#35 When the Playbook Doesn't Fit - Sales in Complex Markets with Josephine Kleiner

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 industriesHow to manage pipeline when sales cycles run 1–2 yearsThe leading indicators that matter before revenue shows upHow Vitus built OnSight, a full go-to-market program that started as a 3-person experimentWhy bad-fit customers aren't just a churn problem, they're a growth problemBalancing quantitative data with relationship-driven insightWhat construction can teach every B2B team about trust, patience, and staying top of mindFollow Josephine Kleiner on LinkedIn Learn more about Vitus CloudRead the OnSight 2026 Status Report