What Solar Sales Reps Get Paid in Australia

Ask a room of solar company owners what they pay their sales reps and you'll get a dozen different answers. Ask the reps and you'll get a dozen more. Here's what the advertised market says - and what a well-built pay plan actually looks like.

I've pulled this together from current Australian job boards (SEEK, Indeed), salary aggregators (Glassdoor, PayScale), and published commission guides used across the industry. The numbers below are advertised figures and self-reported data - treat them as market ranges, not gospel.

The headline numbers

The average Australian solar sales consultant earns somewhere between $90,000 and $100,000 a year. Indeed puts the national average base salary at around $97,800, while Glassdoor's Melbourne data shows a median total pay of about $90,000 - roughly $55K–$81K in base pay plus $10K–$40K in commissions and bonuses. PayScale lands lower at around $89K for the pure base. That's the middle of the market. The spread around it is enormous.

Skim SEEK's solar sales listings right now and the advertised packages cluster like this:

Role type	Typical advertised package
Entry-level / junior consultant	$34–$38/hr or $55K–$70K base + uncapped commission; OTE $90K–$120K
Experienced in-home consultant (warm leads)	$70K–$100K base + commission; OTE $125K–$190K
Commission-only closer (pre-booked appointments)	No base; advertised earnings $7K–$10K/month, OTE $180K–$300K at the top end
Sales manager / account manager	$100K+ base + override or profit share; OTE $180K–$250K

Take the top-end OTE numbers with the scepticism they deserve - they're recruitment ads. But they tell you something real: solar sales is a commission-weighted profession. Nobody advertises a fat base. They advertise a modest base and an uncapped upside, because that's what attracts the kind of person who can close a $15,000 kitchen-table deal.

How the pay mix works

Three models dominate the Australian market:

• Base + commission (the standard). A retainer - typically $50K–$80K plus super - with commission on top. The base keeps the rep fed through the 2–4 week gap between signing a deal and getting paid, and it's what lets you demand activity metrics, CRM discipline and compliance behaviour from someone who's an employee, not a contractor.
• Commission-only. Common for subcontractors and the "pre-booked appointments, just close" model. The rep carries the income risk, you carry the lead cost. It attracts confident closers and filters out everyone else - which is both its strength and its reputational risk.
• Hourly + commission. Increasingly common for retail-adjacent and appointment-setting roles - $33–$38/hr plus weekly commission bonuses, often with leaderboards and short-cycle targets to keep activity high.

Many employers also run a draw against commission for new hires: a guaranteed monthly amount that gets deducted from commission earnings once the rep is up to speed. It's a recruitment tool, and it works - but only if you've got the cash flow to fund it through the ramp.

How commission is calculated on solar

There are four main mechanics, and mature companies often blend them:

• Percentage of sale price. Simple and predictable: typically 3%–8% of the system price on residential deals. Industry guides put the most common band at 5%–8%.
• Per-kW rates. The most common structure in Australian residential solar. The rep earns a flat amount for every kW sold - typically $200–$500 per kW, with the higher rates for self-generated sales and lower rates ($200–$350/kW) for company-supplied or referred leads. On a 10kW system at $300/kW, that's a $3,000 commission.
• Percentage of gross profit. Increasingly the smart choice. One current Sydney listing advertises 30% of gross profit on a $50K–$120K base. Paying on margin instead of revenue means your rep wins when the company wins - and nobody's incentivised to discount a deal to nothing just to get it across the line.
• Per-system tiers. Flat amounts per system size band - e.g. $1,000 for a 4–6kW system, $1,400 for a 10kW. Simple to explain, easy to forecast, and it removes the incentive to inflate system price. The risk: it can encourage oversizing, so it needs design QA behind it.

Then there's the sales support layer. Canvassers and appointment-setters - the people filling the diary - typically earn $50–$200 per confirmed appointment, or $200–$800 per appointment that converts to a sale. If your closers are only as good as their diary, this layer is not the place to economise.

How it gets paid out (and clawed back)

The standard industry practice is a split payment: half the commission when the contract is signed, the remainder when the system is installed and handed over (in grid-connect markets, often described as permission to operate). This isn't stinginess - it's survival. In Australia, customers have a 10-day cooling-off period for unsolicited sales agreements, and residential solar has a meaningful cancellation and refund rate. If you've paid 100% of commission at signing, a cancelled deal leaves you paying a rep for revenue you never collected.

A well-drafted plan spells out:

• Clawback terms - what happens to the signing portion if the customer cancels, cools off, or the job is refunded.
• Payout milestones - signed, installed, and (where finance is involved) funded. Don't pay the final tranche before the money actually arrives.
• Lead ownership - self-generated sales usually earn a higher rate ($300–$500/kW) than company-supplied leads ($200–$350/kW). Write down who owns which lead before the dispute, not after.
• Chargeback behaviour - cancellations caused by mis-selling come back to the rep. This is both a margin protection and a compliance guardrail.

How batteries change the math

Batteries are where the commission conversation gets interesting, for two reasons: they're higher margin, and they're the product the grid desperately needs customers to buy. The common structures:

• Attach bonuses. A flat bonus for attaching a battery - in international benchmarks, bonuses of $500–$1,000 per battery are standard, and Australian listings commonly advertise minimum $3,000 commission per solar-plus-battery sale at the top end.
• Product-group commission. Pay a higher rate on bundled deals. A common shape is 5% for solar-only versus 8% for solar-plus-battery. The rate gap is what actually changes rep behaviour - the difference is noticeable enough that reps start leading with the battery conversation instead of treating it as an upsell at the end.
• Battery-only commission. With federal battery rebates now driving a demand surge (every SEEK listing in this space is shouting about it), retrofits are becoming their own product line. Price these on gross profit, not revenue - battery margins vary wildly by brand and chemistry.

The advice here is simple: if you want your attach rate up, put the money where the behaviour is. A rep paid the same on a $12,000 solar-only deal and a $22,000 solar-plus-battery deal will sell the first one every time - it's an easier conversation. A $1,000 attach bonus and a two-point rate gap fixes that within a quarter.

What this means for your solar company

Putting it together, here's how I'd advise an owner structuring a plan:

• Anchor to the market, not your gut. If your OTE is under $90K, you're hiring from the bottom of the barrel. If you're advertising $200K+ OTE, be honest about whether your lead flow can actually feed a closer at that level - nothing burns a sales team faster than an OTE built on lead-flow fantasy.
• Pay on margin where you can. Revenue-based commissions punish you when panel prices drop and rewards discounting. A percentage of gross profit (20%–30% is a common band) aligns the rep with the business.
• Never pay 100% at signing. 50/50 signing-to-installation is the market standard for a reason. Fund it from the deposit if cash flow is tight.
• Use battery economics deliberately. Higher rates and flat attach bonuses on batteries steer reps toward the deals that improve both your margin and the customer's outcome.
• Guardrail the compliance line. Australia's consumer law is unforgiving on high-pressure unsolicited selling, and the Clean Energy Regulator's agent conduct rules are tightening. A commission structure that rewards speed and pressure is a structure that eventually costs you more in refunds and reputation than it ever paid in deals. Claw back commissions on cancelled-for-cause deals - it keeps everyone honest.
• Document everything. Rate cards, lead ownership, clawbacks, payout milestones. Most commission disputes I've seen weren't about greed - they were about two people remembering a verbal agreement differently.

Your sales pay plan is the single loudest signal you send about what the company values. If it only rewards signatures, you'll get signatures - and refunds. If it rewards installed, funded, compliant solar-plus-battery deals, you'll build a sales team that compounds instead of churns.