If you are interviewing for an AE role in their "Key" segment (make sure to ask if its Key or Strat), then below is what I had experienced. I'll cut to the chase. Do not come here if you are looking at a Key AE role:
A lot to name:
- Leadership has no startup experience. All came from big names (SFDC and way worse - Oracle). This is Oracle 2.0, which is one of the worst negatives you can give a company. Too many grey haired "break down the doors, make you buy software that isn't the best fit just to make money" seasoned Oracle reps. It is not a new-age, product-led sales culture at Celonis. It is all sales-led. There are too many PLG companies in 2022 out there for you to join a sales-led company like Celonis. Not having startup experience in Key is an issue because leadership doesn't know how to feed reps with any guidance/inbound/warm leads, since this is a newer category/company name no one knows.
- Zero inbound for Key team - in the interview, you will be told that partners feed us leads. This is wrong, partners (big 4, accenture, IBM) don't want to work with us until we have a direct deal (which takes a while, 1+ year, will mention below). Make sure you know going in that this is a pure hunter sales role. If you ask "how much of this is inbound" and they say anything more than single digit, they are lying
- Very low morale in Key, and pretty low morale in sales overall. Company gets most of its YoY revenue growth from either consulting firms pre-purchasing licenses (which sales folks are not comped on) at their accounts, or from the Fortune 50 buying massive deals. 2 people in Key have hit their number in the last 2 years. If you are interviewing for a Key AE role, ask them how many in Key specifically have hit their number. If they don't give a single digit answer, it's a lie (they might spin it saying something else).
- High attrition. Ask your manager how many people left his/her team in the past year?
- Make sure you ask for a ramp (full pay out of OTE) here for at least 6 months. I'd start by asking for 1 year and hoping they come down to it. The reason I say this is because the Key territories are cold, and because there is no inbound or warm outbound, it usually takes a year to get into a real deal cycle. The marketing team at Celonis is unfortunately not effective in generating awareness for the the company, so sales people ask as marketers/BDRs/sales reps all in one. Because of this, the few deals that might matriculate take about a year at the minimum
- Equity is non-existent here. They check the box of offering "equity" but it is not market-value. Once I joined here in 2021, and after networking with other frineds at high-growth startups, I should not have taken this opportunity with how little equity I ended up getting and felt like a chump after
- Sales leadership promotes incentives for the sales reps, and then does not pay them out on this. This one is extremely unfortunate, as I don't think they try to screw over salespeople. They are just incompetent on how to align company incentives and paying sales people. No confidence that this will change, and they don't care. Celonis will IPO in either late 2022-2023, and those up top are just waiting for that pay out
- Leadership culture has low EQ. CRO is unimpressive (former Oracle guy), shocker - has spoke badly about competition (UiPath) many times, has told salespeople he doesn't care about commissions, keeps praising the comp plan on an all hands call, when it just sucks...very cringe
- I don't care much about the health insurance piece, but I believe some don't love it
- Scrutinized over expense report, even for the smallest amount. Unheard of in tech sales. Will sometimes get denied expenses for customer expenses because it seems "unreasonable"
- Boring convos. Our product plays well in non-tech forward companies such as chemicals, manufacturing, oil/gas, etc. Doesn't play well with tech-forward companies, less chance of a land or expand. This is a personal preference, but if you are looking to sell a product where tech-forward/cool high-growth companies are wanting to have - Celonis is not it
- Busy work - The Key team spent a lot of time completing executive decks to present upward to leadership. Most of these never got to the customer, and were a complete waste of time
- Low solution engineering talent in Key, very strong in Strat. In key, be prepared to sell this yourself. If you join the Strategic team, they have some really strong SEs that help you co-sell (which was my experience at past companies)
It pains me to have to write this, but I felt the need to do all of this because I know the Key segment (and their sales team in general) is looking to hire, and I don't want people making the same mistake I did. Don't get swindled over the sales pitch of "why Celonis." The Forbes Cloud 100 ranking of #20 is accurate, as their product is really good. However, it's a classic case of good product but poor comp structure, poor leadership.
