entry level sales and marketing

appointment generator

entry level sales representative

solar consultant

solar installer

Ion Solar

What is the best part of working at the company?
Relative flexibility. If you get all your work done for the day, there is a high chance you can clock out and go home. Most workers are on a equivalent to salary or commission.

What is the most stressful part about working at the company?
The "solar coaster". You might be hired on fast, but you will also be dropped just as fast if not faster depending on market demand.

What is the work environment and culture like at the company?
It depends on where you are. As a ground level employee, you are shielded from most of the flack that occasionally comes from the corporate office. If you become someone of note, such as a manager, that shielding is gone. Corporate will rarely reach out to you unless they believe there is a problem. It often becomes a mentality of "us versus them", "local vs corporate". Unless you are a fast paced individual and still can retain efficacy, it won't matter how accurate or honest you are. 

What is a typical day like for you at the company?
Typical days depend on your individual demeanor and what your position is. In general: you start your day, you work your shift (through the good and bad), and you go home after. Most people don't have high expectations for the work day and very few have bad enough days to seriously considering quitting. 

There were 3 different rolls I played when there.
-Site survey: pre-install information gathering for the sake of engineering in corporate so they can create bills of material.
-Warehouse support: I was told I would be a "special equipment manager" due to my extended service as a S.S. and the attention to detail I often gave. This turned out to be false, as I was only a "support" with more demands placed on me than other supports.
-Warehouse Manager: I was given salary instead of hourly and not told I was "except". I worked for 2 months doing over 50-55 hours a week before I noticed and asked HR about it. I was effectively told I could accept it, or leave.

There are many things to talk about at ION Solar. For starters, if you enjoy working outside during all seasons and weather conditions, this job might suit you. Regardless of inclement weather or unsafe work conditions someone in management at ION will try and get you to do some sort of work and will not take no for an answer.
Second, the management at ION is by far the worst I have seen it in all my years of work. There are far too many people behind screens and phones assuring customers and employees that a job CAN and WILL be done by certain dates and times, while they themselves have no idea of the enormous amount of work each job can be. With little regards to the employees who have to deal with disgruntled customers and zealous management, the culture at ION promotes one that makes you sacrifice each day to them entirely. While there are days that seem to run smooth, most days are filled with issues on planning, designing, and logistical nightmares that cause the employees and especially customers more headaches. 
The entire company is focused on one thing, to the detriment of customer and employee, and that is numbers. I understand the concept of a business model, but ION does not care about the customer after they sign their contract. Multiple times have customers been taken advantage of, disregarded, and pushed to the side just so ION can have their sale. Damaged property, long drawn out service calls and system outages are common at ION. I have seen year long system outages  that get “fixed” every so often yet break again shortly after. If you are someone that cares about what kind of work you do, please do not work here. You will be abused and exploited and given nothing in return. 

Ambassador of the best residential solar company in the business. Bias has nothing to do with it. Bias is for people who have only worked for one solar company. I've worked for a few here in Albuquerque. My experience and awareness of solar, how individual solar companies in Albuquerque pitch themselves, & knowledge of what they are actually selling to homeowners is why I choose to represent ION in the community. Switching to solar shouldn’t be complicated. While other companies promise simplicity they simply aren’t built to provide it. I've been able to help more people switch to clean solar with ION than with other solar companies I worked with. Nothing bothered me more than not being able to help homeowners who really need help the most as a solar consultant for other solar companies. ION uses the highest quality solar and electrical equipment and can offer the best financing plan available. No one-trick pony financing here. ION is a Top- 10 residential solar installer nationwide. I like that ION is a privately held company, and I love the fact that we're a profitable company. We're led by men who care about people and the environment. Good management empowers people. They passed me the baton and I'm running with it. My success is up to me. 

Regarding the statements of poor management, disorganization, & low morale...please. This is a sink or swim job. You'll either succeed, or you'll fail. If you fail, the only person to blame is the person looking back at you in the mirror. Or you can blame everyone else for you failing.

Best job ever. Best Solar Company in the business. 

-the end-

In six month's time, I saw the following at the headquarters building-
-got better: Tracking errors by source, creating more standardization for common issues, minor pay raises across the department, getting our backlog's in-out time to under a week.
-didn't change: We can't get new people to stay for long. People leave for other departments or other companies without warning. Whenever we reach goals, the next month's goals are even higher. If someone leaves, the goals are still based on accounts coming in instead of the head count left to work on them.
-get worse: Upper management is too busy staring at spreadsheets to own up to being the cause of the staff shortage. The tiny team of developers who make our software won't update things when needed because they don't think it's necessary (what do end-users know about what the product needs?). There is a bonus pay plan, but practically no one gets bonuses because even the smallest errors are counted against us. My supervisors are good people, but they're stretched thin solving the same problems over and over because no one can stop working long enough to write up a training procedure. One person in management keeps picking on the people working on the harder jobs for not getting them done fast enough, those people quit, someone else takes their place without knowing how to do any of it, and then it started all over.

The best I can say about ION Solar is that they have some AMAZING people working with them. However, their pay is horrible, benefits are subpar, PTO is an absolute joke, and above all else they value their sales reps more than they value anyone else at the company. Every penny they pinch from their operations team is put towards trips, swag, and a multitude of other things for their sales reps. Then they act surprised when they employees in operations that they’re paying barely above minimum wage are not providing a premium experience for their customers and sales professionals. 

I agree that the sales rep is a crucial and critical part for a company like ION and I don’t fault them for spending so much and doing so much to make them happy. What I fault them for is doing all of that at the expense of their operations employees. It’s almost impossible to remain staffed since you’re guaranteed to find a better fit elsewhere and the goals set forth by the executive management are highly unattainable. They actually encourage it to be a constant battle to succeed and I don’t mean that in a good way. If an employee is getting high productivity numbers they don’t congratulate or promote the employee but rather they review the timings for productivity and adjust it so it’s HARDER to achieve the goals. Makes no sense at all. 

Ultimately, the culture among the employees is great but if the executives don’t change the way they treat them, they’re going to quickly find themselves losing everyone. 

Work culture is strange, team members and direct bosses are pleasant to be around but over all the practices feel off, the company continuously pushes staff to try and recruit more people, making it feel a little like a pyramid scheme.  You don’t get paid training and you get told conflicting things so be weary of grandeur promises of large sums of money, as that doesn’t appear to actually be the norm.  Furthermore they have training on not to knock no solicitor doors but the trainers will still do so anyways, and will advise you the same.  Depending on where the office is it feels like a shop going down, every other meeting was a push to do more sales but less than 10-15 actually being on the board.  It gives the illusion that everyone will make off well but reality doesn’t seem to reinforce this.

You’ll also need money to start here, you don’t get compensation on gas or anything, and depending on how well you do it could take two or more weeks before you ever receive a paycheck.  This isn’t the job to start if you’re short on cash.  You’ll also be outside a lot, and in potentially harsh weather.  They want you to work 6 days a week, and be connected nearly all times via their apps and groupchats, which is part of what is wrong with most companies.  You don’t really get to disconnect and not be apart of it when you’re off, you’re technically always on.

The company as a whole aims to have an assembly line akin structure for their departments for the solar installation and post-install. There is no requirement for having solar industry experience. The day to day is just about handling accounts in order to ensure installation and activation of the solar system occurs (or caring for it afterwards but I dealt with pre-install and a few post-install). The company seeks to have a good company culture but they way it is done is what is not best. they seek for an objective manner of measuring productivity of an employee as well as be a good experience for the employee (whether you seek to have Solar be your career or just getting by) but are not willing to change the subjective manner of evaluation or of leaving a mark on the employee, which is an antithesis. They do seek change but the main leadership outside the department supervisor only seeks to implement certain voiced topics. I worked in permitting so that is what I saw. Not a bad place to get started or have as student but they are not that flexible as they make it seem (personal experience). If permitting has an opening, I would recommend going to that department or even utility as I worked with utility a ton and both supervisors have similar mindsets. 

The company needs to step up their customer service/be more nonest about install timelines, delayed installs loose customer trust.
Lots of opportunity but no benefits, no base pay, you get what you put in. Great learning experience if you’re pursuing a sales career, door-to-door sales is some of the toughest training you can get. Top “knocker” performers (1-3) bring in over 6 figures (numbers are crazy) but you have to work late and weekends. Below the top 3 but in the top 6 sales performers you’re probably making $50k. Outside top 10, $20-30k. In-house closers you make more but have to earn your spot aka working late & weekends, and to earn your leads have to be an independent knocker and closer. But that’s why you do it, you’ve got to be serious, hard working, and committed to developing your talent. Pros: some very amazing people, you make your own hours, fun annual trips, decent swag, the product is great, if you’re talented you can make a killing. Cons: if you’re not meant for sales you won’t make much, no PTO, no paid sick days, the inspirational pep talks do not pay the bills, late hours. Hard work life balance to make it but there are inspirational people who have, problem is the bottom 80% revolving door.



Don't let the advertisement fool you working for this company can have its benefits, but the pay is none if you aren't good at sales. They say 10.00 an hour + commission. They fail to mention in the advertisement that you have to work 20+ hours, and if you make $200 in commission they throw out the base pay anyways. THE PAY STRUCTURE is $100 if you manage to get someone to sign up for a "sit" which is an in home appointment. Then $225 if they actually buy the solar. The problem is San Antonio has 10+ solar companies trying the same thing with the same methods, so competition is INSANE and most people you talk to just close the door when they hear what you're there for. They are very nice people just trying to make a living like the rest of us, but they prey on desperate college students willing to get sucked into the "$40,000+ a year" promise. I worked a week an a half doing door to door sales. Needless to say I had no success (now that may be because i'm a bad salesman), BUT I didn't even get the promised $10 an hour pay. IF YOU ARE A COLLEGE STUDENT don't take this job the pay security isn't there for a student, unless you're a pretty skilled salesman already and can take rejection like nobody's business.

Guys, whether you're a hustler or just trying to learn sales, one thing you need to understand is sales jobs have a reputation of being sketch. I didn't mind going door-to-door, I wanted to learn sales skills and my partnership with ION (its 1099 employment) was helpful in building my sales skills. They have a very driven team, good mentors and great inspiration. It's definitely not a luck-based job, you do need to work hard. I would also add is either don't be in debt, don't pay rent on anything, or just keep a huge savings base. With that, you can keep working for them while paying off bills until your commission is enough to sustain you. But here is the part where I rip into them. I still have a paycheck that is a couple months overdue. They keep apologizing and telling me it will be in "next week" or in the "final paycheck." Still haven't gotten it two months later. One would immediately think unprofessional payroll, but after looking into small claims to get my paycheck, I've come to piece together that ION does not intend to pay me. This could be true or not true, they could read this and claim otherwise, but that is what I'm piecing together. 

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