Do You Have A Consultation Assistant?

Hi, everyone. For a while now, I've been thinking about the things I would need to put in place to start my own marketing consultation service. The one hurdle that may be the most important in my situation is this:

Because of a couple problems that I have when speaking, even in an everyday context, and also because of a dental issue that I'm not yet able to take care of, I've been considering the concept of hiring an assistant and having them make presentations and close sales (could this be called a consultation assistant?). I would do all the main work of the business, including getting clients and running everything, but they would be sort of my "voice" if you will (although I would still want to meet the business owners briefly at least).

However, I've realized there may be some significant problems with this. One major concern is that now I would have to pay my assistant. I was thinking of paying them by giving them a percentage of each client they close, but is this even normal practice? I've heard of salesman being paid on commission, but I'm not sure if it's legal to pay someone based solely on closing.

Of course there's other concerns such as having to train the assistant, and that could take a lot of time, during which they also wouldn't get paid, seeing how I wouldn't have even had a client yet. Also, I would need to figure out a way to make the payment system fool-proof so that the assistant wouldn't be tempted to just take the upfront money and run!

I'm sure there's other stuff too, but you get the idea. The reason I'm saying all this is that I'm wondering if any of you have hired someone to do the consultations for you. Is it too much of a hassle for too little reward, or could it perhaps be a smaller headache than what I'm thinking?

I'd love to hear your input!