Industry and being labeled

I find it interesting, and sometimes even slightly annoying when sales people come in from vendors and immediately labeling my projects or constraints by the industry that we're in.

As in: "Well of course you will need feature X you are in the life sciences industry".

This type of statement makes sence of course if feature X is somehow related to the something industry specific. My annoyance comes in when feature X is version control, separation of duties, or support for a standard or specification such as WSRP or BPEL.

Of course I'm not talking about the odd comment but rather the vendor that relates everything I say to the industry. Regardless of the fact that I'm not talking about anything industry specific.

I do find it commical how some vendors sales people identify themselves first and foremost with the industry vertical they are responsible for, despite not knowing anything about the industry.

Sales guy: "Hi I'm Bob, I'm responsible for the health care and lifesciences customers in NY and NJ."

I always want to reply:
"Hi Bob, I'm Rob. I am an Associatte Director of a application development team. We don't care much for NY, and health care is taken care of my HMO. Life sciences? I'm not following. We do computer sciences around here if anything...."

Not supporting manufacturing or R&D means my team is abstracted from the true business. While we do handle the external facing sites and there is some specific rules around that we tend to be doing fairly straight forward development - not industry specific.