Most commercial improvement efforts deliver short-term gains—or none at all. Disconnected tactics, reactive campaigns, and overloaded sales teams create missed orders, wasted spend, and customer churn that quietly erode growth. Lean Focus applies Lean principles to commercial execution—redesigning how demand is generated, qualified, and converted. The result is a disciplined commercial system that improves focus, increases conversion, and makes growth predictable rather than episodic.
Are You Growing Slower Than Your Market Opportunity?
Revenue growth is below expectations.
Sales teams spend too much time internally instead of with customers.
Pipeline visibility is weak and forecasts are unreliable.
Pricing is inconsistent or driven by discounting.
Marketing activity isn't producing qualified demand.
Sales performance varies widely across reps or regions.
High-value opportunities are missed or poorly pursued.
You don't know where revenue is leaking—or stalling.
Most growth problems aren’t market problems. They’re system problems. We fix the system.
Lean Focus applies a focused set of Lean principles to make growth predictable.
Rather than relying on disconnected tactics, commercial work—from go-to-market and pricing to demand generation and funnel management—is aligned to create real customer value and consistent conversion.
Within the Growth Practice, three principles are foundational: Customer Value, Standard Work, and Flow. Together, they enable commercial teams to close more deals, retain more customers, and build repeatable revenue engines that scale.
Principle 1: Customer Value shifts commercial effort from chasing transactions to building relationships that convert and endure.
Instead of flooding the pipeline with poorly qualified opportunities, teams focus on the customers, problems, and segments that matter most. By grounding decisions in real customer needs and lifetime value, sales and marketing improve targeting, engagement, and close rates—because they’re solving problems customers are willing to pay to solve.
Principle 2: Standard Work replaces friction and inconsistency with disciplined commercial execution.
By aligning marketing, sales, pricing, and channels around a shared go-to-market approach, organizations eliminate handoff failures and fragmented customer experiences. When every function operates against the same standards and customer journey, conversion rates improve, trust increases, and growth becomes scalable rather than dependent on individual heroics.
Principle 3: Flow accelerates revenue by eliminating delays across the commercial system.
When leads are engaged immediately, proposals move without friction, and handoffs between marketing and sales are seamless, pipeline velocity increases. Deals close faster, customer responsiveness improves, and revenue that once stalled now flows predictably into results.
The Lean Focus Business System™ (LBS™) turns growth principles into execution.
Within the Growth Practice, Customer Value, Standard Work, and Flow are operationalized through the proven tools and disciplines embedded in the Lean Focus Business System™. Applied side-by-side with seasoned, senior-level practitioners, LBS™ enables commercial teams to redesign how demand is generated, qualified, and converted—creating predictable, repeatable revenue growth across markets and geographies.
Predictable growth requires a disciplined commercial system.
Start a conversation with our Growth Practice to explore your most important opportunities, the constraints limiting performance today, and how the Lean Focus Business System™ (LBS™) creates repeatable revenue growth.
Industry Experience Of Our Growth Practice
SAAS
DATA ANALYTICS
BUILDING MATERIALS
WATER & WASTEWATER
SPECIALTY CHEMICALS
DIAGNOSTIC EQUIPMENT
ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE
TRANSPORTATION MANAGEMENT
GENOMICS & PRECISION MEDICINE
AUTO PARTS & COMPONENTS
ENERGY & POWER SYSTEMS
INDUSTRIAL MACHINERY
AUTOMATION EQUIPMENT
BIOPHARMACEUTICALS
PLUMBING PRODUCTS
CONSUMER BRANDS
HVAC SYSTEMS
& MORE
Organizations We’ve Helped To Grow
Our Growth Practice Regional Leaders
EDWARD SMITHWICK
Senior Vice President, Growth Practice
LEAN FOCUS NORTH AMERICA
+1 (630) 800-8519
About Edward
Edward is Senior Vice President, Growth Practice for Lean Focus North America. He is a global, commercial leader experienced in sustaining profitable growth through leadership of corporate strategy, commercial planning and execution, product management, new product innovation, organization structure, and talent development. He has broad international experience building global $1 billion+ brands and mid-size businesses in complex markets. For almost 30 years, Edward has held leadership roles in public and private companies, including Danaher, Fortive, Veralto, GlaxoSmithKline, and Waterpik Technologies. He earned his BBA and MBA from Emory University.
Edward has delivered above-market results by architecting growth strategies, cross-functional collaboration, commercial excellence, and the ongoing commitment to Continuous Improvement.
At Danaher, he led a cross-functional team to define, rollout, and sustain the global lead management process for a $1 billion OpCo, installing Salesforce and marketing automation, while establishing standard work for Sales, Marketing, and Commercial Operations. At one of Fortive’s largest OpCos, Edward led redefinition of the new product launch process and drove a breakthrough NPD commercialization initiative that exceeded target by 54% applying deep customer insight, rapid prototyping, and disciplined experimentation. At a Veralto OpCo, Edward led initiatives to increase the new product funnel 3x, grow the impact of demand generation by 7x, and increase revenue from price by 7.5% in a single year.
About Manuel
Manuel has over 20 years of experience in Human Resource Management and Organizational Development. He has initially provided support for lean business transformations at all levels as a HR Consultant and later by leading customer-focused Talent and HR organizations in multi-national companies (up to $2.2B and 40+ locations). His assignments include various Talent leader roles at Danaher´s Water Quality Business and Head of HR positions in Pharma and Biotech. As an entrepreneur he has (co-)founded start-up businesses and professional networks. He is passionate about applying lean and agile thinking to build, improve and sustain impactful HR and talent practices, placing and developing key talent to drive the transformation journey, and building a lean leadership culture at all levels of the organization. Manuel holds a MBA (Diplom-Kaufmann) and Ph.D. in Business Administration (HR focus) from Essen University.
About Michael
Michael is the CEO of Lean Focus Nordic, bringing over 25 years of leadership experience. His career includes ~18 years at Danaher Corporation, where he held multiple executive roles, including General Manager/Managing Director Dentistry and Biotech businesses, as well as several VP Operations & Supply Chain and VP of Lean Business Transformation. In his role as Danaher Corporate Director, he was responsible for Danaher Business System implementation in EU. Most recently, he led Operations & Supply Chain of a $1B acute care diagnostics business, transforming it into one of Danaher’s most Lean-mature organizations.
An expert in driving transformational change, Michael specializes in implementing Lean practices and applying Lean business systems in large-scale organizations to enhance quality, delivery, innovation speed, and cost efficiency. He has successfully led cross-functional Lean transformations across diverse industries, cultivating high-performing, problem-solving cultures on a global scale.
Michael is renowned for driving radical business transformations and delivering impactful results. He excels in building enduring cultures of Continuous Improvement, anchored in collaboration, empowerment, and mutual respect.
Contact Our
Growth Practice Today.
Growth Practice Case Study
Driving Salesforce Productivity and Commercial Effectiveness Through Lean Transformation
140
Years In Business
2,000
Worldwide Locations
1. Challenge
The client is a North American Equipment business—a $3B+ enterprise—that faced a fundamental misalignment between how its sellers spent their time and where they created the most value. Sellers were burdened with non-value-added administrative tasks, internal coordination, and transactional problem-solving that pulled them away from customers. The result was constrained selling capacity, diluted focus on high-probability and high-margin opportunities, and revenue performance that fell short of the organization’s potential.
2. Opportunity
The company’s leadership recognized that a significant productivity unlock was possible—not by adding headcount, but by redesigning how work flowed through the commercial organization. By eliminating administrative waste, redirecting support responsibilities to the appropriate back-office and functional teams, and sharpening the sales team’s focus on the highest-value opportunities, the organization could dramatically increase customer-facing time and accelerate revenue growth.
Growth Practice Client Testimonials
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Lean Focus North America
P: +1 (630) 800-8519
E: [email protected]
Lean Focus Europe
P: +49 173 2505762
E: [email protected]
Lean Focus Nordic
P: +45 4030 3080
E: [email protected]
International Phone Number: +1 (630) 800-8519
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