Not long ago, organizations generally sold their products and services through a single channel. A large, established company such as an IBM or a Xerox, for example, would sell everything from mainframe computers to typewriters, or from huge photocopiers to toner replacement cartridges, through one channel - the direct sales force. A consumer-oriented company such as Kodak sold products through retail distributors. A few direct marketing companies such as Avon sold through door-to-door neighbourhood sales agents. 'Go-to-market strategy' usually meant building a good channel and making it work.

Today, all of those companies - IBM, Xerox, Kodak and Avon - go to market through some version or another of a 'hybrid' channel model: a mixture of field sales forces, the Internet, telechannels, direct mail, business partners, and so on. These are just a few miscellaneous examples of a much broader trend. In financial services, for example, and particularly in the brokerage business, the entire industry has migrated over the past decade to a hybrid channel model. In telecommunications, shipping and high technology, an executive suggesting that his or her company go to market through one channel would probably be fired - if not just taken out back and shot.

The reason for this migration toward multiple channels is simple. Hybrid channel models deliver results - the kinds of tangible results that...