Initial high hopes but has been a disappointing experience - Field Energy Consultant SolarCity Employee Review

Once the Elon Musk magic had worn off, I realized that this company is not everything I had hoped for. SolarCity is unorganized and the company is growing way too fast. Everyone is a new hire. The majority of sales consultants have no prior solar experience. The consultants I met and work with were previously in realty sales, gym membership sales, car sales, travel sales, time share sales, paper sales, mobile phone sales or coming from retail customer service. No solar experience and there is no real “consulting” as the job title states. Profanity, smoking, tobacco dipping, and non-professionalism is norm. It is a good ole boy type of position as there is about a 5 to 1 ratio of men to women in sales. This is a hard close sales type of position. You are expected to hard close a customer into signing a 20 year contract at the first meeting in their home. If you don’t hard close and get them to sign a contract at the first meeting, it is almost impossible to get them to move forward at a later date because of the company’s online Yelp reviews and SolarCity’s installation reputation. Common training practice is not to leave the home until the customer signs. If you are not comfortable hard closing a family into signing a 20 year contract within an hour meeting, then you will not be successful at this job. Period. Again, everyone is a new hire. The company has been around for over eight years but I am still hard pressed to find a single sales consultant that has been with the company for more than two years. I was called an experienced solar sales “veteran” by my manager to a new team hire only after my fifth month. One day my manager was too busy to train/babysit the new guy so I was assigned to have him shadow me. I was still learning so it was like the blind leading the blind. The consultants that I have found with just over a year experience with SolarCity, all have one foot ready out the door. Most are disgruntled and not happy with the direction of the company and management. I believe that a high employee turnover rate is part of SolarCity’s success. Sales consultants are expected to sell to all their friends and family as soon as they start their job. This was recommended during training. This is a quick way for SolarCity to capture customers and contacts into their Salesforce database. Continue to sell to these people regardless if the original employee is still with the company or not. As far as management, most have little to no experience managing a sales team. Managers are spread very thin and are learning as they go like everyone else. Many questions and concerns go unanswered or ignored. Most managers are under pressure with their own quota and metric to fulfill that they do and say anything just to keep their sales teams in line. Expect to work everyday. Yes, including evenings and every weekend. Most deals happen during those times. Reason: Most people work during the day and only can meet at night. Most people work during the week and only have the weekend to meet. Also expect most of your appointments to cancel or no show. This happens when a lead is generated from a SolarCity-Home Depot associate or called a FES "Field Energy Specialist". This lead is then transferred to you. Most of these leads are unqualified and only agree to an appointment out of politeness or under pressure from the SolarCity FES associate at Home Depot. Expect to show up on a Sunday for a consultation where the customer is not home, won't answer the door, or forgot about the appointment. Yet, it is mandatory for you to go on these sales calls if it is assigned to you or else you will not get assigned any more leads from the Home Depot. You are also expected to walk up and down the aisles at Home Depot to basically cold call/generate your own leads. Expect to be looked down upon as more of an annoyance than help to most people you encounter at Home Depot. Your intentions may be in the right place but most people associate solar sales people with a negative connotation similar to a used car salesman. Expect people to run away from you and reactions of disgust or fright when you mention the word "solar" to someone. The hardest part of this job is disappointing willing customers. Once you actually sell a job the downstream installation process with SolarCity is horrific. You would lose a majority of your deals to customer cancellations because the installation process is complete confusion at SolarCity. The handoff of sold jobs from the sales team to the install team is a logistic mess. Miscommunication between the sales team and the installation team leads to many apologies to the customer. It is very difficult as a sales rep to build a network of referrals when the downstream product, installation and customer experience is always subpar or average at best. I only recommend this job if you are working retail/minimum wage and are looking for your first sales job to get some experience. If you are an experienced solar consultant, I would look at other local solar companies for employment. If you are an experienced (non-solar) sales professional, I would stay away from SolarCity and the solar industry as a whole. The true culture and atmosphere as a sales rep in SolarCity is not positive, fun or inspiring as some other Glassdoor reviews have alluded to. Look elsewhere for long term stable income employment.