Building Ethical Solar Sales Teams: Why Your Incentive Structure Makes All the Difference

In the competitive world of solar sales (and truly many types of sales), there’s a critical tension every company faces: driving results while maintaining ethical standards. We’ve all seen the headlines – from coast to coast, news stories continue to surface about solar customers being taken advantage of by unscrupulous sales tactics.

While these incidents represent a small fraction of our industry, they have damaged our industry’s reputation and highlighted why building ethical sales practices from the ground up is more important than ever.

Too often, well-intentioned sales teams find themselves caught between hitting their numbers and doing right by their customers. But what if the problem isn’t only with your salespeople – what if it’s with how you’re incentivizing them?

In our new Introduction to Ethics in Solar Sales class, we cover one of the most overlooked aspects of building a sustainable solar business: designing compensation structures that actually support ethical behavior rather than undermine it. This clip from the class explains the practical strategies successful solar companies use to align their team’s financial motivations with customer-first practices.

Ready to learn how to build incentive programs that drive both results and integrity? Enroll for free in the Introduction to Ethics in Solar Sales course today (and earn 1 NABCEP CEU)!

Transcript below.

 Let’s begin by exploring ways to design incentive programs that support ethical sales.

One of the biggest challenges in solar sales is ensuring that your team doesn’t feel pressured to compromise ethics, just to hit numbers, but how do you strike a balance? The first goal is to align sales targets with ethical behavior. 

Let’s consider the structure of commissions and bonuses. Rather than rewarding solely on volume factor in customer satisfaction metrics or quality benchmarks, ensure your team understands that high pressure tactics or misrepresentation will not be tolerated even if sales are made. 

Set realistic goals based on well researched industry expectations. Don’t expect staff to achieve the impossible, but to rather be high achievers in a competitive marketplace while factoring in the growth rate of the industry locally and globally.

Finally, we’re going to hear from Ben Mayer about 100% commission-based sales and the situation this puts even the most ethical salesperson in.

There are plenty of industries that you can borrow from, where a salesperson could be 100% commission and does not have a base salary to keep themselves fed and to keep their families clothed and warm during the natural cycles of any sales life. That’s not a great model for building ethical sales practices.

It’s on the leaders of that organization who’ve established the compensation package to not establish compensation packages that are in direct misalignment with ethical behavior. Because you can take the most ethical salesperson in the entire world and you can force them into a corner by saying, if you don’t make a sale this week, you’re not going to make the mortgage payment. You’ve caused a problem for them. That’s on you, not on them. 

One of the most important things that any organization can do on that front is intelligent compensation packages, where salespeople’s base salaries have to provide a base living wage in order to be sustainable, even if you do have bonuses and compensation on top of the base living wage. 

Salespeople need to avoid misguided incentives. These are incentives that reward only the fastest or highest numbers and can inadvertently encourage cutting corners. For instance, tying a bonus to short-term sales alone might tempt representatives to overpromise savings.