You may be having a good business running. Sales are high, customers keep returning, and your ratings are high. You now think it is time for you to introduce a new product or service.

You then conduct a lead generation campaign to gauge who among your buyers can be new sales leads or business prospect. When you get the results, you are shocked to see the poor results. No one wanted to do business with you anymore. You now wonder where you went wrong.

While these may sound too shocking or jarring, it may be possible that the signals are already there. You just happened to misread their deeper meaning.

So, what are these marketing signals that you should be wary of?

1. High revenue flow – when we see revenue increasing, we often assume that our customers are happy. This is bad thinking. There is no assurance that repeat or additional customers are happy or satisfied ones. It may be possible that they have no other option but to do business with you.
2. Low complaint numbers – basing performance on the number of complaints received is also a bad practice that can impact your appointment setting campaign. It may be possible that the service or product you provide is bad, but not bad enough to compel the business customer to come back. This will make arranging a meeting with the other party.
3. Rely on focus groups – focus groups may sound like a very direct and scientific method of gauging customer perception of your company. Sad to say, this is also a very unreliable tool. More often than not, it only enforces group thinking. And what happens when your focus group has an opinion leader in them? It will only skew your findings towards the wrong results.
4. Trusting phone surveys – phone surveys are great and reliable when it comes to getting results, but the number of people willing to talk is quite low (especially if you are inexperienced in this area). To correct that, it will be good to hire real experts in the field (perhaps a couple of telemarketing specialists). But if you cannot afford the services of an in house one, you might as well outsource the work.
5. Rely fully on high ratings – high satisfaction ratings do not mean that you are an excellent provider of product or service. It only means that you are adequate enough to the customers. In other words, you do not have any loyal customers at all. In this case, you need to dig deeper and be more inquisitive on the perception of your buyers.

In the end, the words of a certain college professor will always ring true: “You should always delight and amaze your customers.” This is the only way for you to create loyal customers, really get in touch with them, as well as be more effective in your lead generation campaign. Yes, it is good that you have parameters, but if you rely solely on the numbers, you end up missing the bigger picture.