What sets you apart?

As a designer, I receive many requests by suppliers and vendors who wants to do product presentation to me.

Actually I'm sure they want to talk to the entire company, but most of the time I am the only one attending. My juniors occasionally sit in, but seeing how they are uninterested, I spare them from the agony.

Honestly, I am not that eager myself, especially when many vendors do not understand that there are 10, 20 other similar vendors servicing me (I dont mean to sound rude and arrogant, but that is genuinely the term used) and I am not drawn when they began to state every single one of their products when those are apparently highly similar to what the next vendor can offer me.

When they go on and on and on and on, I will cruelly stop them in mid sentence and tell them that I dont wish to hear about all the typicals, and please to stop and think, and tell me the ONE thing that I can in turn sell to my client.

Tell me one thing that sets you apart from the rest of your competitors, then assure me that all the general specs the competitor can offer, you can match it, or better still, beat it.


I tell the same thing to myself, to friends. Think about how are you different from your colleagues, and develop your strengths.

If your role in the company is just like your colleague in the adjacent cubicle, it doesnt matter who it is if the company ever need to ask one of you to go.

Pessimistic, yes. But that's life. Understand the pessimism and learn to be optimistic!