What is a good sit rate for a solar sales team?

Whatever yours is now, it is the number worth attacking before you spend another dollar on leads. Most operations book far more appointments than they sit, and the gap is pure waste: a closer’s two-hour round trip for a door nobody answers. Confirmation sequences that require a reply, a message asking whether both decision-makers will be present, and a closer photo two hours before the sit all lift it — and none of them cost more than a few cents per appointment.

Does GoHighLevel design solar systems or model production?

No. There is no shading analysis, no roof modelling, no panel layout, no production estimate and no savings proposal. Aurora Solar and OpenSolar do all of that properly and one of them is free. If "solar software" means the tool that draws the array and produces the savings number for the kitchen table, this is not it — GoHighLevel handles the pipeline around that proposal, not the proposal itself.

Why do solar customers cancel after signing?

Silence during permitting. There is a long, invisible gap between a signature and a working system — permits, utility interconnection, inspection, permission to operate — and in that gap the customer has second thoughts, talks to a sceptical neighbour, and starts wondering whether they were sold something. Automated milestone updates at each stage, even when the update is "still waiting on the utility, here is where we are", dramatically reduce cancellations for a cost of pennies.

How do you separate setter and closer performance in a solar pipeline?

By making them different stages with different owners, so the numbers cannot hide behind each other. Sets, confirmed sets, sits, and closes — each attributable. The moment you can see that a particular setter books twenty appointments and only nine are sat, you have found a real problem that a headline set count was concealing. Solar teams routinely pay commission on sets and then wonder why the sit rate is poor.

Is GoHighLevel suitable for a door-knocking solar canvassing team?

For the pipeline and the follow-up, yes — a canvassed address with a phone number is a contact record, and the sequence that follows is where a lot of canvassing value is wasted. But be careful about consent: a number collected at a door is not an SMS opt-in, US A2P rules apply, and carriers will silently filter messages to a list that was not properly opted in. Get explicit permission at the door and register properly, or the whole channel quietly stops working without telling you.

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Use cases · Home services

GoHighLevel for solar installers

Solar is sold, not bought. Almost nobody wakes up and searches for panels; they are canvassed, called from a list, or clicked on a Facebook ad promising a lower power bill. That produces a two-stage sales organisation — setters who book appointments and closers who sit at kitchen tables — and an appointment no-show rate that would be considered a crisis in any other trade.

By Michael Smith · Last verified July 12, 2026

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The problem

What actually goes wrong for solar installers

The sit rate. A setter books twelve appointments for the week; the closer sits seven. The other five were never real, cancelled, or simply were not home. Every one of those is a wasted two-hour round trip and a demoralised closer, and the setter is paid on sets rather than sits, so nobody upstream has any incentive to fix it. This is the number that decides whether a solar operation is profitable.

Confirmation and re-confirmation automations aimed squarely at sit rate, plus a pipeline that separates setter and closer stages so you can see exactly where the leakage is. Solar's problem is not lead volume — it is that half the appointments evaporate before anyone knocks on the door.

The build

Protecting the sit — from set appointment to a closer at the table

This is the automation worth building first. Not a generic funnel — the specific sequence that fits how solar installers actually work:

Setter books the appointment. Immediately, the homeowner gets a text confirming the date and — critically — asking whether both decision-makers will be there. A one-spouse sit almost never closes.
Same day: a short message setting expectations honestly. How long it takes, what it is not (no roof work happens today), and that they should have a recent power bill to hand.
Day before: a confirmation that requires a reply. Not "we look forward to seeing you" — an actual question they must answer. Silence at this point is the single strongest predictor of a no-show, and it lets you rebook the slot rather than drive to it.
Two hours before: the closer’s name, photo and ETA. It converts an abstract sales appointment into a person arriving, and it measurably reduces the "we went out" no-show.
No-show anyway → an automatic message the same evening, not a week later. A meaningful share rebook, because a lot of no-shows are embarrassment rather than rejection.
Sat but not closed → a long nurture. Solar decisions stall on financing approval, roof age and a spouse who was not convinced. Months, not weeks.
Sold → install-milestone texts through permitting, utility interconnection and PTO. Solar has a punishing gap between signature and switch-on, and silence during it is where cancellations come from.

It is one workflow inside the GoHighLevel CRM, reading the same contact record the SMS engine, the calendar and the pipeline read — which is why it takes an afternoon rather than a Zapier chain across four vendors.

Read this part

Where GoHighLevel is weak here

GoHighLevel does no solar design. No shading analysis, no roof modelling, no production estimate, no proposal with a savings projection, no utility rate database, and no interconnection paperwork. It cannot tell you how many panels fit on a roof or what they will generate — and a large share of people searching "solar software" want exactly that, which is why this page leads on the CRM side. It also has no permitting or PTO tracking beyond whatever pipeline stages you build by hand.

Aurora Solar or OpenSolar for design, production modelling and the proposal — those are the actual "solar software" people usually mean, and OpenSolar is free. Keep one. GoHighLevel is the sales and operations layer around it: setter and closer pipelines, sit-rate automations, and the post-sale communication that stops customers cancelling during the permitting wait. If your problem is proposals, buy Aurora and ignore this page.

We would rather you heard that from us than found it out in month two. The plan price is also not the bill — SMS, phone numbers, email and AI all meter on top of it. Run your own numbers on the true-cost calculator before you commit.

In detail

Solar installers, specifically

Solar’s real number is the sit rate

Every solar operation obsesses over lead cost. Almost none of them attack the number that actually decides profitability: how many booked appointments turn into a closer sitting at a kitchen table with two decision-makers present.

Book twelve, sit seven, and you have paid a closer for five two-hour round trips to nothing. That is not a marketing problem or a lead-quality problem. It is a confirmation problem, and it is the cheapest thing in the whole business to fix.

What actually protects a sit

Not a reminder. A reminder is a message that expects nothing back, and silence tells you nothing.

What works is a sequence of small commitments:

At booking: “Will both of you be there? These usually go nowhere if one partner has to relay it afterwards.” Honest, and it either fixes the appointment or exposes it as fake now rather than on the doorstep.
The day before: a question they have to answer. Any question. Non-response at this point is the single strongest predictor of a no-show, and it gives you a whole day to refill the slot.
Two hours before: the closer’s name, photo and ETA. It turns “a salesman is coming” into “Marcus is coming”, and the difference in people-suddenly-going-out is real.

Then say the unpopular thing

The message that sets expectations before the sit — how long it takes, that nothing gets installed today, that they should have a power bill handy — loses you a small number of appointments.

Good. Those were the appointments that were never going to close, and they were about to cost you four hours of a closer’s day. Every solar operation that has ever pushed back on this has, on inspection, been optimising for a set count that somebody was being paid on.

The gap between signature and switch-on is where cancellations live

Solar’s cruellest structural feature: the customer signs, and then nothing visible happens for weeks or months. Permitting. Utility interconnection. Inspection. Permission to operate.

In that silence, a neighbour tells them they overpaid. A relative asks about the lien. The optimism that closed the deal cools into anxiety, and they start looking for the cancellation clause.

Milestone texts — even boring ones, even “still waiting on the utility, nothing we can do this week, here is where we are” — cost fractions of a cent and prevent cancellations that cost you the entire job. It is the highest-ROI messaging in the industry and it is almost universally neglected because it is not sales.

The design tool is a different purchase

Aurora Solar and OpenSolar model the roof, calculate the shading, size the array and produce the savings proposal. That is what most people mean when they type “solar software”, and GoHighLevel does none of it.

Buy one of those for the kitchen table. Buy this for the sit rate, the setter-to-closer pipeline, and the permitting silence — and check the real cost of the messaging, because a canvassing team sends far more SMS than a typical trade and it shows up on the bill.

Nearby

Related use cases

GoHighLevel for plumbers

Most plumbing jobs go to whoever answers the phone at 2am. What GoHighLevel does about that — and why it still is not a dispatch system.
GoHighLevel for lawn care companies

Lawn care software for the sales side: instant quotes, recurring mow subscriptions billed automatically, and the spring text that fills the season.

Or go back to every industry we have written up.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good sit rate for a solar sales team?: Whatever yours is now, it is the number worth attacking before you spend another dollar on leads. Most operations book far more appointments than they sit, and the gap is pure waste: a closer’s two-hour round trip for a door nobody answers. Confirmation sequences that require a reply, a message asking whether both decision-makers will be present, and a closer photo two hours before the sit all lift it — and none of them cost more than a few cents per appointment.
Does GoHighLevel design solar systems or model production?: No. There is no shading analysis, no roof modelling, no panel layout, no production estimate and no savings proposal. Aurora Solar and OpenSolar do all of that properly and one of them is free. If "solar software" means the tool that draws the array and produces the savings number for the kitchen table, this is not it — GoHighLevel handles the pipeline around that proposal, not the proposal itself.
Why do solar customers cancel after signing?: Silence during permitting. There is a long, invisible gap between a signature and a working system — permits, utility interconnection, inspection, permission to operate — and in that gap the customer has second thoughts, talks to a sceptical neighbour, and starts wondering whether they were sold something. Automated milestone updates at each stage, even when the update is "still waiting on the utility, here is where we are", dramatically reduce cancellations for a cost of pennies.
How do you separate setter and closer performance in a solar pipeline?: By making them different stages with different owners, so the numbers cannot hide behind each other. Sets, confirmed sets, sits, and closes — each attributable. The moment you can see that a particular setter books twenty appointments and only nine are sat, you have found a real problem that a headline set count was concealing. Solar teams routinely pay commission on sets and then wonder why the sit rate is poor.
Is GoHighLevel suitable for a door-knocking solar canvassing team?: For the pipeline and the follow-up, yes — a canvassed address with a phone number is a contact record, and the sequence that follows is where a lot of canvassing value is wasted. But be careful about consent: a number collected at a door is not an SMS opt-in, US A2P rules apply, and carriers will silently filter messages to a list that was not properly opted in. Get explicit permission at the door and register properly, or the whole channel quietly stops working without telling you.

Try it against your own solar installer numbers

Start the trial, build the one workflow above, and judge the platform on what it recovers for you rather than on what anyone says about it.

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