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Frenemies - Where growth meets reality
Welcome to Frenemies - the podcast where growth meets reality. Julia Hartwig believes that the B2B system is broken and that strategy and execution don't have to be disconnected. At the center of Frenemies stands one goal: uncovering the alignment trap most SaaS companies face within their go-to-market functions.
That's why Julia sits down with a guest every second week to uncover the key topics driving alignment and industry news.
Frenemies - Where growth meets reality
#35 When the Playbook Doesn't Fit - Sales in Complex Markets with Josephine Kleiner
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Most go-to-market playbooks are built for 30–90 day sales cycles. What happens when yours runs 1–2 years?
In this episode of Frenemies, Julia sits down with Josephine Kleiner, Head of Sales at Vitus Cloud, a scale-up selling data management infrastructure into the construction industry. A complex, relationship-driven, and traditionally slow-to-adopt market where trust takes years to build, and the standard SaaS playbook fails fast.
Josephine shares how she approaches pipeline, experimentation, and alignment in a world where revenue is always further down the road than you'd like - and why protecting your ICP might be the most important growth decision you make.
Topics covered in this episode:
- Why the standard SaaS go-to-market playbook breaks in complex industries
- How to manage pipeline when sales cycles run 1–2 years
- The leading indicators that matter before revenue shows up
- How Vitus built OnSight, a full go-to-market program that started as a 3-person experiment
- Why bad-fit customers aren't just a churn problem, they're a growth problem
- Balancing quantitative data with relationship-driven insight
- What construction can teach every B2B team about trust, patience, and staying top of mind
Follow Josephine Kleiner on LinkedIn
Learn more about Vitus Cloud
Read the OnSight 2026 Status Report
