1. Hire two reps: one for each coast. Even two part-time reps at each coast I say is better than one rep running around from coast to coast. Time wasting and regionally differences do crop up.
2. Read the the book, Selling to Big Companies.
3. Yes sell yourself so you understand the issues involved.
4. "Salespeople are notorious for giving excuses when they don't meet the sales targets they agreed to."
This is usually when the owner does not understand the market or misestimates the market. Any good sales person will leave and stop wasting time with people that will not work with them to make sales happen. It takes a company to sell. Especially if you want the easy and lucrative referrals.
What is the price point for this product? Who at the customer site will ultimately say yes?
At one company, it was easy to sell since the network engineer was the main guy/gal that had to approve the technical aspects. I just made sure they understood the personal utility of our product as well so they had a personal stake on how their life would with us or a competitor's product.
read the book, it is totally awesome. Having done the job for a number of years, I still learned lots of usually things that I was able to use immediately.
In terms of what to offer, I guess it really depends. Realize in the beginning you are really doing business development not just sales. So there needs to be more of a salary cushion. A low end salesperson is usually 40/40. 40k salary and 40k commission. Realize that the you are hiring a profession and not asking them to necessarily do charity work. However, together estimate the metrics of sales and the where the number of sales at each level in the sales pipeline. Also come up with remediation plans. Say in 2 months, you expect the rep will have made 5 sales. What happens if they have only made 2 sales. Have everything spelled out so everyone knows the ramifications and there are fewer surprises.