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Home » Article » Presentation Design Basics: A Guide for Salesforce Administrators

• Presentation Design Basics: A Guide for Salesforce Administrators

Here’s a situation we can all recall: You have to give a presentation, and it’s time to start creating the slide deck. You begin by opening PowerPoint, making a title slide, putting some bullet points on the intro slide, and inserting a cute picture — and then you hit a wall. You give yourself kudos for getting this far and go get some coffee. You may think to yourself, “I’m not the best at using PowerPoint — there’s got to be a better way!”

It’s not about how pretty your slides are (well, it is, but that comes later). The basis of designing and delivering an awesome presentation is to craft a story and use visuals to support and strengthen that story.

This is especially key for the data-heavy presentations you create. Salesforce Admins and power users are in a unique position to help leadership understand business success metrics from reports and dashboards. But if you show slide after slides of charts and numbers, your audience won’t hear the story you’re telling.

In this post, you’ll learn how three Salesforce experts craft effective, impactful, and beautiful presentations. Sara Cattanach crafts messaging and content for the keynote presentations at Salesforce World Tour experiences, and coaches speakers to deliver great presentations. Aaron Rabideau and Gabrielle Tabios are the masterminds behind the presentation visuals at Salesforce’s largest events, including the Dreamforce keynote . Over and over again, they make it clear that slide design exists to support the presentation narrative.

Start with the narrative

Some of the best presentations have little or no visual elements. A slide deck is there to back you up, not to be the central focus. You want your audience members to leave saying, “What a great presentation!” not “What a great deck.” Your spoken delivery of the presentation is what will convince, inspire, or educate your audience.

Secret #1: Get the narrative, and titles, down completely before you start on the visuals. Otherwise, you’ll be rearranging slides and editing content when you change your story — you’ll end up doing twice the work on the presentation design elements.

When Sara is at square one starting a new presentation, she begins in a spreadsheet by writing out the narrative, with each slide title in its own row. When she has the story down, she goes to the speaker for the first round of feedback — before making a single slide.

Secret #2: Write the story of your presentation the way you write an essay. There should be a beginning, middle, and end. Different industries will have different ways of crafting stories, and knowing your audience is essential. Here are a few common structures:

• Thesis, supporting points, conclusion
• Summary, question posed, hypothesis, exploration, conclusion
• Problem, solution (it’s your company), how your offerings work, call to action (for example: “Learn more here,” or “Go deeper with small-group event sessions”)
• For a key or novel idea: what exists now, compare and contrast feature by feature

Every presentation should be tailored to your audience with a clear goal in mind. Is the point to convince investors to back your product? That’s a very different presentation than the first call deck your sales team will use about that same product. A presentation to your peers about research findings may rely much more on text and supporting stats than the same content delivered to an audience that is not as immersed in the field. Below are a few great examples of clear titles and narratives:

Why visuals matter

Aaron breaks down slide design into three basic tenets:

1. Hierarchy: Is it clear what the primary and secondary messages are? Are messages on the slide competing? Is the title actively working to reinforce your visuals?

2. Balance: Are you using the entire workspace? Is one thing too big compared to another?

3. Alignment: Do titles shift or fonts change size from slide to slide? Do you have clear margins across the entire deck?

The first step he takes when sitting down with a speaker is to say, “Tell me what it is you want me to know.” Aaron’s tips center around two basic goals for visuals: Have each slide reinforce (not distract from) the points in the narrative, and have the visuals be so organized that the audience experience is seamless. In short, you want the presenter to look good.

People are inherent problem solvers. If they see something wrong on a slide, they may not have the design eye to pick out exactly what’s wrong, but their attention will be taken away from what you are saying as they subconsciously work to figure out what’s off.

For example, putting up an even slightly blurry image will divert from what’s being said. Visuals are there to support the speaker and should never detract from the spoken presentation (read: no slides full of long bullet points or low-quality Google-sourced images!).

Taking the extra time upfront to clean up your slides reinforces that you take your presentation, audience, and message seriously. It’s why companies will spend big money on creative agencies that obsess over the details of an ad — if something is sloppy, it reflects poorly on the company. Set yourself up for success by creating consistency and a high standard for quality across your entire deck.

The basics of presentation design

By now, you should be convinced that PowerPoint is not your starting point. After you’ve nailed down your story, and the titles of each of your slides, you can finally get to what you came to this article for: creating impactful slides. The minute details and wizardry of slide creation are best left to training courses, but there are some important points to take home.

1. Each slide should convey one idea. If there are two ideas, break it into two slides. Gabrielle lays out a basic slide breakdown: The top-level thing is what you want the audience to grab right away (a callout, a key visual, or the title). The secondary element supports that first thing, and smaller elements can also be inserted if they don’t overwhelm the slide.

2. Consistency is key. Slide elements should be aligned: Things sit in the same place, are the same color, are the same size, and have the same amount of space between them. Use bold text minimally and a maximum of one highlight color.

3. Text should be minimized. The details of a slide — a picture, callout stat, quote, or subtitle — can support what you’re saying, but the slide shouldn’t speak for you. Newer speakers may need longer titles to help them remember the narrative while presenting. The better you get at storytelling, the less you will need those cues, and the more you can pare down the text on your slides to put your audience’s focus on your words.

4. Recurring images help enhance the narrative. Put a lot of thought into how your images support a slide’s key idea, make sure you use high-quality images, and consider using recurring images. Salesforce uses customer heroes that are tailored to our audience — customers who champion a specific product or are from the segment or industry that best matches who’s in the room. We often introduce this hero at the beginning with a theme — like “customer success” — and then bring them back in at later points to remind the audience of that theme. Even if they don’t consciously pick up on the reminder, using a recurring high-impact image will help shape your story arc and give consistency to your message.

This slide draws the eye to the three main ideas and has supporting design elements containing characters to add in the fun and unify the theme.

Aaron gave one final piece of advice for designing slides, a pithy manifesto: “ If you can’t afford to be minimalist, be clear. ”

Learn more with these Trailhead modules:

• Storytelling and Communication
• Create Rad Content
• Use Storytelling in Presentations
• Virtual Presentations

Alice Avery

Alice Avery is a Product Marketing Director for the Customer Success team at Salesforce. As an advocate for the company's industry leadership in helping customers reach their digital transformation goals, she champions more than 20 years of best practices and expertise through content, research, and events.

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The Analyst Landscape: 25 Takes On Salesforce

25 analysts have shared their evaluations of Salesforce CRM during the recent three months, expressing a mix of bullish and bearish perspectives.

The table below summarizes their recent ratings, showcasing the evolving sentiments within the past 30 days and comparing them to the preceding months.

The 12-month price targets assessed by analysts reveal further insights, featuring an average target of $330.72, a high estimate of $360.00, and a low estimate of $285.00. This current average reflects an increase of 10.52% from the previous average price target of $299.23.

Investigating Analyst Ratings: An Elaborate Study

The standing of Salesforce among financial experts is revealed through an in-depth exploration of recent analyst actions. The summary below outlines key analysts, their recent evaluations, and adjustments to ratings and price targets.

Key Insights:

• Action Taken: Analysts frequently update their recommendations based on evolving market conditions and company performance. Whether they 'Maintain', 'Raise' or 'Lower' their stance, it reflects their reaction to recent developments related to Salesforce. This information provides a snapshot of how analysts perceive the current state of the company.
• Rating: Analysts assign qualitative assessments to stocks, ranging from 'Outperform' to 'Underperform'. These ratings convey the analysts' expectations for the relative performance of Salesforce compared to the broader market.
• Price Targets: Analysts provide insights into price targets, offering estimates for the future value of Salesforce's stock. This comparison reveals trends in analysts' expectations over time.

Navigating through these analyst evaluations alongside other financial indicators can contribute to a holistic understanding of Salesforce's market standing. Stay informed and make data-driven decisions with our Ratings Table.

Stay up to date on Salesforce analyst ratings.

Get to Know Salesforce Better

Salesforce Inc provides enterprise cloud computing solutions. The company offers customer relationship management technology that brings companies and customers together. Its Customer 360 platform helps the group to deliver a single source of truth, connecting customer data across systems, apps, and devices to help companies sell, service, market, and conduct commerce. It also offers Service Cloud for customer support, Marketing Cloud for digital marketing campaigns, Commerce Cloud as an e-commerce engine, the Salesforce Platform, which allows enterprises to build applications, and other solutions, such as MuleSoft for data integration.

Salesforce: A Financial Overview

Market Capitalization: Exceeding industry standards, the company's market capitalization places it above industry average in size relative to peers. This emphasizes its significant scale and robust market position.

Revenue Growth: Salesforce's revenue growth over a period of 3 months has been noteworthy. As of 31 January, 2024, the company achieved a revenue growth rate of approximately 10.77% . This indicates a substantial increase in the company's top-line earnings. When compared to others in the Information Technology sector, the company faces challenges, achieving a growth rate lower than the average among peers.

Net Margin: The company's net margin is below industry benchmarks, signaling potential difficulties in achieving strong profitability. With a net margin of 15.57%, the company may need to address challenges in effective cost control.

Return on Equity (ROE): Salesforce's ROE lags behind industry averages, suggesting challenges in maximizing returns on equity capital. With an ROE of 2.46%, the company may face hurdles in achieving optimal financial performance.

Return on Assets (ROA): Salesforce's ROA is below industry standards, pointing towards difficulties in efficiently utilizing assets. With an ROA of 1.52%, the company may encounter challenges in delivering satisfactory returns from its assets.

Debt Management: Salesforce's debt-to-equity ratio is below the industry average. With a ratio of 0.21 , the company relies less on debt financing, maintaining a healthier balance between debt and equity, which can be viewed positively by investors.

The Core of Analyst Ratings: What Every Investor Should Know

Analyst ratings serve as essential indicators of stock performance, provided by experts in banking and financial systems. These specialists diligently analyze company financial statements, participate in conference calls, and engage with insiders to generate quarterly ratings for individual stocks.

Some analysts publish their predictions for metrics such as growth estimates, earnings, and revenue to provide additional guidance with their ratings. When using analyst ratings, it is important to keep in mind that stock and sector analysts are also human and are only offering their opinions to investors.

If you want to keep track of which analysts are outperforming others, you can view updated analyst ratings along withanalyst success scores in Benzinga Pro .

This article was generated by Benzinga's automated content engine and reviewed by an editor.

© 2024 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

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