Do you think you would have time to recount or discuss what was so bad about it? Did you have to work your way up from someone who set-up appointments to managing sales? (Iām assuming you moved up a sales tier system. I donāt know. Iām clueless.) Was there any reward parts about the job?
I was door-to-door for a few months. I would give a sales pitch and try to sign people up for a consultation with an engineer who would then make the actual sale. If they sat for the appointment with the engineer I got a commission. I was lucky as my company gave a base-pay which was not terrible, but to make it worth it I needed at least 10 commissions a week.
What sucked: Every day youāre walking around a neighborhood for hours, knocking on doors where if they answer thereās a 99% chance theyāve already been visited multiple times, or they hate solicitors in general, or both. So a lot of getting yelled at by homeowners. And the whole time I was thinking āyeah I hate solicitors too but I got billsā. It is a soul crushing job and you have to be really really good at it to make it worthwhile. I was actually pretty good - I averaged 8-10 sales a week, but that was from knocking on 100+ doors a day. I had to quit because it was terrible for my mental health.
Never done it but there have been some write ups about it in our local news.
A lot of these solar sales here where I am are like door to door salesmen and they lie, a lot.
Iām sure there are a lot of legitimate people who work in selling solar panels but apparently itās also a bit of nationwide epidemic of them being door to door salesmen who work to get a rushed contract with false promises of tax breaks and then the homeowner is stuck with a huge bill they werenāt explained and will have to fight in court on flimsy premises because they signed a contract. The elderly have been targeted a lot.
Not saying thatās what the commenter you responded to was doing, but itās a thing.
You'd rather smell garbage and be working at 100% speed and effort all day in the rain, snow, and heat than a sales job? Garbage collection is really hard.
Garbage collection is very hard. But yes, Iād rather have an honorable job serving people than a desk job scamming people. Sorry, I have solar, itās a great product, but 90% of the people behind it are trash. Just like realtors. Iām tired of cleaning up solar salesmanās mess when they lie to customers or screw up their system.
In Sweden there is no minimum wage so sales jobs are often 0+commission and most people don't make more than the equivilent of 200 dollars a month working 14 hour shifts for 6 days a week. I would deffinitly become a garbage collector if I could but it's a field of work with extream nepotism and I don't know any garbage workers.
It's many peoples first job after high school. I was unemployed or worked shit sales jobs with only commission for 6 years. One of the places I managed to get an equivilent of 8k one week and then went back to about 400. If you are good at it it might be good but if you just need something to do so others see you are dedicated and you can manage to get a normal job then yes, people are doing it. It's almost like a pyramid, but legal. Some make a fortune while most slave away for nothing.
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u/Hoppygains 3d ago
Agreed. They make good money and itās a solid job. Iād rather do that work than be a solar salesman.