When a prospect says “compliance handles it,” it’s tempting to hear a closed door. Usually it’s the opposite. The buyer is telling you there’s a problem they haven’t described yet, and they’re waiting to see whether you’ll ask about it.
Two objections come up constantly: “compliance handles it” and “what do you charge?” They sound different, but they do the same job. They pull the conversation toward a topic where you can only lose. You either nod along about process, or you hand over a number with no context and let the buyer compare it to the next vendor’s.
The mistake is answering the surface question. For years I did exactly that. Compliance handles it, so I’d say we integrate with their workflow and move on. Asked about price, I’d quote on the spot. Both answers feel helpful, but both leave the prospect with nothing to weigh except cost.
What works better is one curious question before anything else. For compliance, I now ask: “Walk me through how that works today. When a rep wants to reach a prospect, what gets checked, and where does it slow things down?”
Here’s a composite of how those conversations tend to go. A founder told me compliance covered their outreach. I asked what happened the last time a strong first call needed approval. He paused, then said the follow-up had sat in a review queue for nine days. By the time it went out, the prospect had moved on. That’s the real pain. Compliance itself wasn’t the problem. The delay it caused was.
The same principle works for price. A prospect asked what I charged within the first five minutes. Instead of quoting, I asked what a typical deal was worth to them and how many they closed in a quarter. They said a single deal was roughly $80k in contract value. I then asked what they’d reasonably spend to make sure a deal that size didn’t slip. Once we were talking about one $80k deal, an $8k investment stopped looking like an expense and started looking like risk management. On paper, that’s a tenfold return from a single win. The number didn’t change. The frame did.
Notice what those questions accomplish. They show you understand their world, which a price list never does. They also let the buyer say the thing they came to say, in their own words, and people remember their own reasoning far better than anything you pitch to them.
A few rules I now follow:
Don’t answer the objection on its face. Ask what prompted it.
Get the cost of the problem in the buyer’s language before you mention yours.
Frame your price against the deal, the pipeline, or the time it unlocks, using their numbers rather than yours.
If the math doesn’t work for them, say so. A buyer whose deals are too small for your offer isn’t a failed sale. It’s a qualified no, and it saves both of you a quarter.
The next time you hear “compliance handles it,” don’t treat it as the end of the discussion. It’s the first real question on the table. Ask it before you quote anything.