LinkedIn is a great tool for B2B businesses that marketers use to find new leads. It can already do a lot in the unpaid version, but the paid version is much more advanced and takes your business to the next level. For example, LinkedIn Sales Navigator makes it easier and faster to find the right people.
What is the LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a tool that makes it easy for salespeople to find and reach new qualified leads. It's one of LinkedIn's paid features and can be found in premium accounts under Sales Solutions in the Work tab.
With sophisticated filters, expanded search options, and easier contacting, you'll find exactly who you're looking for quickly and efficiently.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator and its advantages
LinkedIn itself is good at social selling, but LinkedIn Sales Navigator opens up new opportunities to generate leads more effectively.
In the paid version, for example:
- see who has visited your profile in the last 90 days,
- use advanced filtering to help you find who you need,
- you'll be able to search without limiting the number of characters in the query or the number of results displayed,
- you can add contacts to lists and save notes or tags to them, making it easier to categorise leads,
- it's easier to strike up a conversation with potential customers because you can send messages without having to connect.
How to use LinkedIn Sales Navigator to find leads
You can also use filters and keywords in the unpaid version, but not at the level offered by the professional account. LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you to specify several different parameters along with an unlimited number of keywords to refine your search. Search queries can be saved and reused later.
At the time of writing, LinkedIn Sales Navigator allows you to filter users using dozens of filters, including:
- the size of the company they work for
- the city or state where their business is located,
- type of industry,
- personnel changes in the company (for example, an increase in the number of employees or a change to a specific position),
- recent activity (for example, interactions with a specific type of post).
That way, you won't be sifting through irrelevant results. By searching for qualified leads, you'll also increase your success rate and chance of business success.
In LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you can also search using Boolean operators known from programming (AND, OR, NOT). This allows you to filter leads even deeper. For example, this is how you search for contacts who are business managers, but at the same time do not work in companies with less than 50 people (NOT operator).
You can also use filters to better come up with icebreakers when you first contact a potential client. For example, you will only find leads with:
- you have common contacts
- you participated in the same course or event,
- you share a common topic that they just posted about
- you know they recently changed jobs.
A little-known feature in LinkedIn Sales Navigator is the View Similar feature. If you find a particularly interesting lead in the people you searched for, click the View Similar button and LinkedIn will search for users who have a similar position in similarly sized companies in a similar field.
By the way, if you are looking for other ways to find leads, we discuss them in a separate article.
How to reach leads with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
While in the unpaid version you must first connect with a contact to send them a message, in Sales Navigator you send InMails. You can send these messages to anyone outside of your network, plus they appear at the top of your inbox and you can customize the subject line.
The number of InMails you can send depends on your plan. It ranges between 20 and 50 InMails per month. This motivates users not to send bulk spam. We recommend personalizing InMails sufficiently and carefully preparing them so that they interest the lead and do not close them like any other business message.
Lists and tracking of lead activity
You can also save all prospected and contacted contacts directly into lists that you can work with later. Lists help you keep track of who you've already reached out to, who's responded to you, and who makes sense to follow up with next.
Through lists, LinkedIn also alerts you to important lead activity, especially job changes and posts they share. You can bookmark each lead activity to return to it at any time later.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator also works as a simple CRM. But if you expect more from a CRM, try a professional CRM tool. For example, you can try RAYNET CRM with all functions for free and without obligations for 30 days.
Is LinkedIn Sales Navigator worth it?
LinkedIn has many interesting features. For an annual subscription to LinkedIn Sales Navigator, you will pay almost CZK 2,000 per month (even CZK 2,355 for a monthly subscription).
Therefore, investing in this tool is not worth it for everyone. Only consider buying it if:
- you want to save time and efficiently search for relevant leads,
- you need to search for specific people and companies that meet several parameters,
- you are searching for a lot of people and you don't want to be limited by the number of results,
- you want to have an overview of the leads you are searching for and reaching.
Before you log in, think about how you use LinkedIn now. A paid account alone won't get you new business. You need to be on LinkedIn already:
- have had their profile tweaked and updated,
- you've built a network of contacts that you're expanding and working with,
- being active, regularly creating your own content and responding to the contributions of others.
Also, take a look at the article where we describe other smart tools that will make your trading easier.
