. Discovery is restraint under pressure. A clean question, an honest pause, a willingness to let the conversation remain unfinished for a moment.
Discovery is an atmosphere where a person can find their own words. A person either feels met or managed, allowed or steered, safe or subtly examined. That condition decides everything that follows, and it is fragile.
The job is not to extract information. The job is to create conditions where meaning can show up.
The last unfair advantage
In the next decade, advisors won’t win by gathering information the fastest. Everyone will have that layer. Intake will still matter, but intake will not differentiate anyone for long.
Advisors will win by recognizing meaning first. By holding the human layer while the machines handle the data layer. By staying present long enough for the real thing to emerge.
Discovery is the last unfair advantage.
Readers note: On February 9–10, I’ll be leading a workshop focused on the discovery process. We’ll explore ideas like the ones above, along with the research and practical insights we’ve gathered from eight years of studying real advisor–prospect conversations. More information is here.