It only lets you talk to them if you can actually afford their services.  If you cannot, it won't let you talk at all.   Apparently, the only options thus are to hire them or to tell them off even though you can afford them.

If you look in the little tooltip thing under "speak to" when they're selected, it'll show their hiring cost as a pop-up.

I wish this went away.

We should be allowed to talk to them, but then we see they demand too much money. It makes no sense as it is now.

Like, if I want a whore, I HAVE to talk to her to find out what price she wants....

If you select them there is an icon called "recruit" or something like that which will be grayed out if you don't have enough money but you get hover text that tells you how much they want.

lol. I see your point but that has not always been the case for me. I usually have more than enough chedda and to spare--and I still get shined. However, I do persist. I bugged my wife until she broke down and went out with me. On 2 occasions I have bugged a group of NPC's with a champion leader relentlessly as though it was my one shot with Beyoncé. They eventually relented and joined my cause. There is alot to be said for persistence. Hopefully, this is not a bug. Getting a group with great stats is an exciting and unexpected perk.

PS My next Sov.....I shall dub her Sasha Fierce

That depends, what is your charisma, flaws, faction modifiers ? i've payed as much as 620 for a basic hero before. Charisma and Bard ability really have a huge effect on the game.

edit: oh I originally wanted to say: There was some info that stated how much to hire a hero ? Wow. I was always grumbling about his to myself. Can we have this as a floating window above a hero on a mouse over plz ? something to that effect would be nice.