Here I can't help you much other than to tell you that every tech founder has this exact problem, and most of them get rolled by the first couple sales people they hire. I can take some stabs at what doesn't work:

* Hiring people who have posted amazing stats inside other sales orgs but who have never done sole-starter early product sales

* Hiring people at moderate to high base pay to move an unproven product --- there are plenty of people who flit from role to role in gigs like this, never moving anything

* Hiring people for their rolodexes --- every A.M. can talk about a rolodex, and it almost never actually matters on the ground with your product

* Hiring "strategic" salespeople who don't want to cold call or do traditional sales but would rather spend their time on psuedo bizdev which, not coincidentally, can't easily be measured for varcomp or retention purposes

What I have actually seen work: learning how to sell, yourself, before bringing on a salesperson.

If you look around you'll probably find a couple dozen decent posts that address this question.

At the risk of veering into off-topic territory, I'd like to thank you for all the insight you afford this community. I've spent the last year building a software shop from the ground up. I've personally spent hours reading through your post history and have benefited from nearly every post. Your insights on sales, management, and general day-to-day business operations have directly benefited me on the order of tens of thousands of dollars.

So, on behalf of myself (and I'd imagine a hefty chunk of this site): thank you for your time. You should write a book- I'd buy three.

You're scaring me a bit. I may not have that much more experience than you do! =)

Thanks Thomas. Those sound like good solid points worth remembering. I will definitely have to learn to sell before I can afford to bring someone on.

It all depends on your business. Enterprise salespeople are used to long sales cycle, high-contact, high dollar sales. If that doesn't fit your business model, then you want to find people who've done something similar to your model.