Working as a Solar Salesman

What is working as a solar salesman like in Dallas, Texas? Let’s assume you just got hired at a relatively small company selling solar promising $100k plus. You are probably feeling pretty excited and ready to buy in to the companies training practices. While I understand that developing training in such a complicated industry must be it’s own obstacle, I urge you to read this article to prepare for all the nuances of solar you will most likely be left to learn yourself. Let’s start with an example. One of my first closing appointments was a customer living in an electrical cooperative service area, to be specific CoServ. Texas is a deregulated market meaning most homeowners can chose their electric provider. This can be a great asset. However, homeowners living in an electrical cooperative territory have no choice other than the cooperative servicing their area. While most CO-OPs offer some form of net-metering, I assure you in most cases it’s far from the 1:1 sales pitch you’ve been taught. Keep in mind at the time of this appointment I am as green as they come, and all I know is what I’ve been trained to say. I bought in whole-heartedly. Everything was going well enough until my first appointment that asked me about their energy company’s specific net-metering policy. Talk about opening pandora’s box.. At this point all I knew was designing a system with an offset percentage of 100%. Ideally this would mean that through net-metering the energy company would buy back any excess energy produced, i.e. over producing in summer months cancels out under producing in the winter. After that first appointment I realized being a solar sales consultant was going to require an immense amount of self teaching. Within a couple of weeks I ended up with my second appointment with a homeowner living in an electrical cooperative territory without any idea what that means. I met the homeowner at the door per usual without a care in my mind. This homeowner was very sharp with all of their research and questions. They understood investing but they didn’t yet understand net-metering buy-back rates. After about an hour of answering their questions and giving them their final proposal I was close to closing my first deal. By offering a $3.2 PPW the numbers made sense on paper. By going solar their monthly loan payments were about $30 less than what the were paying on average for electricity every month. I could tell he was interested, but me being me I also had to tell him he would still have a small electric bill during lower-generating months. At minimum he would pay the customer charge and meter fee which I believe was around $20 and in winter he could expect a reduced bill even with a 100% offset system due to CoServ policy. Obviously he became much less interested and thanked me for all the information. We exchanged “have a great day” and that was that. Trying to understand how to save a homeowner living in the CoServ service area money by going solar was one of the many conundrums leading to my decision to leave the solar sales industry. With absolutely no guidance from management and conflicting advice from the sales manager and the owner, I left that appointment sick to my stomach. The Owner of the company reiterated his usual cookie-cutter 100% offset no matter what whereas the sales manager advised a 60-70% offset system. With my experience now and hindsight I believe that in this specific situation my sales manager was correct, but how the hell could I know then. At the time CoServ offered a buyback rate of excess energy produced around $0.06 per kWh while charging around $0.13 per kWh import. Looking back its clear to me that offering a smaller system with an estimated levelized cost of energy or lcoe of around $0.09 per kWh for 60% of their energy needs would have been a pretty easy sell. By underproducing, the homeowner would avoid wasted production and either way they’re still paying customer charges monthly regardless of overproducing. Welp I sure as hell didn’t know that then and lets just say that appointment was the beginning of the end. Most solar salesmen’s first foray dealing with a CO=OP is simply having no idea what a CO=OP even is, yet alone anything about buyback rates, wholesale vs retail, rollover credits, capped usage, you name it… I know because this was my experience. The solar industry trains new employees on a script designed to sound much more beneficial to the homeowner than what they can actually expect. And the truly sad part of the equation is most new hires don’t even do the math. Recommending every appointment a system with 100% offset and explaining net-metering as a magical solution where the homeowner will no longer have an electric bill is not only false but unfair to the homeowner and the salesman trying to make a career in the industry. Two things I’m sure of. First, Not every company suffers from this and there are companies that provide adequate training no matter how rare that may be. Second, and most importantly, there are MANY companies just like the very company i worked for. The industry is built on a sale first mentality with a commission only compensation plan promising huge commissions for any sale. By omitting the intricacies of every situation, their entire plan is to hire salesmen that buy in, train them to recite a script and convince homeowners that going solar is an absolute no brainer. Those same salesman typically last 3 months or less and the company moves on to the next gullible person willing to drive thousands of miles on a hope and prayer shadowing senior salesmen. If they’re smart, they’ll pick up on the slight of hand required to make a deal. I picked up on this pretty early and started to do the research to understand the difference between what I was being trained to say versus what was true and the results did not sit well with me. Most companies offer a low interest rate of around 2-4% on their solar financing, yet these loans come with a dealer fee typically in the 30% range. The federal tax credit is 30% so they’re effectively cancelling out any savings from that credit. If you are selling someone a solar system costing a monthly fee equal to there current monthly energy bill maybe you can make peace with that by explaining the cost of energy will most likely rise during the lifetime of their solar system. However, once you dig a little deeper you realize most of these potential customer’s current energy providers do not offer 1:1 net-metering and require a minimum customer connection fee which many times cost $20 or more per month. How can you reasonably sell over-priced solar to someone knowing they‘re paying AT BEST $240 annually on top of a monthly bill equal to their previous average energy bill. It’s simple. You simply don’t tell them that information. This was the catalyst for creating Shedding Light. I believe the day of free solar consultations are numbered. You are never going to get the truth when someone’s entire income is predicated on you signing a contract. Charging a flat fee for consultations to potential solar buyers is the only way to provide consultations in the best interest of the homeowner. While their are companies and salesman out there fighting the good fight, God bless you if you chose to roll the dice.