Many people believe that they can easily sell packaged ice to Alaskans— but finding the crème de la crème sales team is really a difficult job. For Startups, consider not hiring salespeople until the products or services are completely geared up for deployment. It sounds quite obvious but even building it too early could be emaciating. Later also, you do not need to build a very big sales team but a small fulgurant team can drive in terrific sales. Here is a nice piece of information by Dharmesh Shah on Venture Beat’s Entrepreneur Corner about building up a stellar sales team:

3. Don’t hire several sales people at once. Your goal is to figure out the “pattern” of what kinds of people are best based on what you’re selling and who you’re selling it to. You need some feedback from the system so you can continue to iterate on your hires.

Once the sales team has been set up, you need to pose in the compensation structures correctly and make it sure that you are tailing sales metrics thoroughly. You should be ready to wait in the dark as it requires atleast six months to start converting the leads in an efficient manner. You can get more insights about this informative article from here: http://entrepreneur.venturebeat.com/2009/08/05/14-tips-for-building-a-startup-sales-team/