1. Before we had a product I spent a lot of time taking care of administrative stuff that was necessary to get the company going. I also wrote the copy for the website. The biggest thing though is to talk to the people who you will eventually sell to and see if they are interested in what you are building.

2. Practice is a huge part of it. I also think its worthwhile to learn about the training programs bigger companies put their employees through. I have a few cd's from http://www.sandler.com/ that have been very helpful. If you have a friend who works in sales, they probably have a bunch of these.