Either you win a sale or you don't. There is no silver or bronze medal in sales, according to Donna Marie Thompson at this fall's Advanced Profit Innovation Conference. Sales is a fierce competition, and there are no second-place winners, just first-place losers.

This is a reality every distributor faces. To make things more complicated, nearly every customer wants to be served in a different way. How do you manage the varying needs of customers?

Thompson highlights three improvements that can be made that will help address the constantly changing needs of customers. The first is an enhanced customer interface. This will help educate the customer by providing all relevant information to customers online. Additionally all communication with customers should be reviewed to reduce any errors visible to the customer.

Second is an enhanced supply chain. Vet your suppliers to make sure their core values match yours and deliver exceptional customer service to reduce marketing costs that might need to be invested to buy back business lost with errors. Don't make any challenges in your supply chain your customers' problem.

Third, Thompson suggests investing in enhanced predictive analytics to find meaningful patterns that are ultimately useful to increase sales, rather than relying on linear forecasting. Any distributor knows that sales growth is rarely, if ever, linear.

These steps build trust and loyalty in customers which will not only help win sales, but turn one-time buyers into customers for life.