2026 Starts Now: How to Take Control of Your Career

A new year brings a fresh opportunity to reset, refocus and take control of your future. If you're a graduate or early-career professional thinking about what comes next. 2026 is the perfect time to be intentional about your career choices.

If you're ambitious, motivated by results and keen to develop skills that will set you up for long-term success, a career in sales could be the ideal starting point.

Why sales is a smart career move for graduates 

Sales is often misunderstood but in reality, it's one of the most valuable and rewarding career paths you can choose early on. A career in sales puts you at the heart of how businesses grow, giving you exposure to commercial decision making from day one.

For graduates, sales offers:

• Strong earning potential, with commission rewarding performance and progression.
• Clear career pathways, where success is measured on results rather than time served. 
• Highly transferable skills, including communication, negotiation, resilience and commercial awareness.
• Fast-paced, collaborative environments that suit driven, ambitious individuals. 

Put simply, sales teaches you how businesses operate and that level of understanding can open doors throughout your career, both within and beyond sales.

Experience isn't everything! You just need the right mindset

Generic training sessions have limited impact on a salespeople’s ability to sell complex solutions. Develop bespoke training that reflects real customer scenarios, product nuances and your company’s value proposition.

Research also highlights that best‑in‑class onboarding programmes dedicate significantly more hours to structured training in the first 90 days, which correlates with faster competence and confidence.

Implementation tips:

• Use blended learning: live instruction, self‑paced modules and hands‑on practice.
• Include role plays, real case reviews and scenario simulations that replicate actual buyer interactions.
• Incorporate assessments to ensure learning is retained and applied.  

3. Introduce a Mentorship or Shadowing Scheme

Pairing new hires with experienced sales professionals fosters real‑world learning and embeds your sales culture. Rather than leaving newcomers to “figure it out themselves,” structured mentoring accelerates skill acquisition and builds confidence in unfamiliar situations.

Mentorship also fosters engagement and job satisfaction by giving new hires a clear support system and a sense of connection within the team. This structured guidance helps retain talent, creating a more stable and cohesive sales force while ensuring new employees feel supported as they take on their roles.

With a positive onboarding experience, employees are far more likely to stay with the company long‑term, increasing stability and reducing turnover costs.

Implementation tips:

• Assign mentors early and schedule regular shadowing sessions.
• Encourage mentors to provide feedback based on observation, not impression.
• Use manager oversight to ensure mentoring delivers measurable progress.

4. Equip New Hires with the Right Tools and Systems

Sales effectiveness today depends heavily on the right technology ecosystem. Ensuring new hires are familiar with your CRM, sales enablement platforms and communication tools from day one allows them to be operational and efficient more quickly.

Onboarding systems that integrate learning with daily workflows reduce friction and improve both adoption rates and outcomes.

Action points:

• Provide access credentials, tutorials and quick‑start guides ahead of start date.
• Host practical sessions on how systems support activity and KPI tracking.
• Track tool usage and offer follow‑up coaching where engagement is low.

5. Prioritise Coaching and Real-Time Feedback

While onboarding often focuses on classroom‑style training, it’s ongoing coaching that drives behavioural change. Feedback loops are essential to reinforce learning and correct mistakes before they become habits.

Data also shows that onboarding programmes which incorporate continuous measurement of metrics such as time to productivity and first deal accelerate ramp time more effectively than those that focus solely on early orientation.

Ways to embed ongoing coaching:

• Establish weekly one‑to‑one sessions in the first three months.
• Review calls, proposals and pipeline activity to provide evidence‑based guidance.
• Use performance dashboards to spotlight trends and tailor coaching focus.

6. Embed Long-Term Development into the Onboarding Journey

View onboarding as the start of a career development pathway rather than a finite event. Continuous learning opportunities not only reinforce initial onboarding but also drive sustained performance improvements.

Organisations that embed onboarding within broader enablement and career progression frameworks typically see higher engagement and efficiency across the sales team, ultimately contributing to better quota attainment and revenue growth.

How to design for long‑term growth

• Align onboarding milestones with longer‑term development goals.
• Curate ongoing training on advanced selling techniques, new product lines and market trends.
• Recognise and reward learning achievements as part of performance reviews.

Investing in robust sales onboarding is no longer optional. Organisations with structured programmes reduce sales ramp‑up time, build stronger teams and improve retention. 

At Furza, we help businesses design onboarding systems that are grounded in practical execution and measurable outcomes. By aligning your onboarding with key performance goals, you can convert new sales hires into confident revenue drivers. 

Exploring Support?

At Furza, we help organisations build structured, effective onboarding programmes that get new sales reps productive faster and set your team up for long-term success.

Get in touch today to see how we can streamline your onboarding process and accelerate your sales performance.