Personally, I think you can do all your sales from one location to start off. It's great to send people to location, but you might not have the cash to do that. A lot of this really depends on what you are selling and for how much.
If you find people that love your product and have free time... get them selling! I would have no hard feelings if they can't sell anything. Just make sure they can clearly articulate your product so they don't harm your businesses reputation. As long as they believe they can make money and ideally they really believe in your product and they are good let them loose!
You might even consider having someone generate the leads and get the calls set up. You take over on the actual sales aspects and if you make the sale they get their commission.
I don't think it's really that important to have the logo designed exactly the way you want it. The most important step is the 'word mark' or 'standard character mark' the name itself. You probably don't want to spend $300 for each class of good in the short-run, but minimally get the main one down, so you have some grounds to work from. The most important step is adding the TM to the name and logo being used in commerce. This helps protect the name ahead of time.
You can file the trademark yourself. I would look at all the competitors in the space through trademark searches, see how they define the trademark and the define your own balancing being really broad vs. very exact. If there is a problem in your filing, the attorney at the trademark office will help you out and you don't need to pay anything. They can't advise you on how to protect the name, but they will ensure the wording in form is correct. Actually, I was quite impressed at their customer service!
This is all just my opinion, I am no expert in trademarks. But I love the process of building a name brand. Trademarks are pretty important to avoid complications that you have encountered. Good Luck! Sorry for the woes and I hope you find a really cool name. Luckily .coms are loosing some ground as the ONLY name to get these days.
Try Swahili (East Africa) names, they sound good rolling off the tongue. My steps have always been: Domain Check, Search Name on Internet with Combos, Trademark "word mark." If you can get past all of that, then you need to check for the logo design trademark search. Really, the wordmark is quite important. BUT....another important step now in my opinion is checking for all the Twitter and Facebook URL's too. Trying to brand that one domain with everything... makes it pretty tough huh?
If the domain is not available I move on, else go to the next steps.
I spent 4-6 months trying to come up with a name, but I suppose its different for everyone.
If you find people that love your product and have free time... get them selling! I would have no hard feelings if they can't sell anything. Just make sure they can clearly articulate your product so they don't harm your businesses reputation. As long as they believe they can make money and ideally they really believe in your product and they are good let them loose!
You might even consider having someone generate the leads and get the calls set up. You take over on the actual sales aspects and if you make the sale they get their commission.
Good Luck on the launch!