Since 2000 the world of Sales and Marketing has changed totally. Yes the corporate aims remain the same but supply and communications channels have turned themselves inside out and it bites at every company and every team involved with winning and holding customers.

The new marketplace has been generated by more factors than the Web, factors that are to do with increasingly sophisticated buyers, more choice and greater demand for competitive pricing in a time when costs are spiralling and standards are changing.

We live in a disposable world that has never been more aware of its responsibility to energy conservation and it sees an uncertain future. It leads to confusion and reprioritising in product selection criteria with customers wanting explanations and information to run cost/performance comparisons, product purchase price/full life cost analysis and recycle or rebuild considerations.

The threat, and the opportunity, comes from customers being in control, setting the agenda and swapping loyalties to suit the moment. The Web has just speeded things up. It has brought information instantly to the office PC. Information to assist in all aspects of the buying decision, from identifying alternative suppliers, alternative specifications, alternative ways of structuring the purchase and alternative ways of benefiting from after sales support.

Somewhere on the Web will be a page where users of your products/services are posting their opinions. Worrying isn't it? Search has changed the game forever; it is affecting every business right now.

Market dynamics shift and we all have to settle down to new rules. Rules that say the customer is boss and that marketing is now the responsibility of the whole company. And the mantra of the wise says: maintain your customer at all costs because it's cheaper than finding a replacement.

Today the Web has given businesses the affordable one-to-one dialogue with its customers they always wanted. It is the one opportunity they have lacked and now it is time to make full use of the gift. The product remains king but without good marketing and marketing communications good products can still be buried in the clamour of a million competing communications. But the market and the opportunities are definitely there you just have to be that bit better than your competitor in getting to it. Each channel to market is an opportunity to slant the sales message to best effect. The creative inventiveness of the clever marketer has much work to do.