Are you making these mistakes while launching new products ?

The fact is that these marketing mistakes are easily avoided; and yet people make them all the time. Are you sure you too are not committing these mistakes in your own business?

Your new products are conceived 
in a wrong place and in a wrong sequence
Your new product process starts with an "idea" but you forget whose idea is it. Is it your internal idea or is it from an external customer? Unfortunately, many companies start with what they think is good and is based on internal inspiration / reason : it is "the latest", "it can be made on our existing machines", "we know how to procure the main material at a good price", "how can we not have this product?", "we already know the customer so half the job is done already", "the CEO himself likes it" etc.   You should invert this process and start by asking which customer's what need is strong and urgent and this is likely to make you succeed more often. This is called as market positioning. Doing things in the wrong order is delightful but a proper way produces better results. 
 
You treat casual feedback 

from untrained sales force as facts.

Sales people are not always right about what the market wants. Their 3 standard formulas are "improve the product", "reduce the price" and "spend more on promotions".  The sales people are focused on "how to sell more next month and exceed targets"; everything else is secondary to them. In any case, many times the sales people do not get to meet the people who truly influence or make decisions. That is why you should not consider the sales force feedback as undiluted truth. I suggest you put a good salesperson on a team along with  marketing and technical colleagues and (a) train them in the methods of ferreting out facts (b) establish direct contact with the customers.  How to listen to the market is an important skill and needs to be developed in the organization - not as a specialist discipline - but as general skill that is needed widely.
 
Your managers  taking marketing decisions
have no direct contact with customers
Your managers rely on "gut feeling". Your marketing managers think they are the "market" themselves. They conceive new products and services based on books, discussions and fads alone without input from the live customers. Probably your managers avoid complaining customers like a plague. If this is true, you definitely need a develop a "customer culture". You must encourage all in the company to take every opportunity to interact with the customer and learn what are their needs and "pain points" and how do they go about purchasing. One low-cost approach is to train yourself and all of your employees to routinely interact with customers for the explicit purpose of gathering intelligence about their needs or handling their grievances . Sometimes the best information can come through casual comments. Soon you'll begin thinking like your customer - which is the first step in overwhelming your  competitors.

You do not know your business, customer, purpose.
You blindly copy methods.  

There is only one universal truth in marketing  - "KNOW WHO IS THY CUSTOMER AND LISTEN TO HIM";  everything else is situational and need not be done under all circumstances : better product is not needed in all circumstances, lower price should not be the objective in all situations, wider distribution need not necessarily result into better results, you do not need to advertise or promote all the time, you need not appoint dealers for everything. For example, B2B customers tend to be more measured and rational in their approach to purchasing, and they are far fewer in number. They're smart and will make you smarter if you engage them in a peer- to-peer dialogue. Let them lead you to their areas of interest, probe with skill, and you'll be shocked at how much you'll learn. In such situations do not use surveys because they are used by B2C companies selling mass consumption standard products. 
 
You gather only qualitative customer feedback.

The partner of a business spent months interviewing customers, only to hear his partner say that he didn't believe what customers were saying. Managers and owners often hear what  they want to hear and then parade some customer quotes for support. What you need is quantitative data, which measure customer importance and satisfaction on key outcomes. Skip quantification and your new product will be based on assumptions, bias, and wishful thinking. 


You listen only to existing / immediate customers. 

Unlike B2C producers, your product might become part of your customers' products, your customers' customers' products, and so on. It's a mistake to interview only your direct customers, because they are usually unable or unwilling to disclose downstream needs. It is also very important to know why your non-customers are not buying. Or why your competitors' customers are not buying you.