Really, the biggest thing you can do to help your cause is find +skills anywhere you can, as the others have said so far. If you can run NM Meph/Baal, do so, as this is your best chance to find +skill items. Also, places like NM Council are nice for getting flawless gems, and then you can trade off pgems for worthwhile equipment.
Uniques to look for would be Arm of King Leoric (+5 RS/SM!), Homunculus, Skins of the Vipermagi, Lidless Wall, etc. I may be wrong but I believe those can all be found in Nightmare (perhaps all NM Meph, even), and even better items than those can be found as well. In addtion to what Bruticus suggested, a very cheap Lore (Ort+Sol) helm can help a bit, too.
Once you get a few +skills items (~28-30 RS/SM as Bruticus said), you should be able to run Hell Pits fairly effectively. From there you should be able to accumulate enough wealth to eventually pick up Shako, a low Necro Torch, etc.
In regard to keeping your minions organized, by far the best way to do that in my opinion is to have an Enigma (Jah+Ith+Ber) armor for the +1 to teleport mod, as it brings all your minions directly to where you teleport. Once your army is summoned, amp a crowd and teleport on top of an enemy. Your minions will usually kill this enemy almost immediately (a type of gang-bang telestomp, if you will), at which point CE takes care of the rest. Of course, this is a rather expensive item and will take a while for you to be able to afford, but in my opinion it should definitely be a target piece of equipment. For me it is by far the most useful item on my summoner.
I'm a bit short on items right now (US East Ladder), but feel free to add my account, kanadah4, to your friends list, and I'll show you my equipment and help you out when I find some more useful Necro items.
Just don't get discouraged on your summoner, they're fun and extremely powerful with a few +skills :thumbsup:.
