Whiteboards Over Slides — Reinventing Presales to Unlock IGEL’s Hidden Potential

In the presales world , it’s easy to fall into the “demon trap.” You open PowerPoint, show a few slides, run a scripted demo, and you’re done. The customer politely agrees, you ask a few questions, and the meeting is over.

• But nothing really changes.
• No new ideas.
• No real commitment.
• Just another meeting to check off the list.

The truth is, today’s endpoint story can’t be told in slides — it has to be explored.

From Demo to Discovery

There’s a quiet moment every presales engineer knows — the one right before you click “Start Presentation.” You’ve rehearsed the pitch, your slides look perfect, and the demo environment is clean. And yet, somewhere deep down, you know exactly how the next 45 minutes will go: a predictable walk-through of features the customer has probably seen before.

That’s the moment I realized something had to change.

Because the endpoint world we’re in now is not the one from five years ago. The classic story — “IGEL equals VDI access” — doesn’t fit anymore.

We’re now living in a hybrid application era, where users fluidly move between:

• Citrix, AVD sessions or any other virtualization platform,
• SaaS tools like Salesforce or Workday,
• progressive web apps replacing installed clients,
• and even native Linux apps that deliver full performance locally.

The endpoint has become the nexus where all of that meets. But when your presales story is still limited to “secure thin client for remote apps,” you’re not just underselling IGEL — you’re underselling your customer’s future.

So instead of showing what IGEL does, start exploring what the customer could do with it.

Here’s how the shift happens:

• You stop saying, “Here’s how IGEL connects to Citrix.”
• You start asking, “What’s your plan for SaaS adoption? How do you secure your browser strategy?”
• You stop leading with management dashboards and start sketching how endpoints could handle mixed workloads — one user in Chrome accessing SaaS, another launching Teams locally, another connecting to a virtual desktop.

When that happens, the conversation stops being about IGEL as a product — it becomes about IT architecture, user experience, and future flexibility.

And that’s when customers lean in.

Because suddenly, you’re not another vendor running a demo: You’re the one helping them rethink the role of the endpoint entirely.

A Real-World Story: The Browser Moment

A few days ago, I was in a presales session with a large healthcare customer. They were looking at IGEL purely as a replacement for their aging thin clients — a one-to-one swap. The room was full of people expecting to talk about remote sessions and device management.

Instead, I walked up to the whiteboard and drew three simple icons: a cloud, a desktop, and a browser.
Then I asked, “Where do your users really spend their day?”

After a moment of silence, one of the application leads said, “Honestly? Ninety percent of their work happens in Chrome now.”

That changed everything.

We stopped talking about virtual desktops and started exploring browser isolation, progressive web apps, and how IGEL could secure and optimize that experience directly at the endpoint. By the end of the session, what started as a replacement project had turned into a modernization strategy.

No slide could have done that. But a whiteboard could.

Whiteboard as a Mind Opener

Forget the demo for a minute. Take a pen. Stand in front of the whiteboard. Start with a blank canvas and ask:

“How do your users actually work?”

That single question changes everything.

You’ll discover that many users today spend 80% of their time in a web browser, that some key apps are SaaS or PWA-based, and that VDI is just one delivery method among many.

Suddenly, the conversation shifts — not about what IGEL does, but what the endpoint could become.

You can then draw architectures that combine:

• local browser sessions for SaaS,
• secure containers for Linux apps,
• remote sessions when needed,
• and unified user experience on a single endpoint.

That’s where light bulbs start to turn on.

The Power of “What If” Questions

Presales isn’t about features; it’s about possibilities. Ask questions that stretch the vision:

• “What if your browser was your workspace?”
• “What if you could run a native app without breaking compliance?”
• “What if your endpoints could switch use cases overnight — from VDI to SaaS or kiosk — without reimaging?”

Every “what if” opens a door. Every drawing on that whiteboard unlocks a conversation about how IGEL enables this flexibility today.

From Whiteboard to Proof

Once the picture is clear, then comes the demo — but not a standard one. Now you’re showing their future, not your product.

That’s the difference between selling technology and creating momentum.

Closing Thought

Presales is not about convincing; it’s about revealing.
When we use whiteboards instead of slides, we turn technology into a story the customer co-writes.

And with IGEL, that story can now go far beyond VDI — into a new generation of endpoints ready for the web, for PWAs, and for a future where flexibility defines success.

Because sometimes, the most powerful tool in presales isn’t PowerPoint — it’s a marker.