Quota - as an FES, you won't see a dime from your closed wons until you hit quota for the month. It sounds attainable on paper but it is anything but in practice. If you do not hit quota you are given a verbal, if you don't hit it again you get put on an improvement plan, after that you're gone. Many of my coworkers are constantly worried about their job security.
Sales Tactics Utilized - You need to essentially be a sleazy used car salesman - just for solar. You have to hound people all day in The Home Depot to try to convince them to just have a free consultation. 99% of people have no interest and don't want you talking to them and for every nice rejection, there's many rude ones. You have to have thick skin. But even if you get into a conversation and someone expresses their genuine interest. You have to reel them in to inviting someone they don't know to come to their home to give them a quote. Assuming you are able to do that - great! You have done your job and it has now been handed off to a consultant... completely out of your control. Do you get compensated if they actually sit with the person (50-70% cancel or no show)? Nope. You have to count on a consultant to close the deal, which many of them are hesitant to do because of the millions of reasons a job can DQ, from credit fail to failure of site survey, etc. and the consultants have to eat it if the job doesn't pull through. So naturally, they only want to close the jobs that they have a very good feeling will close. Anything shakey in their mind will be a DQ and that consultation you busted your butt for all day on a Saturday is gone.
Even IF a deal closes, you need to hit unreasonable quota that you generated on the month before you see a dime from commission. Short 1 close on the month (while closing some incredibly $-valuable to the company)? Aw you were so close! No commission for you. You're just endlessly advised to look at how you can improve even though you did your job and got someone to sit with a consultant - that counts for literally nothing.
Nepotism - in short, there is obvious favoritism and top performers are practically enshrined on a pedestal as gods because they are natural salespersons or work in a good market. The company will suck you in with the whole claim of "top performers are earning 90k+/yr" but there are so many variables that could keep a person otherwise very good at their job from even earning the minimum commission - it's just deceptive. And you will consistently get empty encouragement that you too will get there, but I know poeple doing the position for over a year and struggling to make commission.
Working Every Weekend - say goodbye to your weekends. They consider Friday - Sunday to be prime time because that's when people are shopping in the stores. So forget hanging out with your friends and loved ones, you'll be in the store. Every. Weekend. The company preaches work/life balance hard, but there is none of it in practice. Consultants need to work 7 days/week to succeed and specialists grind away every weekend and can end up with nothing to show for it.
Little Control - as I said, you are counting on consultants to close the deal. It's out of your hands. You can lose your job if they are unable to do it. The consultants are in the same boat as well having to try to reach ridiculous quotas and generate their own leads that are valued more than yours (literally, those leads make the company more money than the store-generated ones you create). You are at the mercy and competency of the consultants.
There is also absolutely no credence given to geographical location and the market of the region you work in. You'll see people in better regions crushing it because people there are more receptive or it is a newer market. Forget it in the saturated ones. Anyone who wanted solar got it in 2012 - 2014 during the peak of solar. You have to find the remaining scraps and convince them they missed the boat.
Rude Customers - know that you need thick skin to do this job. I, personally, know how to brush it off and move onto the next prospect. But you will encounter a barrage of ignorant, uneducated, self entitled, rude morons every day. It gets tiring and demotivating after a while. When you are new, you are most likely to perform well (I did) because you haven't been exposed to the grind month after month yet. You are fresh meat and don't know better. But you will learn if you stick it out long enough...
Not Feeling Valued - company will preach about how important their employees are to them, etc. but at the end of the day you are a number on a stat sheet. If your numbers aren't good enough, you are gone. Nobody is safe, whether you've been doing it for a year+ or just a few months.
Limited Support - your job is very difficult and the higher ups will try to claim that they know how hard it is but they have no clue. They just want to see the numbers. You count on support from teammates and your direct manager, which can vary depending on the type of person they are.
TL;DR - quota is ridiculous, pay is sub-par, virtually no control over whether a deal closes, support is low, you are a disposable number, a slave to the grind, no work/life balance, empty platitudes.
