What "Good" Actually Means in Solar Sales
Close rate, show rate, and commission all move depending on where the appointment came from, not just how good the closer is. A referral books and closes at close to double the rate of a cold phone lead. A paid appointment that nobody double-confirmed the day before is far more likely to sit empty than one that was. Treating every number below as one flat industry average will lead you to the wrong conclusion about your own pipeline.
This page collects the sourced close-rate, no-show, and commission benchmarks behind that variance, so you can compare your own numbers against something other than a guess.
Reading the Single-Source Numbers Correctly
A few of the figures below come from one publisher rather than a cross-industry survey, and each of those is marked "single-source estimate" in the line itself. Treat them as directional, not as a guaranteed benchmark for your market. The market-wide close-rate range is triangulated across two independent publishers and is not flagged.
The no-show figure below is the reason a double-confirmed appointment, one that gets reconfirmed with the homeowner shortly before the scheduled time, matters more in solar than in almost any other appointment-buying category. See how that mechanic works on the VA Horizon vs. shared solar leads page, and see the CAC and installer-failure numbers this pipeline math sits inside on the solar market statistics page.
The Numbers
Solar close rates, the share of appointments or leads that convert to a signed contract, run 8% to 17% across published industry benchmarks.
A narrower lead-to-close benchmark cites 8% to 12% on average, with top performers reaching 15% or higher (single-source estimate).
Referral leads book at roughly 80% and close at roughly 37.5%, a net 29.2% lead-to-sale rate. Phone leads book at roughly 71% and close at roughly 25%, a net rate near 17.75% (single-source estimate).
No-show rates on solar appointments run 30% to 40%, even on leads and appointments a company has already paid for.
Solar sales commissions typically split into two per-watt bands: setters earn roughly $0.05 to $0.15 per watt for booking the appointment, closers earn roughly $0.20 to $0.50 per watt for signing the contract, varying by market (single-source estimate).
Customer acquisition cost per completed sale runs an estimated $800 to $2,500 on a typical $25,000 residential installation.
A commonly cited target for lifetime value to customer acquisition cost (LTV:CAC) is a 3-to-1 ratio, a general finance benchmark applied to solar sales economics (single-source estimate).
The dealer fee embedded in a typical solar loan, averaging roughly 22% in 2026, is the pool that funds the entire setter-and-closer commission stack in a dealer-network sales model.
Sources
The external data in this article draws on the sources below. Figures described in the text as estimates or industry triangulations are directional and are not attributed to a single dataset.
- AgentZap, solar lead statistics
- SunVoy, solar lead source benchmarks
- Invention Solar, solar lead cost breakdown
- Everstage, solar sales commission structures
- Wall Street Prep, customer acquisition cost (CAC)
- bodhi.solar, why solar CAC runs high
- IntegrateSun, solar dealer fees analysis