The LeanScaper Podcast Hiring Your First Salesperson? Don’t Screw This Up. w/ Asad Zaman
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Oct 7, 2025 In this discussion, Asad Zaman, CEO of Sales Talent Agency, shares his wealth of experience in sales hiring, emphasizing the challenges of finding the right talent. He reveals that only 1 in 10 salespeople truly excel, and highlights common pitfalls founders face, like underestimating hiring complexity and structuring improper compensation. Asad advocates for starting small with lead generation and carefully building a talent pool through headhunting. His insights offer a crucial playbook for businesses looking to scale effectively.
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Sales Talent Is Extremely Uneven
- Asad and Benji observe roughly 1 in 10 salespeople are truly excellent and most are not.
- Sales requires rare talent plus training, so hiring success rates are low without systems.
Talent + Training Drives Sales Outcomes
- Sales performance mixes learned skills and innate talent, producing wide outcome distributions.
- Many people can't convert training into high performance because the job needs certain natural traits.
Demand Focuses On The Top Few
- Top sales talent is scarce because demand targets the top 10%, not the full candidate pool.
- Great reps are well-paid, busy, and hard to attract without a competitive offer.
